Delhi: Hundreds of students who joined a "kiss of love" protest in the nation's capital against strict moral codes that effectively ban public displays of affection have been attacked by right-wing Hindu extremists who branded the kissing couples "un-Indian".
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Standing for what they called "Indian culture", members of the Hindu Sena, a right-wing nationalist organisation known for its "moral policing", hurled insults at the protest organisers, publicly threatening to rape them.
"They [the Hindu Sena] would bring up their mothers and sisters and in the next minute threaten to f--- me and my family," said Pankhuri Zaheer, a kissing protest organiser from Jawaharlal Nehru University's department of women's studies.
"I'm scared, of course, but there are a lot of people with me and there always will be," Ms Zaheer told The Times of India.
Hundreds of couples, straight and gay, from several major university campuses defied the Hindu Sena and kissed in public outside a Delhi metro station.
Hindu Sena members claimed that kissing in public was equivalent to "walking around naked".
"This isn't progress," said one Hindu Sena member, Vishnu Gupta. "What should be promoted is Indian culture. Kama Sutra isn't what they think."
Police stopped the "Kiss of Love" campaigners from moving towards the Delhi headquarters of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the Hindu nationalist organisation that is considered the ideological mainstay of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who will attend the G20 conference in Brisbane next week, has been a lifelong member of the RSS, which claims to be the world's largest volunteer organisation.
Ahead of the visit, Australian branches of the Overseas Friends of the BJP and the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh have been told by Indian community leaders to keep a low profile for fear that the public airing of hardline views would not properly reflect modern India's plural society.
"If conservative elements can capture our public spaces and impose their diktat on us, we will do the same in retaliation" said one Kiss of Love campaigner named Zareen. "Our university spaces, parks and roads are not free any more. We live in an age where a Dalit [member of a lower caste traditionally regarded as untouchable] is hacked to 40 pieces because he fell in love with a woman from a higher caste.
"The Kiss of Love campaign is a defiance of moral policing and a struggle to uphold the spirit of love in all its forms and for everyone," she said.
