IBNLive : Sagarika Ghose's Blog : Panties and Perverts

I had reached the quoted link via [India Uncut]. Then I had not cared to read the link in its entirety. On reading it I was reminded of how people had ganged up against women who worked at call centers, so much that it had been proposed that women should not be allowed to work later than 10PM in the night! This was their response and solution to a couple of women raped and killed on their way to their way to work at night. Maybe women working late hours and giving up their traditional duties (in line with western culture?) is also not a forward movement for India. Of course, victimizing the victim is indisputably Indian culture?

IBNLive : Sagarika Ghose's Blog : Panties and Perverts: "However much we may hate the Sene, upholding the commercially-driven Valentine's Day as a supreme cultural resource, or seeing the pub as the shining symbol of our social 'freedom' may not be forward movement for India. If young people are choosing urban lifestyles that are desi imitations of Sex And The City, this is hardly a matter of celebration. In fact, today, fears about 'westernization' are so deep that with the exception of UR Ananathamurthy, few of Karnataka's galaxy of public intellectuals have come to the defence of the young women drinking at the Amnesia Lounge in Mangalore on 24th January."

Politically, there is even a consensus on the moral failings of "pub culture, " with even the BJP's ideological opposites, Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot and health minister Ambumani Ramadoss expressing energetic disapproval of pubs. When union minister Renuka Chowdhury urged that there should be a "pub bharo" campaign against the Sene, several of her own Karnataka Congress leaders protested that drinking was against their norms.

Also, I think she reads too much into the response of politicians who, even if they think otherwise, will not speak anything that will put off their vote banks (a lot of Indians who have in all probability never been to a pub but are very confident of their notions of what a pub is like and especially what men and women do in a pub.).

To me it is hardly a matter of celebration that so many people think freedom should of the kind they think is acceptable.

I am no historian but did Indians never drink? We do have bhang and bhang ki thandai even now-a-days. Why are people so scared of drinking? Its OK not to drink but being scared or calling it un-Indian seems to be a stretch to me and yes I love to drink and would hate to live in a place where I can't buy one at will.