Politics of love in current India
text_fieldsThe people who have come forward to protest against the act - that negates the very existence of farmers - by disregarding their age, weather and COVID are the greatest examples of patriotism and humanity. Collectively, they have gathered to defeat the treacherous and inhumane law of the ruling dispensation. They do not fear the political dictatorships of India.
Similarly, the couples who choose to love freely without fearing the political leadership of India are also a great example before our nation. They have made the biggest contribution in sustaining the Indian constitution, secularism and democratic rights with their own life and choices. Protests should erupt across the country against the implementation of an act by the UP govt that prevents, threatens and punishes the Hindu-Muslim love affairs in the name of 'love jihad'. A law contrary to the ethics of the constitution has been enacted and the Sangh Parivar goons have taken law into their hands by hunting and separating the Hindu-Muslim couples in UP.
The man has been locked up in jail. His three months pregnant wife who got caught between these Sangh Parivar poachers had bleeding and is now admitted in a hospital.
The whole people in the country who believe and live in love should form a strong defence against this inhuman law. Legal steps should also be taken to get this law repealed.
There was a pamphlet released by the Sangh Parivar who had conducted the racial massacre of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002. In one of their many rules that prohibits the Hindu young men and women from doing, is to not fall in love with anyone from the Muslim community. One of those days, a group of boys studying in Kerala University's Karyavattom campus came home to see me. I will never forget the face and eyes of every boy who sat in front of me that day. They didn't talk to me much. It was silence most of the time.
But that silence kept talking to me. Even though I wasn't much senior then, I consoled them like an older sister. Fear has no place in love. Love has neither religion nor caste. Love is our religion.
I didn't see fear but pain in the face of those children. It's been 18 years and those kids must now be in their early forties. Within these 18 years, the country has now turned into an even more pitiable state. Amidst the picture of people getting insecure when they look up to legal institutions who are responsible to uphold our democracy and secularism, there is no other alternative. That is what the example set by the farmers' struggle has taught this country.
The governing bodies that bring in laws to suppress man's instinctive desire to love and be loved are the prophets of hatred, spite and fundamentally of inhumanity. What autocrats fear most is love and unity.
Today, the BJP governments at the centre and in the various states are suppressing the whole gamut of civil rights by-laws passed with the backing of their hegemonic political authority of lies, violence, corruption, malice and disunity.
Those who use religious politics to ban human love should be considered as none but enemies of man. Does this government expect that the Hindu-Muslim people will not fall in love any more fearing the law against conversion and love jihad?
People who are creating false propaganda that Love Jihad is existing in Kerala will use this opportunity to watch and hunt the Hindu-Muslim love affairs. This is a political context where the democratic minds of Kerala should come together and stand united. The reason being that addition of even one vote to the BJP constitutes a dangerous threat to Kerala's culture of love.
The ideals and compelling currents of Kerala's renaissance and modernity supported mixed marriages and romantic marriages as idealistic models because they were aware of its revolutionary political potential. However, somewhere along the line, the progressive camp gave up the revolutionary concept that is love. Now the progressive, democratic segment of Kerala should recapture everything of value that it had lost mid-way.
The eternal reality is that there is love as long as human beings exist. True lovers in any world and at any time are human beings who tempts people to make people around to dream without fear. And true lovers are the ones who challenge all authority. The good literature we have read and the good movies we have seen have had intensely marked the feelings of eternal magic of love based on the realm of the experiences and fantasies of such people.
The politics of love should be vigorously discussed in the political and cultural mainstream of Kerala. It is necessary to deny space for the atrocities of Hindutva fascism in here. Talking and writing about the politics of love is as relevant a political intervention as talking and writing about hunger.
The rebirth of a society in which human beings are happy and fit for life is important, especially in our country. The current scenario is demanding this realization now more than ever.
I always write plenty of love stories with this realization, with the realization that it is my nuanced political work. It is a way to transform this community to be nurtured back to love. In times to come, our country needs to be active with the political work of love that resists all forms of violent authority made up of religious hatred, casteism and male dominance.