Underwear For Valentine’s Day And Indian Women’s Rights

Edit to add – if you’d like to know more about skepticism and rationalism in India: Guru Busters the Documentary. The current status of Indian rationalist groups was discussed on an episode of Skeptic Zone, featured at Dragon*Con 2008 as a panel called ‘Global Skepticism‘. Enjoy listening here!

Just a short entry for the season – save this up for Valentine’s Day!

Valentine – English form of the Latin name Valentinus, a derivative of valens ‘healthy, strong’. This was the name of a Roman martyr of the 3rd century, whose feast is celebrated on 14 February . This was the date of a pagan fertility festival marking the first stirrings of spring, which has survived in an attenuated form under the patronage of the saint. “Valentine”  A Dictionary of First Names. Patrick Hanks, Kate Hardcastle, and Flavia Hodges. Oxford University Press, 2006.

Wear your underwear proudly wherever you are on that day – and think of these women and their rights. From The Times: Facebook women say ‘knickers’ to pub ban bullies.

A group of young Indian women plan to send pink knickers to a Hindu radical organisation that attacked female students in a pub last month and is also threatening to target unmarried couples celebrating Valentine’s Day.

The Consortium of Pub-going, Loose and Forward Women – which had more than 10,000 members by last night – is urging Indian women to defy the radicals by enjoying a drink at their nearest pub on Saturday.

The group was founded on Face-book last week in protest at the Sri Ram Sena (Lord Ram’s Army), which assaulted several young women last month in a pub in Mangalore, a college town in the southern state of Karnataka. Pramod Mutalik, the SRS leader, said at the time that his followers were “custodians of Indian culture” who had prevented the women at the pub from going astray.

You can read the whole article at the link and in fact, join the Facebook Group here. They’re not alone in the knicker-thing, either:
- 1,500 protesters in underwear demonstrated against bull runs in Pamplona, Spain, in 2006

- Women in Burma sent underwear to Burmese foreign missions in 2007 in protest at military rule

- Women in Moscow wore only knickers and bunny ears as part of an antifur demonstration in November

- Residents of Agrate Conturbia in Italy voted in their underwear in 2000 in a protest at increased air traffic.

Tagged as: Consortium of Pub-Going, Facebook, feminism, Hindu, India, knickers, Loose and Forward Women, news, pink chaddi, rebellion, Religion, Sri Ram Sena, underwear, Valentine's day, women, women's rights