Next Steps

Finally, Valentine’s Day is here and perhaps Mr. Muthalik is wondering what to do with the pink chaddis sent to him by some self-declared custodians of progressive India, but we are sure that these self-declared custodians know for sure what to do with the pink condoms we sent to them. We wish them a safe, snobbish, and secular Valentine’s Day.

Well, so what are we doing on this day? Those amongst us, who have girlfriends or wives will pamper them, and those who don’t, will blog like me :)

But as we told, our campaign doesn’t end with Valentine’s Day. It’s just a beginning, and we had a good beginning. Thousands of people visited this page and supported us, some people visited this page to abuse us and Hinduism, that’s their culture and they have every right to practice that, we promised not to moderate, and one can still see those abusive messages lying in the ‘comments’.

So what do we do next?

Let me first confess that the pink condom campaign was just a tool to get noticed in the media and the virtual world - to mobilize people, to bring together like minded Hindus on a common platform, to be a voice of modern age Hinduism.

No media house would have supported a “consortium of assertive and proud Hindus who are sick of Indian sickulars conspiring to attribute every vice in the society to Hinduism”; anyone speaking appreciatively about Hinduism is termed ‘communal’ in today’s world. Everyone is working overtime to defeat the communal forces and win a ticket to progressiveness.

That’s why Indian media was more than happy to help a group, which placed a pink underwear over a background associated with the sacred Hindu sign of Om. This group, calling itself a “consortium of pubgoing, loose and forward women”, further derided RSS by putting pictures of a man and small kid attending RSS shakhas (at least keep little children out of this politics).

A group that could mock the Hindu sacred sign and wrongly blame RSS for Mangalore put attack (when RSS has decried the attack and even favored ban on the attackers) was a sure-shot secular and progressive group in today’s world, and the Indian media obliged them no end.

If this group had so many chaddis to spare, I wish they had sent some of it to thousands of Indians who have no piece of cloth to cover themselves (yes, I don’t find chaddis offensive, they are a very useful part of the wardrobe). But those poor, naked, dirty and backward Indians don’t speak English or go to pub, so they sent chaddis to Muthalik, I hope Muthalik sends them to those poor souls, but even he won’t I know.

But it was not about chaddis. It was not even for liberty and women rights. It was all about proving oneself morally superior. Send a pink chaddi and prove yourself forward and progressive. The whole campaign was steeping with a condescending attitude.

Let me make it clear once again – what SRS did in the Mangalore pub was not only uncivil and uncouth, it was criminal. If any campaign was needed, it was needed to bring those guys to book. The pink chaddi campaign brought those guys to television studios and news paper columns.

Anyway, let the pink chaddi guys feel satisfied that their job is done. Our job starts now.

First of all, I’m changing the name of our group from “The Pink Condom Campaign” to “The Self-respecting Hindus' Initiative for Equality and Liberty with Dignity” or “The SHIELD”.

The name has been changed on facebook community too, which could start as our initial platform for discussions and future course of actions.

We should invite likeminded friends to join, who otherwise didn’t join earlier as they thought pinkchaddi was too small an issue to start a counter campaign, and they were right, but as I told earlier, it was just an excuse to catch eyeballs and unite.

So what do we do next?

Our movement/campaign/initiative starts now. It would not be led by one group or any Sangh Parivar organization. It will be championed by you – an ordinary self-respecting Hindu.

Let’s act as a SHIELD against people attacking Hinduism and blaming it for everything wrong that goes around in our society.

Let’s act as a SHIELD against people like Sri Ram Sene, who have hijacked name of Hindu culture to do get some free publicity.

Let’s act as a SHIELD against vices that truly infect Hindu society such as casteism, gender inequality, lack of brotherhood, and ignorance about richness of Hindu culture.

Let’s also act as a SHIELD against other vices that infect our society such as corruption and crime, because if we don’t do that, the sickulars will blame even those on Hinduism!

Let’s unite and act as a SHIELD to protect our self-respect and self-esteem, something that has been under constant attack but has survived for centuries. But we can’t just bloat under the fact that if it has survived all kinds of attacks, it will survive even in future. Hindusim is all about Karma philosophy, and we have to act.

Let’s spread the word, discuss issues, try to meet in different cities in person, and let the movement start.