Well the lovers day is finally here and everyone is hoping that it will go good, especially in Mangalore where the “ram-sena” is trying to avoid any valentines day celebration because its against our “Indian culture”. and who has openly threatened that he and his followers will forcibly tie the knot between unmarried couples  if they are found celebrating valentines day.

Now, valentines day to me personally is just another day. I don’t consider it to be of any huge importance.  But for those busy couples who hardly get time to spend time with each other or for those married couples who can revive their romance just for one day instead of being busy in family matters and those old couples who have been sharing their love for long can too have fun on this special day. So whats not “Indian culture” in this? There is nothing western in this. Love is an universal language and everyone has the right to celebrate it.

Of course the ram sena seems to be very vocal about the fact that they are not against “love” but valentines day which promotes “western culture” and that they have the full support of many parents. But i still maintain the fact that theres nothing wrong in celebrating valentines day whether its youngsters or adults. one just need to make sure that they dont get into trouble for unwanted reasons which they are themselves responsible for.

So for all you couples out there in “love” Have a[ Safe and] Happy Valentines Day!

`Our objective,” says the marketing exec at Dove Canada, “is to take your breath away.”

Well, they’ve done that, all right.

In its latest viral assault on the cultural distortions around what constitutes “beauty,” the soap company has just launched a rapid-fire Internet video that, says Dove’s Alison Leung, packs a lifetime’s worth of societal pressure emanating from the gazillion-dollar beauty industry into a mere minute (and 14 seconds).

It’s called, appropriately, Onslaught, and with the force of rifle fire rains down the nipped, tucked, botoxed, firmer, thinner, softer, tighter imagery that bombards young women from pre-adolescence through their whole darned lives.

It’s political, it’s edgy, and you want to watch it.

You also want your daughters to watch it. And they are, on YouTube, which tallied 70,000 hits in its first day.

Created by ad agency Ogilvy & Mather in Toronto, Onslaught follows the success of Evolution, Ogilvy’s first viral video for Dove, which featured the manic retouching of a naturally beautiful woman until she became the high- eyebrowed, swan-necked, artificially altered “norm” of the beauty trade.

Evolution proved so successful that Dove began airing the spot on The Hills, a reality TV show about vacuous, uncommonly attractive women in Laguna Beach.

“It’s a great juxtaposition with the content on the show,” Leung says dryly.

Both videos, and a third heartbreakingly simple spot entitled Amy, were directed by Ogilvy’s Tim Piper.

“We wanted to skew the messaging toward mothers,” he says of Onslaught. “Maybe this generation needs to talk to the next generation about the messaging they’re getting from a very early time.”

Onslaught tells a simple story. One day a freckled strawberry blonde with a clip in her hair is walking to school with her chums; the next she’s a candidate for yo-yo dieting; eventually she’s pressured to alter her physical self by any fat-sucking, nip and tucking means.

“We tried to lay it out in a way that was quick and fast and interesting to watch,” says Piper of the path set by our so-called beauty culture, which he terms our “low self-esteem industry.”

The film is scored to Simian’s La Breeze – “You cannot hide, there’s no place to hide” – before the tag line: “Talk to your daughter before the beauty industry does.”

Dove is a participant in that. The beauty industry that is. It’s owned by Unilever, which includes Slim-Fast among its many brands. On its website, Unilever promotes its hair products thusly: “Want hair like Paris Hilton, Nicole Kidman or Posh Spice? It’s easier than you think with the right products and a bit of practice.”

Is there not a contradiction here? Dove,” responds Leung, “exists on its own.”

It has certainly carved an effective niche with its Campaign for Real Beauty. Launched in 2004, the campaign refreshingly featured unskinny women in their smalls and lovingly photographed the facial lines of true aging.

The campaign is more than mere advertising. The Dove Self-Esteem Fund has launched numerous initiatives aimed at awareness- raising, including mentoring programs, one of which was launched this year at the Henry Street High School in Whitby.

“We want them to embrace who they are,” says Leung of the young women who meet weekly. “To see a broader definition of beauty.”

A Dove survey conducted with Seventeen magazine found 93 per cent of girls and young women feel stressed about their appearance as they get ready in the morning.

In the sweet, filmic Amy, a tousle-haired teen rides up to Amy’s house on his bike. He calls. And calls. And calls her name.

Words silently appear in Amy’s absence: “Amy can name 12 things wrong with her appearance.”

