NEW DELHI, India - Hardline Hindu and Muslim groups burned Valentine’s Day greeting cards on Tuesday and held protests across India against celebrating the festival of love, saying it was a Western import that spread immorality.
Saint Valentine’s Day has become increasingly popular in India in recent years, a trend led by retailers who do healthy business selling heart-shaped balloons and fluffy teddy bears...........
God almighty, they really start looking for things to burn. Can't we fine them for CO2 emission of all these burned cards? I bet they signed the Kyoto agreements! That will teach them to mess with Saint Valentine...
And my girl got me a Kama Sutra and I am really in doubt here. Should I use it for what it is meant or to fire up the oven?
The Taj Mahal - India's most famous expression of love
The BBC's Vijay Rana explains how Valentine's Day has replaced more traditional celebrations of love in India
Among the numerous gods of the Hindu pantheon, Kamadev is the lord of love. He wields a bow of flowers.
Couples fall in love when struck by his rose-decorated arrows.
Valentine's Day is popular with young urbanites
India is also the home of the Kamasutra, the most elaborate treatise on lovemaking.
There are numerous folk tales of legendary lovers who kissed death with a promise to meet, or rather mate, in heaven.
These old tales are so lurid they make Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet a pale afterthought.
Indians protesting against Valentine's Day celebrations make one wonder what has happened to the people who once sculpted the passionate love makers on the temple walls at Khajuraho.
That ancient tradition of love died somewhere in the Middle Ages. No longer was it celebrated in public cultural displays. Lovers were frowned upon.
European flower market Huge demand for the flowers across Europe
By Habib Beary in Bangalore
Flower traders in the southern Indian state of Karnataka say close to 80 tonnes of red roses are being shipped out to Europe ahead of Valentine's Day.
They say this is the single biggest consignment of flowers from the state so far.
The city of Bangalore accounts for close to 70% of India's total flower production and at least 80% of the country's red roses are grown in the city.
The President of the South Indian Floriculture Association, KS Ramakrishna, told the BBC that about 40 tonnes of red roses were being shipped out to Europe on Friday.
Another lot of roses will be sent out on Sunday, to reach Amsterdam about 10 days before Valentine's Day.
Mr Ramakrishna added that while half the flowers will be sold directly to flower dealers in Holland, the rest were to be sold at Amsterdam's auction centre.
The flower exports came about after parleys between local flower dealers in Bangalore and their counterparts in Europe that started many months ahead of Valentine's day.
At least $2m worth of red roses are being sent to meet the huge demand across Europe.
A huge Valentine's card on Bombay's Chaupati beach
By Sanjeev Srivastava in Bombay
In India, Valentine's Day hype has truly caught on in the last few years, and a whole new industry is now established to market "love".
Remember, Cupid rhymes with stupid
Bombay Times headline
Valentine's Day celebrations and marketing gimmicks have, according to many, reached fever pitch this year. One Indian newspaper described the effect as "love being in the window display of superstores".
Proponents are undeterred by protests in some parts of the country by those who see such occasions as yet another attempt to pollute the Indian culture and value system with what they see as western influence.
Love blitz
Everything from mobile phones to mood candles dance academies, websites, ballpoint pens, and even bottled mineral water is being sold in the name of love.
heart decorations India has taken Valentine's day to heart
The Bombay Times perhaps sums up the Valentine fever best in its headline which reads: "Remember, cupid rhymes with stupid."
Being the commercial capital of India and also the country's biggest metropolis, Bombay has taken the lead in Valentine's Day celebrations and the marketing blitz associated with it.
Some Valentine's special offers are either bizarre or practical, depending on how one looks at them.
men signing Amorous men sign the massive Valentine's Day card in Bombay
For example, one deal suggests you pick up a brown teflon-coated frying pan for your beloved.
A prominent city restaurant has offered 50 free lunches for the best Valentine's messages, while a prominent ice-cream maker is trying to get free publicity and an entry into the record books by putting up the biggest Valentine's Day card on Chaupati beach in Bombay.
A TV channel is taking a giant float of the epic ship, the Titanic, to different city colleges. Young sweethearts can pose on it like filmstars Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio, who played Rose and Jack in the Oscar-winning film.
Amorous men sign the massive Valentine's Day card in Bombay Sporadic opposition
There have been protests in cities like Delhi by groups of Hindu nationalists who oppose Valentine's Day celebrations on the grounds that it is a western concept and an affront to more modest Indian cultural values.
But such opposition is sporadic and does not enjoy any mass support.
Even those who are not necessarily taken in by the Valentine's Day hype concede that India could do with more "love feasts" like these - if for no other reason than that it is one of the truly secular events in the country's social calendar.
Hahahaha bloody hell... If I could choose between a day filled with Kama Sutra action I wouldn't even think twice about sending "just" a card! Stange people........ I gues that the credo: The grass is greener at the other side" is still very true.
Of course they have a right to burn these cards. As long as they don't start burning mosques and churches along the way. But if they like to burn a couple of thousand silly cards..... go ahead and have some innocent fun. (About as innocent as Valentine's Day)
