So the Kiss of Love event in Kochi did make waves that will stay in our memories for long. A very small group of young people did manage to publicly express affection and love at Kochi as planned despite all kinds of intimidation in the days leading up to the event. The lead organizers were constantly heckled and harassed; the event was grossly  misrepresented; there were attempts to stop it legally; threats galore were openly brandished against anyone who dared to participate; the police and the media, who ought to have been neutral, participated in the general hysteria that painted the event as a law-and-order problem. The core group was arrested and removed before the event to prevent trouble, apparently. Yet they did not back off; this event will indeed be remembered in the history of twenty-first century Kerala.

No one who knows life in Kerala would have expected it to ‘succeed’. The right-wing troll brigade has been celebrating obscenely, but then they clearly can’t see beyond their precious noses, because anyone who knows the strength of the united tightass coalition in Kerala and the depth of their irrational fear of touch (which, no doubt underlies much of the everyday mental and emotional pathologies in Kerala, the subject of much hand-wringing among the tightasses themselves) would know that there is no victory worth the name there. But of course they are also devoid of basic moral sense which would have made it evident that it is no big deal for an idiotic bully of a child, many times the size of a firefly, to kill it in a single swat. Nor can they be expected to have any inkling of the fact that the stupid hulk might crush the firefly with its sheer weight but is incapable of producing that speck of light which the firefly alone can ignite.

I watched the drama unfold yesterday at Kochi with undiluted glee: the idiotic spoilt-brats who tried to crush the fireflies were screaming in frustration like only spoilt-brats can, and stomping up and down. And  their hapless nanny, the Kochi police, was trying desperately to pacify them by arresting the fireflies. But the fireflies were not caught; they still flitted over the heads of the shrieking monsters and inside the police van, even, and they did not lose their fire. That’s no mean achievement, ye fireflies!

While I continue to rejoice at this show of courage in the face of the most egregious violation of democracy, it may also be important to reflect on the lessons that we learn from this event, big or small:

(1) While the Hindutva groups and the conservative constituencies of other religions in Kerala may advance different arguments to justify their loathing of public physical expressions of warmth, the unity they have achieved in their irrational fear of public touch needs to be considered further. There is a common psychological core to this pathological mindset, which is actually well-explored by psychologists by now. A mountain of scientific evidence exists now that reveals how vital affectionate, unconditional, uninhibited human touch is to our well-being. Public hugs, kisses, affectionate hand-holding, body-grooming — all of these are now found to be extremely important to mental health and emotional balance. Indeed, interdisciplinary research into the importance of touch claims that it alone is the true language of human compassion. Anthropologists and psychologists also point out that the proscription of public pleasurable touch, sexual and asexual, is a distinctive feature of Western cultures and that non-western societies are far more tolerant of it! This means that all the groups mentioned above which swear alike to be against ‘the corruptions of western culture’ (and indeed they justify their touch-phobia in those terms) are actually the most ‘Westernized’! No wonder, then, that the struggles of women, young people, Afro-Americans eruptions against the foundations of Western culture in the 1960s and 70s reached out towards non-western cultures. I do not believe that their crazed fear was simply because the forms of touch that the participants in the Kiss of Love sought to uphold included the romantic and the sexual. Indeed, it is my experience that the horror of touch overlays the horror of pleasure in Kerala. As a young mother traveling with her toddler in local trains, I have experienced many times most horrid stares of displeasure indicating deep dissatisfaction at the fact that my child and I were indulging uninhibitedly in the pleasures of touch.

(2) It is truly significant that the participants in the Kiss of Love and the wider circle of supporters were from different diverse religious backgrounds. It may perhaps be  possible to view this tussle as an internal battle within the Hindu fold also. Indeed, the huge gap between Hindu and Hindutva could not be more visible. It is no wonder that the most beautiful representations of erotic union — indeed, the most beautiful representation of the kiss — is to be found in Hindu temples. In this version of the Hindu, sacred spaces are also spaces in which divine pleasures may be amply depicted; and though it is clear that pleasures fall in the domain of gods and demi-gods and anti-pleasure to the domain of humans, gods are imagined largely in anthropomorphic, if sometimes exaggerated, human form. It may be possible to imagine a Hindu imagination of public space in which this sacred quality gets carried over there and thus allows for tolerance towards physical expressions of pleasure in the public. I am sure struggles for such a kind of Hindu are possible to imagine: for example, what would the Yuva Morcha do if a group of Hindu believers dressed up as Radha, Krishna, and the Gopis indulged in a re-enactment of the Rasaleela based on the Gita Govindam, on a beautiful moonlight night beside the sensually-languid Arabian Sea at Kochi? Maybe they would rush there with their uncouth slogans and obscene threats, but it will be undeniable that the rest of us, spectators, will end up seeing Hinduism-enthusiasts beat up Krishna, Radha, and their companions! No doubt that this could violently expose the inner struggles over the Hindu, but I doubt if this would be my struggle, if it will answer my complaints about mainstream contemporary Hinduism (as separate from Hindutva). For it does not necessarily dispel the deep divide between gods and humans in the mainstream Hindu imagination, and futher, the many divides of caste between humans, which indeed dehumanise a very large number of humans. I cannot speak for other faiths, but I am sure attempts to make space for public expressions of affection, love, and sexuality are possible in at least some of them. But we need to ask the question whether such space-clearing does overcome effectively other divides that may continue to hinder the achievement of a fuller internal democracy of faith. In other words, while such internal debates may be necessary, they are neither sufficient nor necessarily prior to struggles for the right of expression in public space. It is important for me, then, that the participants and supporters did not limit themselves to calling for an internal debate in religions over public physical expression of warm feelings as a universal norm; they demanded the rights of expression for all those who desire it.

