Kerala on Thursday protested against the incident of alleged moral hooliganism staged by Shiv Sena activists at Kochi’s Marine Drive the other day, in which they attacked and threatened couples spending the evening together. Kochi saw hundreds of people protesting the Shiv Sena atrocity by kissing, hugging, painting, staging street plays, mock-caning and ‘love Sit-in’ at Marine Drive even as the State Assembly witnessed uproarious scenes.
Several organisations, including political parties, their feeder outfits and Kiss of love, a forum that staged the controversial kissing agitation in November, 2014, to protest against the attack by a group of Yuva Morch activists on a coffee shop in Kozhikode alleging immoral activities. Many other centres in Kerala like Kozhikode also saw protests against the Shiv Sena act.
A group of Shiv Sena workers had on Wednesday scared away several couples spending the evening at the Marine Drive walkway in Kochi by caning, threatening and showering abuses in the presence of several policemen who refused to intervene. The Shiv Sena activists had committed the alleged atrocity by saying that “love under umbrella” was unacceptable.
The police arrested eight Shiv Sena men including the outfit’s Ernakulam district president. The Government had on Wednesday itself suspended a Sub Inspector of police and eight civil police officers for failing to take appropriate action against the act of moral hooliganism in Kochi despite Intelligence warning.
The police did not disrupt the protests as they had done in the case of the 2014 Kiss of love protests. Kiss of love had on Wednesday given a call for kissing protest through its Facebook page. “We can’t say whether we would kiss or hug here. Our intention is to protest against cultural hooliganism. What is wrong even if we kissIJ” asked a protestor in Kochi.
Pro-Congress Kerala Students Union held a cane-and-broom protest against Shiv Sena on Thursday morning while Marxist student and youth wings DYFI and SFI jointly held a “Sneha Irippu” (Sit for love) at Marine Drive. In the afternoon the Muslim league and CPI’s youth wing AIYF held protest marches to the Ernakulam district Shiv Sena office in Kochi.
The Shiv Sena’s alleged moral hooliganism in Kochi caused uproarious scenes in the Kerala Assembly with members of the ruling and Opposition sides nearly coming to blows following a comment by Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan that the Congress-led Opposition UDF was perhaps behind Sena’s act.
Pandemonium broke out after the Chief Minister, while replying to the notice for an adjournment motion moved by Congress member Hybi Eden over the Kochi incident, said he suspected that the Opposition was behind it and that “I have a doubt that the Shiv Sena’s moral policemen were hired” by the UDF Opposition.