The seeds of a social resistance movement like ‘Kiss of Love’ that caught the fancy of lovers of social liberty across the country may have been sown on the island of Fort Kochi on Saturday when a group of about 100 activists and ordinary people took out a ‘marriage-like’ procession that culminated in the burning of the traditional ‘mangal sutra’— ‘thali’ in local lingo— which ‘sanctifies’ Hindu marriages.
Held to symbolically “free love from the shackles of institutionalisation”, the unique event was organised by the Njattuvela Cultural Workers’ Forum as part of its annual Bob Marley remembrance programme and under the watchful eyes of a large posse of police personnel, including many from the special branch.
“Love is not something to be confined in the institution of heterosexual marriage, made holy and perfect by the conventional ‘thali’. Love also happens between women, between men, between other genders and even outside the contract of marriage, which has been an instrument of suppression. By burning that religious symbol which sanctifies the institution, we have sought to set off a revolution of sorts,” said Jenny Sulfath, who has just enrolled for M.Phil. in ‘Women studies’ at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) in Mumbai, who inaugurated the event.
She said the event was also intended to assure those who rallied behind the ‘Kiss of Love’ movement that the machineries of government were eager to smother, with little success.
“The ‘thali’ burning thus becomes a declaration of our liberty to love besides being a demonstration of our solidarity with all other forms of love,” she said.
The movement gains significance in the context of the debate over ‘conjugal rape’.
On Saturday evening, as rain clouds hung heavy over Kochi, the group took out the festive procession from Fort Kochi bus stand and gathered at the Vasco da Gama square where the police and a fairly large crowd of onlookers witnessed the burning of a big paper ‘thali’ with firecrackers stuffed in. The square, where it was held, was renamed as ‘Ashwathy Nagar’ in memory of a girl from Kodungalloor who ended her life buckling under moral policing.
The meet in remembrance of the Rastafarian singer Bob Marley will continue on Sunday with public programmes at the square. There will be folk songs, musical dance performances based on resistance poems and a talk by human rights worker Advocate Thushar Nirmal Sarathy, out on bail after being arrested under the draconian UAPA.
The Bob Marley event, relatively low key compared to previous editions, got under way on May 8 with a camp on theatre, cinema, songs and poetry. Documentaries on human rights violation were screened.
“We only wanted to emphasise that people have a right to campaign for civil liberties and fearlessly express their opinion on issues,” Rasheed Mattancherry, treasurer of Njattuvela, said.