And then: “He can’t name one.”

____________________________________________________________

Sexually Exploiting our Youth.

As we watch the next generation blossom, we watch them grow surrounded by sexualized marketing targeting them with no shame. Most would agree, sex in itself is not wrong or bad, just as alcohol, voting, and driving aren’t. However would you let a 10 year old child drink or drive? Not likely.

As a society we have created laws protecting children from big tobacco and alcohol industries advertising campaigns for well thought-out legitimate reasons. For some reason however we are turning a blind eye when it comes to sexualized marketing and entertainment targeting kids, mostly girls.

In 2003 “Sex and the Media” reported 83% of the top twenty episodes among teen viewers contained sexual content, including 20% that depicted sexual intercourse. The Center for Media and Popular policy reported that on average music videos contain 93 sexual situations per hour, including 11 scenes depicting “hardcore” scenes such as intercourse and oral sex.

Studies don’t need to convince us, most would agree that sex is used to promote economic growth whether marketing Bratz to 7 year olds, mini-skirts and tops with cleavage to 12 years old or the “Six Mile” movie to teens. Sex is used to exploit the attention of our youth to make a buck for ourselves and we apparently aren’t acknowledging any harm being inflicted nor taking responsibility to protect them.

The American Psychological Association however has noticed and weighed in on the issue. Earlier in 2007 they sent out a press release to the media highlighting the negative effects of sexualizing our youth: “The proliferation of sexualized images of girls and young women in advertising, merchandising, and media is harming girls’ self-image and healthy development.”. They went on to say: “The consequences of the sexualization of girls in media today are very real and are likely to be a negative influence on girls’ healthy development,” says Eileen L. Zurbriggen, PhD, chair of the APA Task Force and associate professor of psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. “We have ample evidence to conclude that sexualization has negative effects in a variety of domains, including cognitive functioning, physical and mental health, and healthy sexual development.”

Many of us have witnessed the successes of anti-smoking campaigns. Whereas 15 years ago you could smoke in malls and now you’re lucking to find a space outside to smoke without feeling bad. Hopefully the majority of adults will wake up their consciousness to these issues and change the course of sexualizing youth in our everyday life and pop culture. If you wouldn’t ID them, perhaps you shouldn’t be sexualizing them and selling to them using forms of sexual imagery and entertainment.

So this time the war is between the NCW member Nirmala Venkatesh and Minister for women and child development Renuka Chowdhary. What better way to divert the attention from the ongoing case than fight with each other? I have a great deal of respect for Ms. Renuka choudary. She is a strong confidant women and i think she is perfect for the job. If not from anyone else i definitely expect a lot from her on this case.

In one way i look at this pub attack as a political stunt, after all the elections are on its way and what better way to have a good publicity? [The Sri Ram Sena which was little known or regionally known till a month ago is nation wide famous today]. And especially since these girls who were attacked have not come forward to register a complaint. I understand that they have their future to look after and probably their parents are not too happy [to be more polite] with the way things have turned up. But together they could fight this. If they all stand united am sure these culprits could be put behind bars for good, after all the evidence has been seen by the whole country.

Now i do not see any reason for the ncw member and Ms. renuka to have any fight whatsoever over the report filed. They should be solving the matter and come clean once and for all. And most importantly give jutice to the those victims.

Recently i came across something, which i think is worth a read.
personally i think its correct.. but yes i do not think everything is to be blamed on the man himself.. but there has to be a self control at least on this subject . [same goes for the women]

Note:
This goes for any gendered rape, male on female or female on male or female on female or FTM on MTF or non gendered to dual gendered and so on and so forth….

“The Movie the world is talking about”

The Movie basically is about a boy, jamal, who is from the slums and his journey in life. Which starts from loosing his mother in the Muslim-Hindu riots to meeting lathika and subsequently falling in love with her to loosing her and finding a new life being a tour guide at the taj mahal and then working as a waiter in a restaurant in the suburbs of mumbai to finding lathika again as a dancer in a brothel and then helping her escape and paying the price by loosing both her and his brother [salim] who has been with him throughout to working as a “chai-wala” in a call centre and then finding his brother and through him, lathika, who are working for a mobster and is still hoping to get back together with her  to again loosing her at the VT station and  finally landing on the game show “kaun banega crorepathi?” [ who wants to be a millionaire?"] because he knows she will be watching the show and try to find out where she is. And surprisingly the questions that are asked to him on the show are all related to the events that happened in his life.

Now if one looks at this movie in such a way then there arises no question of representing India in a bad light. Its a fantasy movie, a movie about a boy from rags-to-riches.  How can one show someone from being poor to gaining new heights in his life? by making sure that the road to success was as difficult as hell which makes the audience feel good that the hero and especially here, the underdog, as emerged victorious with the girl and the money in the end.

So i don’t understand why people think that movie insults slum dwellers. No body is calling slum dwellers as dogs. Its just taken on the context of underdog which is just changed a little to suit the actual contents of the movie. Now obviously it sounds better than Underdog Millionaire right.

I do agree that the depiction of poverty is stereotypical especially since its coming from a western director. But the movie justifies its contents. Now i don’t know had the movie been made by an Indian, it would get worldwide recognition or not. I would guess probably not. But its not made by an Indian and the movie is getting all the attention. So the whole “IF” scenario is not needed.

The only drawback is that the movie shows only 2 good aspects – Jamal and lathika. Rest all characters are partially or fully negative. So it makes the movie’s background, i.e India look too bad than necessary. They could have balanced it better. Other than that the movie is perfectly fine, and i look at it only as a movie not as complete reality. Just like you don’t think actors who play mental characters in a movie are really mental in real life, its in the same way, that even though it has shown India’s negative side it does not mean that India doesn’t have a bright positive side too.

Over all the movie is good and besides A.r. Rahman i don’t really care about all the other awards its getting. And i don’t think anybody needs to think ” this is India” and all that’s shown in the movie to be taken against it. Just watch the movie and enjoy. Nothing else.

A while back, I wrote a column here on whether female nudity in film is art or exploitation. One of the things I posited in that column was that the existence of female nudity as such in a film isn’t what determines whether it’s art or exploitation — it’s the context in which the nudity is presented, as well as how it’s viewed by those watching it. Several readers got in touch to ask, “Do bare male chests in film equal bare female breasts?”

No, they don’t — and here’s why.

Any discussion of the sexual objectification of women versus men in film has to start with considering the differences in the way women versus men tend to be objectified in society overall. For example, is a billboard advertising men’s underwear, in which a sexy male model is shown lying languidly clad only in boxer briefs objectifying and sexualizing the male body in the same way that a Victoria’s Secret billboard ad objectifies and sexualizes the female body?

Both are examples of objectification to a certain degree, but in the male ads the ads play more to how the wearing of underwear of a particular brand will contribute to a man’s perception of his own virility. Victoria’s Secret ads target both the sexual insecurities of women — “Buy our sexy underwear and men will find you more physically attractive! Keep your man happy by being as hot as one of our models!” — and the proclivity of men to see women not as sexual beings, but as objects for their own sexual gratification.

I would argue that there is also, generally, a marked difference between the ways in which women versus men are sexualized in society, from the Barbies and Bratz dolls marketed to our young daughters, to the clothing styles targeted at tween and teen girls, which are getting increasingly revealing and sexed-up at ever-younger ages. Just take a stroll through the halls of a public middle school to see how a lot of 11-to-13-year-old girls are dressing these days. Witness also the prevalence of articles in magazines like Cosmopolitan, Cosmo Teen and their ilk that focus on how to make yourself more sexually attractive to men and how to please your man sexually once you have him, as well as the myriad ways in which young girls and women are portrayed as sexual objects in media generally and film in particular.

And while there’s nothing inherently bad about having a hot sex life within your relationships, there’s nothing inherently good about focusing on teaching young women that their primary function in life is to sexually satisfy men through displaying their body parts. And a big part of this problem is the assumption (primarily by men) that there’s nothing wrong with men viewing women in general as little more than tits and ass on display for their gratification.

Children Now, a California-based children’s advocacy organization, analyzed gender portrayal of female characters in video games in its publication “Fair Play: Violence, Gender and Race in Video Games,” noting that “Female sexuality was often accentuated with highly revealing clothing. Female video game characters showed quite a bit of skin. Nearly one in five female characters (21%) had exposed breasts (7% fully exposed), 13% had exposed buttocks (8% fully exposed), and 20% had exposed midriffs. In addition, females were more than twice as likely as males to wear revealing clothing (20% of females and 8% of males).” And as the publication notes, the portrayal of sexy female characters is harmful not only to girls but to boys as well, in that such portrayals help shape the perception of what an “ideal woman” is and “influence girls’ feelings about themselves and their place in the world, and they may also
influence boys’ expectations and treatment of females.”

The same holds true for the ways in which women are portrayed in films. Consider how often we as film journalists write with something akin to awe whenever an actress is given a meaty part that focusing not on her body or its various parts, but on other aspects of her character, or when female characters are focused on something — anything — besides their relationships with men. Consider also the prevalence of depictions of female characters in sexualized situations, gratuitous nudity, or revealing clothing, as compared to how often we see men in film displayed in the same context.

Just how bad is it? If we look at the website Mr. Skin, a website that tracks down to the minute scenes of nudity of film, we see on the front page these words: “Looking for nude celebs? Your search is over. Mr. Skin has them ALL! See naked Hollywood right now!” And then look at the pictures right above those words: eight actresses, in various stages of looking sexy. Not one man with bare chest and sculpted abs. The website offers “FULL size clips and pics from our ENTIRE library!” to horny guys who, presumably, are not looking to the site to provide much in the way of intellectual stimulation.

If you click on “Take a Tour” of Mr. Skin right off the front page, moreover, you’re immediately treated (with, I might add, no age screening or parental approval requirements to keep minors from stumbling across it) to sexual, revealing, and bare-breasted stills of Halle Berry, Angelina Jolie, and Monica Bellucci. But wait, that’s not all! Let’s see how Mr. Skin further objectifies these actresses:

“Halle Berry won an Oscar for baring boobs, butt, and bush in her nakedly passionate performance in Monster’s Ball. Be sure to also check out Halle Berry’s nude Golden Globes in Swordfish, Things We Lost in the Fire, and Introducing Dorothy Dandridge. See beautiful Halle Berry nude now! Join Mr Skin now!“

“Angelina Jolie nude is the sexiest woman alive. See all Angelina Jolie nude pics and videos at Mr Skin. Watch Angelina Jolie bust out her boobs, butt, and bush in Wanted, Original Sin, Taking Lives, Mojave Moon, and more. And don’t miss the Angelina Jolie lesbian sex pics and vids from Gia. Join Mr Skin now!“

“You fell in love with Monica Bellucci as Persephone in The Matrix movies. Now see Monica Bellucci’s naked tits, ass, and pussy! Get complete Monica Bellucci hot nude pics and sexy videos from Shoot ‘Em Up, Irreversible, Malena, Brotherhood of the Wolf, and more. Join Mr Skin for Monica Bellucci nude now!“

Wow. I’m sure Halle Berry will be thrilled to note that she won that Oscar not for her acting, but for baring her body for a bunch of horny pervs living in their parents’ basements to wack off to. The thing is, a website like Mr. Skin is not just a problem in and of itself, it’s reflective of the larger issue of how women are viewed by men — although it’s worthy of note that Mr. Skin does not, so far as I can tell, differentiate the actual context in which nudity appears in film, which is part of what separates nudity as art from nudity as exploitation.

Nope, these guys just take any instance of female nudity in film they can find, slap it up there for the masturbatory pleasures of their membership (and the dollars they rake in through objectifying women), and sexualize actresses relentlessly, reducing them to nothing more than tits, ass and pussy. For this reason, Mr. Skin is one of my least favorite sites on the entire internet — all the more so, because I happen to know some otherwise intelligent male film journalists who contribute to it, seemingly unaware (or perhaps not caring) that the “work” they provide to that site objectifies not only the women in the films they analyze for nudity, but every woman they know — their female friends, wives, mothers, sisters, nieces and aunts, all of whom, in their relationships and interactions with men, have to deal with the consequences of the objectification of women in media as existing for the sexual pleasure of men.

Ask any woman you know if she’s ever felt threatened, objectified, or reduced to tits and ass by men in her day-to-day life: walking down the street to work past a pack of leering guys, riding the subway or bus, working in an office, going out for a girls’ night with her friends; then ask the men you know if they’ve ever, in their entire lives, felt threatened in the same way by women. Gratuitous depictions of female nudity in film, the sexualization of women’s bodies in media in general, and websites like Mr. Skin all contribute to this problem, in a very real way, by sending the message that it’s perfectly okay to view women as objects of sexual pleasure and nothing more. Perhaps the men who contribute to Mr. Skin should consider whether they would write about and objectify the girls and women in their personal lives in the way the write about the women they’re reducing to body parts in their roles in films.

But what about male nudity in film? The thing is, even when you do see male nudity in films, it’s rarely objectified in the same way that female nudity is. The bare male chest, glorious though it may be, is never as sexualized as the bare female breast; women’s breasts — which, by the way, exist physiologically for the feeding of infants and not primarily for the sexual pleasure of men — have been completely sexualized by the misogynistic portrayal of female breasts in various forms of media, including film, as existing for primarily for the arousal of men. This turns the female body, which can, of course, also be displayed nude in artistic ways, into little more than tits, ass and bare cleavage for the purpose of stimulating men who watch the films in which nudity takes place, regardless of its context. And even when directors do use nudity in more artistic ways, as in Darren Aronofsky‘s use of nudity with Marisa Tomei‘s stripper character in The Wrestler, very often the men who watch those scenes are more concerned with the visceral thrill of seeing bare boobs than with the context in which the nudity is portrayed.

I’m not a prude, I don’t think sex is inherently bad or dirty or immoral, nor do I think that all nudity is necessarily objectifying as such; it’s very often not a case of the work itself being objectifying, but the way in which film nudity involving actresses, even when it’s clearly intended to be artistic and not exploitative, is sexualized in a way that nudity by men simply is not. When Viggo Mortensen went full-frontal nude in the steam room fight scene in Eastern Promises, that nudity had context: his character was going into a steam room for a conversation with a bad guy, so of course it made sense within the context of the scene that his character would have to be nude. But you would never hear a man arguing that Mortensen chose to do that scene just because he wanted his bits-and-pieces displayed to turn on women watching the film, nor is there any unspoken expectation that just because he went nude for this particular scene in this particular film, that he can or should be expected to reveal all in future films. Compare that to the way in which actresses who’ve bared themselves for the screen are seen by men — and the above references to Halle Berry and Angelina Jolie on Mr. Skin are just the tip of the larger iceberg of how women’s nudity in film is viewed.

There are, of course, larger societal issues involved in the ways in which females are sexualized and objectified in media, and it’s not something that’s going to go away overnight. On the one hand, the sexualization of females in film, even when fully (or mostly-fully) clothed, as in Megan Fox‘s sexy “leaning over the broken car” scene in Transformers or Angelina Jolie in Tomb Raider, exists in part because of the societal expectation of how it’s acceptable for men to view women; on the other, the prevalence of female sexual objectification in media feeds that expectation, teaching our sons from an early age why women exist and what they’re there for. Men are not objectified in this way in media generally to nearly the extent that women are, and it’s an overall cycle of perception, desire and consumption that continues to feed the way in which women tend to be viewed by men, not just on the movie screen, but in our real-life interactions with them.

So no, Virginia, bare male chests in movies do not equal bare female breasts. There cannot be any sort of parity for the ways in which male nudity versus female nudity is viewed in film, so long as women continue to be marketed through media generally — including Hollywood — as a sexual commodity for the consumption of male consumers, and until we as a society overall evolve beyond the stereotypical view of women as existing primarily for the sexual pleasure of men. The men who promote, consume, and encourage the reduction of women into their body parts need to recognize that their own perceptions of women and why we exist are a big part of the equation, and that when they objectify women in movies, ads and video games, they by extension objectify every woman, thereby contributing not only to the ways in which we feel unsafe in our personal lives and become victims of unwanted sexual advances and assault, but to the way we as women feel about ourselves and our relationships with men.

So here’s a challenge for all you men out there: The next time you view a scene involving nudity from an actress in a film, hit the pause button on your inner horny teenage boy and ask yourself how you would feel about that woman being objectified as a sexual object — or being written about as “tits, ass and pussy” on a site like Mr. Skin — if she was your sister, your mother, your daughter, your niece, or your friend. And then adjust your own reaction accordingly. If more men would view all women as being worthy of being treated with the same respect they would show to women they know, we might just start getting somewhere.

- by Kim Voynar

from movie city news.

“I hate the way I have started this blog. I like men believe me, I was born to a strong powerful Army dad and am married to a honest, good hearted man. But are all Indian men brave,strong, honest, decent and have a conscious of making India  (or their own house for that matter) a better place for their wife and children or mothers and sisters? What has triggered these feelings inside me? I don’t know ! I lived in India for so many years subconsciously registering all the sins and atrocities committed by Indian men..reading them in paper…observing the servants..observing normal people who were just not good. I had accepted then that life was like that and there was nothing I could as I was a woman living in a country like India.  What am I talking about…? everything actually…! I live abroad now and see that these people have resolved these issues…is this why they are now able to focus on progress. and we fail at it?
We live in the 21 st century and it apalls me when I hear about female infanticide in India. It apalls me more when I see punjabis or other similar communities showing off having so much blood in there backyard( I am including bride burning episodes) .I am also ashamed of some southern states where this exists though thank god in a smaller scale. Apparently the male child is preferred as they can be put to use for manual labour and would take care of old parents (as if?…this seems to be the only other holy practice that parents assume they should focus upon)  but I wonder what is so great about giving birth to male in India. The low class male is mostly drunkard, abuser and a poor worker. The high class male is self absorbed, selfish and egostic. I am not including all men but many are this way. These high class males have dad’s money, their mom constanly reminds him that he should not hesitate to ditch his girl friend to marry a girl of their choice as that would fetch them a dowry and they would receive a king’s treatment where they can harass the girl’s parents for every single unrealistic demand. The men are not alone in this every corrupt man seems to have a backing from another corrupt female in form of a mother or sister. Now if this is the case with men where they get everything easily in India…how are they going to care about other people around them? When they don’t care about their future wife and her family…how are they going to bother about what occurs in their country and the plight of woman in other households. How are they going to be against the corrupt government when they are mini criminals blackmailing their wife’s family for more money during  marriage? How are these men going to care about infanticide occuring (hopefully) elsewhere when they think its there wife’s duty to take care of his biological child and not his! When these men don’t help vaccum their own houses..how are they going to care about why Indian roads and infrastructure is so poor? I am just saying that people don’t become cowards, criminals or rogues on a single day this is long process in making. It starts in childhood when a child lies, bullies and is selfish. It continues in teenage when a man ditches his girlfriend exhibiting low morality, it continues further when a man enters wedding stage where corruption takes its peak. These are mini rogues in making. If this is the state of an average man in India, how do you expect the politician to be honest? If this is the case with most men..how do you expect to get rid of corruption, infanticide,bad infrastructure and poverty in India? I know with this blog I have alienated many men against woman and increased unity among men. But an intelligent man would surely think about this and feel. I have always felt that nothing is more apalling in India than the fact that GOOD men tolerate ROGUES. These good men remain humble and tolerate all the atrocities by these bad men taking flake with other men when they shouldn’t. Its time good men voiced their opinions and expressed themselves. Unfortunately the situation in India stil looks bleak to me…I don’t know if I would see a happy India in this lifetime. “

By

zyaz

zyaz.sulekha.com

If you are a girl having a nice time out with some friends, you are not safe. If you are student writing a competitive exam after months of hard work and preparation, you are not safe.

If you are an honest person refusing bribes and chandas you are not safe. If you are person working hard for your livelihood in some other state of your own country ,you are not safe. If you are a person who does not know how to speak many languages, you are not safe. If you follow a particular religion you are not safe. If you have a particular name you are not safe. If you dress a particular way, you are not safe.

If you are not safe in your own country, amongst your own people and with the existing law and order then the only thing which can make one feel empowered and safe is to yield weapons, take an eye for an eye, beat people, smash vehicles and property.

If we do this, we will all be truly safe and achieve the proud status of ”The Goonda Republic” in totality.

Then all will be blind, all will be maimed, all will hate each other openly and all will feel empowered and safe.

by Roli Shukla in NDTV Hot Debates

Mangalore North Circle inspector Umesh G Shet said a group of 10-15 men entered the pub in the evening and started arguing with the guests. “They got into an altercation with the women customers saying they were dressed indecently,” he said.

The men also told the women that they would face dire consequences if they were seen in pubs again. The group left the bar after threatening its owner.

The incident drew instant criticism from various sections of the society, who strongly condemned the moral policing by members of the Sri Rama Sena, which was involved in violence during Karnataka’s Cauvery water dispute with neighbouring Tamil Nadu.

Sri Rama Senais a pro-Hindu apolitical organization based in Hubli and promoted by Promod Mutalik, who floated the organization after parting ways with the BJP a few years ago. The organization is known for celebrating all Hindu festivals on a grand scale. But is infamous for creating communal tensions and moral policing. It claims to be a “protector” of swadeshi ideology and Hindutva.