The crisp lawns, water fountain and new walking path of Lohia park attract people of all ages. Middle-aged women wearing tracksuit trousers paired with traditional tops walk the trails with strollers. Frisbees and kites fly in the air, and almost every day couples embrace under a tree or on the grass, oblivious to all around them.
Priyanka Shivharee, 22, and Rohit Chaudhary, 25, are in the park because in the northern Indian city of Lucknow it is one of the few places where they can get some privacy.
“Actually, the park is a silent place,” said Chaudhary, who studies at a local engineering college along with his girlfriend of three years. “We can talk to each other and exchange emotions. So peaceful. That’s why we come here.”
Couples may not always tell their families or friends where they are going, but it is no secret that parks such as Lohia are romantic hideaways. Greater female mobility, more open media, which include sexual imagery in movies and advertisements, the decline of arranged marriages and a rise in premarital sex all indicate India is becoming more progressive.
However, such change has not gone unopposed.
The recriminalization of gay sex in December last year and the gang-rape of a woman in a village in West Bengal in January to punish her for an illicit relationship were just two of a series of incidents that showed a conservative reaction that some say is hardening.
Some Indians worry that a victory for the right-wing Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party in the election could signal more conservative trends in India.
On Valentine’s Day, a local petitioner in Lucknow requested the deployment of security personnel in the parks to prevent so-called “obscene activities.”
Luckily for the park’s frequenters, the high court dismissed the request, but such “moral policing” has caused controversy across much of India.
“It just happens randomly, the police just come and round up the couples there, even if they’re just sitting and talking,” said Aditi Gupta, 22, who now prefers dates in cafes or cinemas.
Lakshmi Chaudhry, a journalist at the Indian Web site Firstpost, said private bedrooms were a luxury for many Indian couples who share crowded homes with extended families.
“One of the great unseen things is that the police pretend this is immoral, these unmarried couples, but a lot of them are married couples,” Chaudhry said.
“Women in public always have to have a sense of purposefulness,” said Sameera Khan, an author and expert on gender in India. “It’s when women want to access public space for pleasure, to wander around, sit on a bench and read or hang out with a boyfriend, or as we say, to loiter — that is when Indian society is not OK with it.”
Faramerz Dabhoiwala, a historian at the University of Oxford and the author of The Origins of Sex, said religious liberty was the most important predictor of sexual freedom.
“You can’t have moral freedom without religious freedom,” Dabhoiwala said.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in