For millennia, thinkers from Akbar the Great to Gandhi have wondered about the definition of India, and what it means to be Indian.
Is it about tolerance, the passive live-and-let-live philosophy that is the basis of our interpretation of secularism? Or is it joint families, a fondness for horoscopes, our many ways of cooking the potato, and handiness with computers?
Nah. The Sri Ram Sena, a radical Hindu outfit in the southern Indian state of Karnataka (of which Bangalore – bless it – is the capital) has discovered the answer to this most complex of queries. There answer is so simple, so short, and so absurd, that it is no longer to difficult believe that the Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything Else really does equate to 42.
Women. Can’t. Drink.
See? Here you thought India was some kind of decadent occidental morass, guaranteeing equal rights to men and women, where all religions were treated equally, and people can do what they damn well please. No sir. India is the property of men, i.e., Hindu men, i.e., Hindu men with the idea that India is their property. So to prevent any further confusion, here is a list of what it means to be Indian:
Un, women imbibing alcohol is not Indian. Men imbibing alcohol is, because chauvinism is an excellent alcohol-digesting enzyme.
Dos, The health minister, Ambumani Ramadoss, has said India will not progress if we don’t stop drinking alcohol.
Of course. Look at the ale-swilling British, whose soppy island conquered and held our subcontinent for two hundred years. Look at the beer-chugging Americans, who in those two short centuries became masters of the planet. Look at the wine-sipping French, whose culture remains one of the most forceful in the world and who form the core of the EU. And the Germans who, lager in one hand and a slide-rule in the other, are the biggest economy in Europe. How indeed, with a glass of the strong water in our hands, will we ever be great?
Tres, Valentine’s Day is not Indian.
Really, I get this one. No one burns cards for Mothers’ Day or Fathers’ Day or Rakshabandhan (which, when you think about it, is just Siblings’ Day) because they’re Indian. It’s Indian to love your mum and dad and sister and brother – just not a significant other because hey, wives are supposed to be treated like doormats and husbands worshipped anyway, so what’s the point?
Before you ask, any notion of a romantic relationship before marriage is not Indian. Neither is one after. That’s just perverted. Our population is the result of extensive cloning, and the Kamasutra is the fault of time-travelling Muslims or Americans, pick one.
Valentine’s Day is a foreign conspiracy to dilute Indian culture. Indian culture is defined as everything till right before the day in 200 AD when the Kamasutra was penned by that monotheist.
The world is divided into two countries. There’s India, where everyone knows his caste and dharma. And there’s the Rest of the World, comprising Britishers (all white people who ruled India), Americans (all other white people), Pakistanis (all Muslims everywhere, including our own), and the Chinese (anyone with flat-nosed and slitty-eyed, including our own).
This Rest of the World has been trying to destroy India from the beginning, sending Muslim armies, Britishers’ navies, and Chinese communists to overwhelm us. And when none of it worked, they invented Valentine’s Day as a last-ditch attempt to destroy India. It’s working. The country that assimilated everything from Alexander the Great to the French Empire is melting.
When Muslims in Afghanistan keep women indoors, barring them from living their lives and owning their persons, that is Talibanisation. What should we call it when Hindus do it in India?