(3) I think this event also rubbishes a whole lot of hogwash that plagues one’s ears in contemporary Kerala about how the youth are incapable of doing anything significant, how they keep consuming and turning into crap etc. etc. The action at Kochi yesterday, anyone who knows the intensity of the everyday mental pathologies that have infected Malayalis will agree, called for no small amount of moral courage. Of course, it is always the youth who have displayed it – like, for instance, in the infamous incident of moral policing under the aegis of the CPM, against a Night Vigil organized by young people in support of the Chengara land struggle in Kerala. But this is an ageing society, and the memory of the aged (because it is exposed to third-rate Malayalam tele-serials all the time, perhaps) is notoriously short. Future historians who study our times will probably come across different waves of struggles against moral policing by a brave minority of young people, and it quite possible that they will find little difference between the Yuva Morcha, the conservative Islamic organizations, the Kerala Students’ Union, the student organization of soft-Hindu Congress in Kerala (which however might be recognized as distinct for its strikingly comic posturing, and terrible Malayalam spelling and grammar, since most of the source material will be the placards they held yesterday. Their contribution to contemporary struggles being nil otherwise). They will also dismiss as insignificant the difference between those who were truly terrified by the Kiss of Love and those who opportunistically pretended they weren’t (prominently, the mainstream leftist student and youth organizations who indulge in heavy-duty moral policing elsewhere but have downed their weapons sensing an opportunity).

(4) This also forms an excellent opportunity for the very large numbers of young Malayalis who now study and work around the world to shake our local henny-pennys and Chicken Littles into their right minds (images which flitted into my mind when I saw the Kerala-saree-clad KSU ladies nervously clutching their badly-written placards). For these students and workers know only too well that the sky has not collapsed in societies which are more liberal regarding public hugging and kissing. This has already happened in some campuses in other parts of India, such as in Hyderabad but I am sure the non-resident students could strengthen the struggles for democracy back home in many other ways as well. There are historical reasons for the depletion of cultural cosmopolitanism in the second half of the twentieth century in Kerala.I have written about this elsewhere: [http://www.academia.edu/4990209/Thinking_of_Keralas_Many_Cosmopolitanisms] . In the context of the specific kind of transnational migration that Malayalis have experienced in these decades, we are increasingly trapped in a situation in which oppositional cosmopolitanisms may be articulated only in an ever-narrowing public sphere. While the public sphere and the literary public are shrinking for many reasons, larger society is increasingly shaped by consumerist cosmopolitanisms that transnational migration bring, and the other side of the coin is undoubtedly the growing influence of narrow, ultra-conservative religious and local-communal affiliations that thrive on the deep insecurities that many migrants experience in the hostlands where deeply unequal and racist circumstances prevail. It, then, is a necessary political task of our times to consciously attempt to rebuild the channels in and through which democratizing cosmopolitanisms may circulate freely across different geographical scales.

There is no doubt that the battle against Modern Untouchability has begun; no wonder such a small group of people made the entire establishment quake with fear. I am reminded of the early twentieth century struggles against caste untouchability, the great stigma endured by those who participated in it. The brave young people who went to this struggle should see the opprobrium heaped on them as a badge of honor, and for sure, this is how it will be remembered by generations to come. The right-wing moral brigade, which includes mainstream Malayali political parties, the Hindutva organizations, and the conservative religious minority organizations, will perish in the sands of time as mere dust under the feet of future generations, while these fireflies will surely light up their skies. All strength to you, brave young souls, may your tribe increase! (I am tempted to call you The Gadflies but I hold myself back!)