Pubs or Culture?

For the first time, I am ashamed to admit that I am an Indian. As I was watching TV the other day, a curious mix of shock, horror and utter disbelief in how a bunch of stupid Sri Rama Sene "activists" took to the streets and shamelessly assaulted the innocent women chilling out in a pub in Mangalore.

It truly pains me when I hear our impotent politicians (who allegedly represent us) making regressive statements like, "We will fight against liquor and the pub culture promoted by the last government. We are against the malls where boys and girls go hand-in-hand". With the Mangalore incident coming into light, dating, PDA, even holding hands--pubs and clubbing join the long list of activities that are supposedly "Anti-Indian" according to our politicians. What is wrong if two people walk hand-in-hand? No one is imposing to hold hands and the people who shop in malls don't have problems then why should our politicians have so much problem?

It is truly ludicrous to see such a sad thing happening in the world's largest democracy! Mumbai has seen examples of "MORAL POLICING" of this sort when couples were getting arrested for cosying up at Marine Drive or Bandra Bandstand, the vandalism outside the veteran painter M.F. Hussain's house and the most important the trouble created every Valentine's Day. My question is how can the government be so lax and allow such things to happen in metros? Yes, I do understand that traditions are defined by the people and they modify according to the times but this is just an attempt to seek attention.

Most of our Indian politicians have indeed become laughing stocks and with every passing day, we are certainly losing faith in the judicial system of India. I personally think this is a kind of "cultural terrorism" that is being promoted by our impotent politicians and while I agree that it is also highly demeaning for an average Indian woman. On one hand, we talk about the liberation of a woman and have many of them like Usha, Saina, Sania, Beenamol who have done India proud at the international level and on the other hand, there is this ridiculous treatment meted out to ordinary citizens by some "political activists". Eight out of ten people work in India and we do end up hitting the nightclubs, a lounge bar to end the day and I see nothing nothing wrong in that "culture" as long as we behave responsibly.

Every government is expected to bring in changes with the changing times. When international tourists had just started looking at places like Jaipur and Bangalore as tourist destinations, Ashok Gehlot and Yeddyurappa's stands are set to ruin everything. A tourist cannot be expected to sit in a hotel room after a tiring day and he will definitely want to hang out in a nightclub or a mall but the enlightened youth also know their limitations. Indeed, the moral policing will definitely take the states backwards.

On a more personal level, the state government has no right to interfere in the private lives of the people. It has the responsibility to check the imposition of views by sticks and stones. Lifestyle activities like pubbing are only soft targets for political parties to score brownie points or by anointing themselves as the "guardians" of Indian culture. There is no dearth of problems that the state administration and our impotent netas need to take care of, and yes young people having fun is definitely not on their agenda and it is not a burning topic.

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