What is love? Bajrang Dal, Durga Vahini have the answer ahead of Valentine's Day

It’s that time of the year again, folks. It’s the time when love (or lust) is in the air, couples exchange gifts with each other, they come up with new but cheesy ways to say how much they adore each other. Singles (pointlessly) feel sad, while some pretend that the day is like any other. But come every Valentine’s Day, our good ol’ politicians outrage and try teaching the youth the ‘proper’ way to love. Because after all, what is love? Baby don’t… via GIPHY If Jim Carrey grooving to the song ‘ What is love’ by Haddaway didn’t answer that question for you, don’t worry. Because who else knows what love actually is better than Bajrang Dal and Durga Vahini? On Thursday, members from Bajrang Dal (the youth wing of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad) and Durga Vahini (the women’s wing of the VHP) burnt Valentine’s Day greeting cards in Hyderabad, reported ANI. But perhaps the most cheerful and endearing part of this incident was the important life lesson which members of both the organisations had for the youth. “Love shouldn’t be for one day, don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day,” ANI quoted some of the members as saying.

Love shouldn't be for 1 day, don't celebrate Valentine's day: Durga Vahini Bajrang Dal activists in Hyderabad pic.twitter.com/AFBSsez38k

— ANI (@ANI) February 11, 2016

This logic is so mind-blowing that it can be used to reduce pollution. Diwali, after all, is celebrated because it is the festival of lights. But, wait a minute. Light (literally or metaphorically speaking) should always be present in a person’s life, much like ’love’. According to Bajrang Dal and Durga Vahini logic then, light shouldn’t only be celebrated for a day. Thus, Diwali shouldn’t be celebrated, which then would take care of a lot of pollution. In fact, this logic can be used to ban all festivals. Because all festivals, like Valentine’s Day, are about celebrating something positive which should always be present in a person’s life. Isn’t that the whole point of a festival? Celebrating love, lust or infatuation — irrespective of the duration of time for which it is present in your life — for one day is as wrong (or maybe right?) as celebrating anything else for one day. If we all began following Bajrang Dal and Durga Vahini logic, we’d have no festivals. In other words, something like this would end up happening: via GIPHY Another important life lesson which these organisations taught us is that irrespective of what you actually think love is, you will never really know what love is until you thrust that idea of love down other people’s throats. Till today, different people have different ideas of love. Some people celebrate Valentine’s Day and others choose to ignore it because they think it is stupid and cheesy. But the key difference between common people and the enlightened Bajrang Dal and Durga Vahini activists is that common people don’t impose their views on others. The genius Bajrang Dal and Durga Vahini activists might have realised that the only way to find out what love is would be to impose their own idea of love on everyone else so that there is only one defition of love in the world. Want to know what love actually is? Go out and scream about your idea of love to other people. If someone disagrees, react like this:

Another hilarious aspect of this outrage by the VHP members is that a day before they decided that the best way to educate the youth is by burning greeting cards, they had on Wednesday issued instructions to their workers and activists not to harass couples on Valentine’s Day. Bajrang Dal’s convenor for UP and Uttarakhand had said that interfering with couple was useless because the “acts that couples indulge in” at public places is “similar to nature of animals”, reported Indian Express. This really makes us wonder why the Bajrang Dal workers began outraging a day later though. Maybe the logic behind it was that they had only promised not to harass couples on Valentine’s Day. After all, no one said anything about not torturing greeting cards, did they? That’s right. You just got owned by an organisation which likes to burn greeting cards. via GIPHY This, of course, is not the first time politicians are sharing their profound views on love with the youth. On Valentine’s Day in 2013, saffron activists had held demonstrations in Andhra Pradesh and forced young men and women who celebrated Valentine’s Day to get ‘married’. In 2014, Shiv Sena had actually organised an anti-Valentine’s Day procession without any permit in UP. Ahead of Valentine’s Day in 2015, right-wing outfits in western UP had again warned that couples found celebrating the ‘foreign festival’ will be forcibly married to each other. Spreading the message that nothing teaches people the ideas of love and tradition like violence, hooliganism and moral policing, these political leaders have told us that this is what you’re supposed to do on Valentine’s Day: