Mangalore: Bajrangdal Takes out Bike Rally in City against Valentine's Day Celebrations
Pics: Prajwal Ukkuda
Daijiworld Media Network - Mangalore (SP)
Mangalore, Feb 13: The local unit of Bajrang Dal took out a motor bike rally through the city roads on Friday February 13, to urge and convince the people not to celebrate Valentine's Day. The motor bike rally started from P V S Circle and went through SDM College, Saibeen Complex, Kadri, Mallikatta, St Agnes, St Aloysius college before culminating in University College.
District level leaders of the Dal including Shivanand Mendon, district assistant convener, Balakrishna Shetty, Krishnamurthy, Vinay Shetty, Sharan Pumpwell and Vasudev Shenoy were present. Before the start of the rally, the leaders addressed the participants and the people, asking them not to celebrate festivals that promotes a behaviour that is unacceptable to Indian culture. They also requested the activists to maintain peace while seeking peoples' cooperation to desist from celebrating Valentine's Day on Saturday February 14.
Bajrangdal said, that the Valentine's Day celebrations are guided purely by global commercial interests, and a ploy aimed at coaxing the girls to stray out from their traditional path in the name of celebrating the occasion. The Day neither has any emotional value nor any principles or philosophy attached to it, they argued. The youth need to understand that this is just an occasion to enable hotels, resorts, bars and pubs to make money and not to strengthen emotional bonding, it said. The day also is aimed at promoting luxurious living, moral turpitude and use of drugs, they said.
More than 100 motor bikes took part in the rally and the rallyists waved flags as they made their way through the city streets. They also distributed pamphlets to the people, urging them to tread the path of patriotism, help the poor, follow the ideals of Swami Vivekananda and freedom fighters.