As a child, one heard talk about loving all living beings constantly. But the absence of respect for an individual’s right to love, and periodic punishments doled out to those who dared to exercise it outside caste and community boundaries, lets me know how little we have actually cared for love. And how mercilessly families turned away from those who dared fall in love and chose their own partners. Even the Bollywood films that built monumental love tales for small town audiences – with chaperons, of course – heckled the short lives of such ‘love marriages’. It was stunning to realise that the culture I was living in that celebrated and sang hymns to divine love between Radha and Krishna, narrated fables about Heer-Ranjha, Sassi-Punnoo, and Rajula-Malushahi, was not a world open to love for real individuals. Within families and nations awakening to real love: carnal or romantic or patriotic is possible only if a family and the national leadership can let go of an obsessive longing to dominate everyone else. Sadly despite shrill proclamations of ‘Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam (the earth is one large family)’, the real culture crafted by those immortal lines, is fading. In principle, India’s constitution has founded its politics, religion, workplace patterns, relations within families and clans, founded on an inclusive love ethic. A love ethic presupposes that everyone has a right to be free, to live fully and have partnerships that suit their own concept of love. Illustration: Pariplab ChakrabortyBut for the last decade, the annual celebration of Valentine’s Day has become a red rag to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and several groups that claim to be associated with its definitions of moral and racial purity that frown on the young meeting each other without parental consent or supervision. So come the spring month of February, hear them heave and swear. They will serve the severest punishments on young lovers they catch cavorting in parks or fields or on the riverside. In Delhi, a number of three wheelers can be seen with banners with the mug shot of Asaram Bapu who has campaigned for long that the young celebrate February 14 not as a Christian festival named after ‘their’ St. Valentine but as a memorial day for serving one’s parents as good children – Matru Pitru Seva Divas. Ironically this self proclaimed godman serving time in jail after being charged with two cases of rape in two states, has been let out on parole on grounds of old-age related health issues. Likewise another notorious sexual offender – godman Ram Rahim – is charged with two cases of rape and one of murder, is also out on bail for the 16th time. Another powerful former MLA serving time for rape and murder was exonerated recently and the family of the then minor girl fears for its safety. ‘Halt! Hocus Focus Fo,’ as the uniformed police sentry guarding my uncle’s house used to shout. He meant, ‘Halt! Who comes? Friend or foe?’.Even as we sign deals with the US and EU, we are hurtling closer towards becoming a nanny state that turns a blind eye to bands of goons masquerading as moral police. Eminent rightwing leaders are publicly warning parents against the bogey of ‘love jihad’ and castigating pre-marital love as an offshoot of despicable ‘Western’ influence. Live-in relationships are banned in several states unless those living together thus register themselves at the local police station. This is a nation where the average age of our citizens in 2026 is 29.2. What arm of a democratic state can successfully straitjacket this vast and hormonally explosive mass to craft a cultural monolith? Can it stop people from buying chocolates and flowers for one’s lover on Valentine’s Day when the media is overflowing with ads inserted by makers of chocolates and other kinds of presentable gifts? As Narada, the divine messenger tasked by an irate father to snuff the love between two young lovers cries out in Padmavat, “Ah, for all my wisdom, I stand beaten by a lowly heretic weaver (Kabir)!”Each time Indian society has turned more heterogenous, more hybridised, people have begun celebrating prosperity. So it is but natural that market forces have entered the scene. Our dear holy Kashi, that seat of Shiva, took the lead in the north. A fourth-century Jataka mentions the festival of love and wine, Madirotsav, being celebrated during the spring season. Embers of this are still alive in the ‘Piyale ka Mela’ celebrated on Tuesdays and Saturdays when toasts are raised to two fabled courtesans, one a Brahmin and another, a singer of a ‘lower’ caste. Cut to the 21st century, Valentine’s Day is being described as a symbol of what RSS leader Indresh Kumar says is the direct result of negative commercialisation of our Hindu culture by the West. In 2017, his party expelled eight members from its Mumbai office after a video showing them dancing to Bollywood songs on Valentine’s Day was posted on Facebook. The members’ excuse was they were celebrating the birthday of a female member which coincided with Valentine’s Day, but this was not acceptable. Next year a post on X from the account of one @meghakaveri had the rightwing group Bharat Sena marrying two dogs in the streets of Hyderabad symbolising how vile love was.Fact is, youth is a time of rebellion but also great confusion for young minds. Love may be capable of giving them a sanctuary, maybe briefly but real nevertheless, from the world of facades, fake news, morphed videos, posturing rapist priests and greedy politicians. In reality, the fear of caste-class divide being obliterated and caste women becoming unavailable for their own caste men is perhaps the main concern driving the violence against celebrations of Valentine’s Day. But the cultural acceptance of lying by scores of semi-literate jobless youth following Babas and political leaders for some miracle that will give them something, is damaging in more dangerous ways. It is not lost on any one that rapes are often perpetrated by family and friends of families. Girls are being kidnapped and pushed into sex trafficking. Social media has become a den for predators looking for unsuspecting victims. Those that demand for total pre marital celibacy with a very vast, very young population are less stupid than they are revealing. The invasion of homes and parks by Bajrang Dal or Ram Sene activists is ultimately also a cynical assertion of a dogmatic Hindutva over liberal India. Keeping the young first in a constant state of lack, then promoting perpetual desire in popular media encourages spending and can occasionally lead to horrifying incidents like the three lonely sisters in Delhi, denied schooling and friends and handed video games and mobiles. To know love we have to learn to tell the truth. And the truth is, with hostile neighbours and intricate international deals, we can no longer afford regressing culturally to burrow ourselves in the mythical past or an AI-created virtual world. Mrinal Pande is a writer and veteran journalist.Saakhi is a Sunday column from Mrinal Pande, in which she writes of what she sees and also participates in. That has been her burden to bear ever since she embarked on a life as a journalist, writer, editor, author and as chairperson of Prasar Bharti. Her journey of being a witness-participant continues.