Why The Loksatta Party Supports the Kiss of Love

A Loksatta Party member explains why the party supports the protesters' right to use the kiss as a form of protest.

WrittenBy:Tara Krishnaswamy
Date:
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Much hullabaloo was created both within and beyond, when the Loksatta Party (Karnataka) declared its support to the Kiss of Love (KOL) protests rights, in accordance with Article 19 (1) (b) of the Indian Constitution, which guarantees the right to assemble peacefully without arms. People who hitherto watched politics like a rally in a spectator sport that does not touch their lives, and those who imagined themselves “active citizens” because they “like” posts on Facebook were suddenly outraged into arousal from their stupor.

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Recent Loksatta achievements like pushing the government of Karnataka to issue an order that police stations must maintain a list of convicted sex offenders, in order to help schools perform background checks before hiring, may have more substance but less oomph as was evident from the public response the move elicited.  It was done through peaceful protests, mobilising public opinion and submitting memorandums to the state government.

The stance of the Loksatta party on KOL predictably elicited a barrage of questions ranging from, why not go the whole hog and support people stripping in public to how good politics can possibly support or even permit the “erosion of moral values of our glorious culture” in the name of liberalism?

Never mind the irony that the very topic of the good peoples’ righteous indignation was the only thing that caught their attention, and the clever KOL brethren were milking this reactionary behavior. Imagine them instead sending a memorandum to the government registering their condemnation, or calling for a press meet, or writing letters to the editors of the local dailies against the manhandling of couples in coffee bars. Yawn. Suffice it to say that the KOL rudely awoke the otherwise scarce but all knowing Leader of Opposition, Karnataka Legislative Assembly, Mr Jagadish Shettar to publicly state that this was “not in accordance with the Indian culture.”

Reams were written to placate the recently awakened that what was being supported was really a cry for liberty and the right to protest peacefully. This is a fundamental right of all citizens without exception and unless there exists a threat to national sovereignty and integrity, it cannot be revoked by the police under the garb of law and order.

The naysayers, however, marched on with vigour. Amidst this din, though, were genuine voices attempting to explore where liberalism ends and moral policing begins. Are these decisions intuitive and subjective? How do we draw the line?

So, is liberalism just a tag? Or is it a ship with an inbuilt compass?

The boundaries we draw for ourselves as a society are expressed as the laws of the land. Some sections of society would like those lines to shift towards the west, others would like them redrawn more conservatively, some are apathetic and others, plain cavalier. The beauty and burden of democracy is that it is the will of the majority – which implies that most people want certain specific things.

Some such specific and significant things we want in India, as a majority in this democracy, are the Constitution, the accompanying laws and this form of government in general, and at any given point in time  in society, a corresponding set of revised laws and a similar set of governments across the country.

And so we allow ourselves prostitution, but not solicitation. Nicotine is carcinogenic and addictive, as is marijuana, but the former is legal and available over the counter. We explicitly disallow child labour but look the other way when many families and shops employ underage help. And while we outlaw indecent exposure in public, we tolerate the daily flood of public urination.

After all, we are who we are. As a collective, we appreciate the need for caste-based reservations, which is an act of governmental welfare of the downtrodden and disadvantaged, while simultaneously demanding a liberal business climate with more and more self-regulation in the market and less and less state intervention. We see the need to correct the decrepit public education system and also the need for unfettered private education. We bemoan the lack of proper public health facilities while seeking luxurious private hospital facilities.

These ostensibly dichotomous behaviors that have culminated in new or modified laws are the result of prolonged social introspection. It follows from the recognition that even in a free country with fundamental rights guaranteeing the equality of all citizens at one end, and the freedom of the individual citizen at the other, the playing field is heterogenous. We have partially heeded our social conscience in including the disadvantaged and less privileged among us in the exercise of progress via reservations, affirmative actions, vouchers and tax allowances.

As citizens of democratic and free India, the laws of the land are absolute, and fundamental rights non-negotiable. Some laws are imperfect, yes, and we, as a society have been, are and will continue to seek to amend them. While there is a yawning chasm between law and its enforcement by the policing agencies, and a  fairly wide leeway in interpretation of  the law by the judiciary, we will reserve that for a later debate.

