KISS AND REBEL
We had written about the student movement
in Kolkata a couple of months back. While a lot of us had come to the
conclusion that the movement was over and would come to nothing, the student
community has proved us wrong once again. The movement goes on, only now it has
become a clarion call against everything that is wrong in the Indian society,
taking it well beyond the simple issue of asking for the resignation of an
incompetent Vice Chancellor, a stooge to the powers that be in West Bengal.
This weekend Kolkata, a city full of
contradictions, witnessed something never ever seen before on its streets. A
group of young people made a human chain in front of the police station close
to the university. They did not shout slogans, they did not sing songs. They
just kissed each other. A kiss of comradeship, a kiss of protest. While the
hapless police force stood around not knowing what to do and pedestrians gawked
or snickered or looked away, the participants just concentrated on giving the
kiss of life, of derision, of anger and above all protest, to a patriarchal and
hypocritical society. A society where molestation and rape are daily incidents,
where women are harassed physically and verbally as a matter of course, where
unspeakable acts take place behind barred windows in posh and respectable
localities.
Yes, this is an unprecedented protest
movement that is attempting to strike a blow against the very fundamentals of
the Indian society. A society that proscribes everything that is fundamental to
human nature and condones everything that is abnormal. There can be no public
demonstration of love in the Indian society – that needs to take place behind
closed doors. The Minister for Education of West Bengal declared that if young
people really have ‘impulses’, they need to ‘indulge’ in them in the privacy of
their homes. Impulses? Indulgence? For something that is as natural as the sun
rising and setting? As seasons following each other? As the love between a man
and a woman? Well yes, that is what the Indian society is like. Where the
police makes regular raids in the few secluded places in the city, arresting
couples for ‘indecent public exposure’. Their crime – holding hands or kissing
or sitting with their arms entwined around each other. For believe me, you
can’t go beyond that in the city with a thousand eyes and ears. Lovers
condemned to snatching a few moments of intimacy braving the roving eyes and
the patrols of the moralist police or the vigilante gangs constantly on the
prowl – not to prevent serious assault and rape, but to harass those who seek
some privacy and intimacy against all odds.
So back to the Kiss and Rebel movement that
sort of fits seamlessly with the earlier movement by the students that was
titled ‘hok kolorob’ – let there be noise. Yes, they are hell bent on making
noise, these young students, and their voices are being heard, far and wide,
all over the world. They are apolitical, these protestors, that make them
unique. They are technologically savvy, using the social media and the internet
to make their protest heard in real time, also unique. This is probably the
first time in the history of student movement in India that the causes of a
relatively small student community are taken up all over the world. They have
moved ahead, only as students can, of narrow local interests and made the
movement universal. They are protesting against established social order, against
the fundaments of an incredibly reactionary society that curbs, sanctions and punishes
what is natural in man.
The worldwide student movements that swept
the entire Western world in 1968 changed a lot of things – mainly the concept
of freedom of individuals. The freedom to live and love, the freedom to give
voice to protest, the freedom to choose. Those movements had only a very
marginal impact on India, if at all. The kiss and rebel movement is homegrown,
and may bring in important changes in the society. If it is followed, if it is
supported by the youth in India. And by others.
A kiss is the ultimate form of pure love,
whatever the nature of the relationship. A kiss seals a moment of unadulterated
love, of understanding, of sharing. A kiss cannot be considered as carnal, as
vulgar, as wanton. Those who condemn the act of kissing are not human. They
need to be stamped out. So make your kiss an act of protest, an act of love, an
act of friendship and do it publicly. Let us raze the prisons to the ground.
[Picture: Ronny Sen]
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