As many as 30 persons belonging Bharath Hindu Munnani were arrested when they tried to stage a marriage between two dogs of foreign breeds in Choolai, in Chennai, to protest Valentine’s Day celebrations to mock youngsters who were “imitating” western culture.
The police detained the people for holding a demonstration without permission. Mock weddings between dogs and donkeys were also conducted in some other parts of the city.
Similar protests were held in other parts of the state also. At Vagaiyadi Street in Kottar village of Kanyakumari district, a group of Hindu Mahasabha cadres led by their district general secretary, Suresh, took out a procession at the end of which they performed the mock marriage of two dogs.
This marriage was performed to mock the “so-called lovers behaving indecently like dogs in public without basic etiquette”, Suresh said. “We are portraying the anguish of most parents about this day,” he said.
A group of Hindu Munnani cadres also burnt Valentine’s Day greeting cards in front of the Sankararameswarar temple in Thoothukudi against V-Day celebrations.
In Tirunelveli district, a Muslim organisation, the Tawheed Jamath, in Muslim-dominated Melapalayam and Pettai, warned Muslim parents against sending their daughters out on the day.
However, lovers were not much worried about the diktats of religious fundamentalists and felt that the hue and cry of them only helped popularise the day.