There are many ordinary, extraordinary, strange, silly and outright absurd things the law allows us to do. And then, regardless of legal sanction, there are other ordinary and perfectly legal things the society sometimes reacts with grisly violence to, like inter-caste marriages. And then there are commonsensical things that get accomplished in this very society only by amending the law, like the mandatory declaration of criminal antecedents of the candidates contesting elections.

Can we then do anything permitted by law? Including some of the examples from above?

Oh yes! We can. And no one has the right to judge or take action against us for perfectly legal activities. No one. No one has the right to look down upon us, demean us or pretend to be holier than us for the perfectly legal choices we make.

If we find the display of kissing in public distasteful, we have  a choice to not see it, just as we might when we see an obscene film poster, spitting in the stairwells or urinating on the street side. All of the latter are not only vulgar displays in public but also deface public property and punishable by law.

While we have somewhat heeded our social compass in attempting to right some wrongs with allowances like caste based reservations, a debatable modicum of public health and education etc., has our basic human fabric frayed?

Why is it acceptable to us that men routinely and brazenly unzip and draw out the private to urinate in public while we are easily outraged by women’s clothing? Isn’t the former unlawful and a public menace at the very least, while the latter is at most individual opinion? Why do we not bat an eyelid  when we see children begging at the traffic signals while actively pontificating on kissing?

A woman cannot expect to return from work fully clothed, from head to toe, wearing a long sleeved, high collared, pillow case style shapeless salwar kameez late at night in safety. Consenting adult men and women of differing social strains, be it caste or religion, routinely endanger their lives, especially in rural India, by simply falling in love or getting married.

Are these not legal and permitted? Is it then not an unreasonable restriction on their liberties? Have we lost our sense of proportion? Has our sense of right and wrong been muddled by that feudal wiring in our brain?

Our conscience as a society seems to flag easily on grave matters like life, liberty, equality and the right to eke a living, while we readily lose sleep over individual preferences and choices. While we slumber on, unmindful of the fundamental problems affecting the country, our moral stance is being appropriated by hooligans whose idea of cultural preservation is to beat up couples in coffee bars if they display affection, and who lecture women on dress codes when they are molested. This, even though the behaviors of people at the receiving end are perfectly legal and the culprits’ blatantly illegal and anti social.

Self appointed sentinels who imagine themselves as icons of Indian culture and attempt to sanction social behaviors could remind themselves that where their version of morality is at odds with the law, they need to seek the basis of law itself and opt to work at that, or accept it with grace. They do not get to ram illegalities down people’s throats.

We do have the right to dress as we please, speak our minds and kiss away in public with other consenting adults. Indeed, the Supreme Court has ruled thus, time and again.

Respect for law is the very fulcrum of a democratic and free society.

In straying from this fulcrum and imposing or allowing the imposition of our own subjective and judgmental moralities when they are clearly at odds with the law, we have made this free country near impossible for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for a significant portion of our fellow citizens.

This society like any other has its share of those still living in medieval times, those struggling to evolve from the apes and others who live here, now and globally. We cannot escape this until each one of us own our  personal island where we handpick the residents and monitor them every second. Our island then, won’t be a free land, like India.

Liberty, then, is the ability to let live and not impose our subjective views on others. Liberty is to allow others their legal choices and defend their right to those choices even when they don’t intersect with our way of life. Liberty is freedom from despotism, prejudice and arbitrary judgement. In essence, it is a social contract to be bound only by the law of the land.

But to live liberally and freely, one must first be alive. And safe. And smart.

The adult woman can decide for herself if she can bear the risk of being the one molested or worse, for wearing that legally permitted attire deemed socially provocative. What the rest of us are responsible for is to ensure that this country remains safe, free and law abiding for her and anyone else who himself/herself is not breaking the law. We are not responsible for her choice of clothing.

And so, while some may find kissing in public radical or distasteful, we as a society have chosen democracy, this Constitution and the rule of law. Each time a fundamental right is violated and we stay mum, we quietly assent to an unconstitutional, illegal and   anti-social act. Furthermore, by not resisting it, we embolden the fringe, the anti- Constitutional purveyors to more such atavistic actions and allow the society to claw back to more regressive times.

The silence of the good will cost us dearly as a collective. So uphold the law we must.

And this is what the support for the KOL protesters’ rights delivers. A shock. A shocking awareness of the erosion of liberty.  So, instead of getting all riled up, the self-righteous moral police better kiss and make up. Better still, wear their pink chaddies, black dots and rainbow brooches and then do so.

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