There are lovers, there are fighters, and then, there are those who are both. We met this third group on Valentine’s Day 2015 as over a hundred of them showed up outside the Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha’s Delhi headquarters to protest against the Mahasabha’s diktat threatening to marry off couples found together on Valentine’s Day. What ensued was short lived but rich in drama – police rounded up evidently peaceful protesters in police vans and taking them to the Sansad Marg Police Station, roughing them up in the process in full view of the press and bystanders.

The protest that ended in such drama had far tamer beginnings. The scene outside the Hindu Mahasabha office at 12:00, pm which is when the protest was supposed to begin, was non-existent. The only sign that the venue would be the scene of anything even remotely eventful were the barricades at either end of the street that were manned by what seemed like more police than necessary at the time.

Journalists wandered the empty road in front of the Mahasabha office trying to get bytes from one another before realising their mistake and awkwardly excusing themselves. A billboard at the entrance to Mahasabha premises informed bystanders that the venue for marriages was upstairs. A gaudy yellow and red shamiana set up did precious little to add to any feeling of romance associated with Valentine’s Day.

While the protest looked set to be a dud, a sign of how serious the police were taking it was the riot-gear present by the barricades and the occasional policeman armed with tear gas.

We spoke to a policewoman stationed near the Mahasabha office about why they were there, “We can’t stop anyone. We are here to make sure things don’t get out of hand. All this [ The police arrangement] is just a precaution, we want to protect the people in case something does go wrong” she said. Her statement was put to the test shortly after.

A group of around 40 protesters from the Students Federation of India (SFI) had assembled at one end of the road and had begun their march toward the Hindu Mahasabha office chanting anti-Mahasabha and anti-Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) slogans. No sooner did they arrive near the Hindu Mahasabha, the police forcibly escorted them onto a bus and took them away to the police station. The whole process was done in a matter of minutes but not before the police became the target of some of the slogans. 

 As the journalists and bystanders tried to make sense of the first act of this drama and by the time the police had regrouped, the sound of drums were heard, heralding the arrival of a second wave of protesters. Once again, the only “weapons” on display were slogans, a few masks and some musical instruments yet these protesters met with the same fate as the first lot.

While the first set of protesters were entirely from SFI, this group showed representation from the Facebook event ‘Shuddh Desi Romance’ which had been set up for this very purpose. Samara Chopra Dalmia, one of the Facebook group members, told us that she was in attendance with her husband to “Stand for unity, openness and expression”. Her idea of the protests were a far cry from the Shuddh Desi Romance flyers being handed out which spoke of standing against “capitalists” and “right wing forces” in the same sentence while stating the aim of the group.

Queries to the police as to why the protesters were detained were met with uncertain mumbles of “Section 144”, with one police officer even going so far as to tell us “You don’t need to know why they [the protesters] have been detained, the arrested people will be told.” On being pressed further for answers, he turned his back on the press and feigned deafness. 

Even as we decided to go to the police station for answers, we started seeing signs of a third lot of protesters. These fared even worse than the last two groups with police picking some protesters up even before they were within a hundred metres of the Mahasabha premises. As they were shepherded towards the police vans, we had just enough time to ascertain that some were members of All India Students Association while other were members of Peoples Union for Democratic Rights (PUDR), and one unfortunate Mass-Com student was dragged to the van even as he tried to cover the protest. In their fervour to detain anyone who fit the general demographic of the protesters, Newslaundry’s Mahima Singh was set upon by two over zealous police women before they realised she was a journalist and let her go.

While the relatively small group of PUDR protesters was detained almost immediately they had enough time to distribute flyers ranting against love jihad, the Akhila Bhartiya Vidya Parishad (ABVP) and the burning of churches in Delhi, among other things while mentioning the Hindu Mahasabha and Valentine’s Day a grand total of ZERO times. Clearly the different groups of protesters might have had much in common but the objectives of their protests were markedly different.

Even while protesters were being manhandled we spotted a Hindu Mahasabha worker, who identified himself as Pankaj Kumar Mishra, handling a police walky-talky and clearly enjoying proceedings. He claimed he was just holding it for a policeman. A policeman spotted us questioning Mishra and promptly snatched the walky-talky out of his hand before chastising him briefly after which Mishra was no longer willing to speak to us.

In the aftermath of the protests, Mandir Marg was left strewn with flyers, posters and other signs of the protests that had just ended.

The protesters were taken to the Sansad Marg Police Station rather than the more obvious choice of the Mandir Marg Police Station which was just a couple of hundred metres away. Police at both stations were at a loss as to why this was the case.

As we arrived at Sansad Marg Police Station, we were witness to a group of protesters who identified themselves as Jawaharlal Nehru University students. They stood outside the closed doors of the police station shouting slogans. Some were also detained by the police while others, clearly not in the mood for a stint in the police station, stood at a safe distance condemning the police under their breath.
According to the ‘SHUDDH DESI ROMANCE: Hindu Mahasabha Style!’ event page on Facebook, protesters inside the police station held mock- same- sex marriages. But the celebrations that followed were real.

In a press release on their website, the Mahasabha mentioned that the police didn’t let them meet with the protesters. “Even though the Delhi Police didn’t allow us to meet the couples who wanted to get married, we have been able to prepare them for marriage and have generated awareness about it,” it said.

Ultimately, this day will be remembered not for Valentine’s Day, but for the police’s mishandling of the situation and general heavy handedness. It should also serve as a message to future protesters to organise more efficiently. Protest leaders were unidentifiable, protest demands and agendas were all over the place and punctuality was a word none had heard of. In fact, the protests that promised so much ended in more of a whimper than a roar. The Facebook protest group, which had over 2000 RSVP’s, was eventually represented by 50 people at best. Protesters never gathered in groups that were at all large, dooming the protest to failure. Clearly, good intentions will only take you so far.

With inputs from Mahima Singh