Buy:VinVega
02-14-06, 09:14 AM
Yahoo Story (http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060214/wl_nm/india_valentine_dc;_ylt=AsRjOtQtGn4KdQU_NrVtZmABxg8F;_ylu=X3oDMTBjMHVqMTQ4BHNlYwN5bnN1YmNhdA--)
Moral police burn Valentine's Day cards in India
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Hardline Hindu groups and radical Muslims burned Valentine's Day greeting cards and held sporadic protests on Tuesday across India against celebrating the festival of love saying it was a Western import that spread immorality.
Saint Valentine's Day has become increasingly popular in India in recent years, a trend led by retailers who do healthy business selling heart-shaped balloons and fluffy teddy bears.
But the growing popularity of the day in officially secular, but mainly Hindu India has also sparked protests which have sometimes turned violent.
On Tuesday, protests were held in the capital New Delhi, some towns in the south of the country and its only Muslim state of Jammu and Kashmir, where an Islamic insurgency has raged since 1989.
About two dozen women separatists, veiled in black from head to toe, rummaged shops and burned Valentine's Day cards in Srinagar, Kashmir's summer capital, witnesses said.
"Valentine's Day spreads immorality among the youth," Asiya Andrabi of the Dukhtaran-e-Milat (Daughters of the Muslim Faith), a group of women separatists, said in a statement.
"We appeal to our children to stay away from this western culture."
In Bangalore, India's technology capital, as well as Hubli town, both located in the southern state of Karnataka, groups of Hindu nationalists burned a big heart-shaped card.
About 50 Hindu activists wearing holy saffron-colored scarves held a noisy protest in a popular market near the Delhi University campus, a Reuters photographer said.
They burned greeting cards which they were carrying and shouted "Down with Valentine's Day."
I guess that's one of the drawbacks of getting all the US's jobs, you get some of our culture as well. ;) I thought this was amusing.
Moral police burn Valentine's Day cards in India
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Hardline Hindu groups and radical Muslims burned Valentine's Day greeting cards and held sporadic protests on Tuesday across India against celebrating the festival of love saying it was a Western import that spread immorality.
Saint Valentine's Day has become increasingly popular in India in recent years, a trend led by retailers who do healthy business selling heart-shaped balloons and fluffy teddy bears.
But the growing popularity of the day in officially secular, but mainly Hindu India has also sparked protests which have sometimes turned violent.
On Tuesday, protests were held in the capital New Delhi, some towns in the south of the country and its only Muslim state of Jammu and Kashmir, where an Islamic insurgency has raged since 1989.
About two dozen women separatists, veiled in black from head to toe, rummaged shops and burned Valentine's Day cards in Srinagar, Kashmir's summer capital, witnesses said.
"Valentine's Day spreads immorality among the youth," Asiya Andrabi of the Dukhtaran-e-Milat (Daughters of the Muslim Faith), a group of women separatists, said in a statement.
"We appeal to our children to stay away from this western culture."
In Bangalore, India's technology capital, as well as Hubli town, both located in the southern state of Karnataka, groups of Hindu nationalists burned a big heart-shaped card.
About 50 Hindu activists wearing holy saffron-colored scarves held a noisy protest in a popular market near the Delhi University campus, a Reuters photographer said.
They burned greeting cards which they were carrying and shouted "Down with Valentine's Day."
I guess that's one of the drawbacks of getting all the US's jobs, you get some of our culture as well. ;) I thought this was amusing.