India
In
India, in the antiquity, there was a tradition of adoring Kamadev, the
lord of love; exemplification by the erotic carvings in the Khajuraho
Group of Monuments and by the writing of the Kamasutra treaty of
lovemaking.
This tradition was lost around the Middle Ages, when Kamadev was no
longer celebrated, and public displays of sexual affections became
frowned upon. Around 1992 Valentine's Day started catching in India, with special TV and radio programs, and even love letter competitions.The economic liberation also helped the Valentine card industry.
In modern times, Hindu and Islamic traditionalists consider the holiday to be cultural contamination from the West, result of the globalization in India. Shiv
Sena and the Sangh Parivar have asked their followers to shun the
holiday and the "public admission of love" because of them being "alien
to Indian culture".
These protests are organized by political elites, but the protesters
themselves are middle-class Hindu men who fear that the globalization
will destroy the traditions in his society: arranged marriages, hindu joint families, full-time mothers (see Housewife#India), etc.
Despite these obstacles, valentine's day is becoming increasingly popular in India.
However, leftist and liberal critiques of Valentine's day remain
strong in India. Valentine's Day has been strongly criticized from a
postcolonial perspective by intellectuals from the Indian left . The
holiday is regarded as a front for Western imperialism, neocolonialism, and the exploitation of working classes through commercialism by multinational corporations.[65]
Studies have shown that Valentine's day promotes and exacerbates
income inequality in India, and aids in the creation of a
pseudo-westernized middle class. As a result, the working classes and
rural poor become more disconnected socially, politically, and
geographically from the hegemonic capitalist power structure. They
also criticize mainstream media attacks on Indians opposed to
valentine's day as a form of demonization that is designed and derived
to further the valentine's day agenda
An 1883 lithographed advertisement for Valentine's Day greeting cards published by Louis Prang, showing a woman holding a group of tethered cherubs, who float like a bunch of balloons above her. Prang became well-known during the American Civil War, printing war maps for newspapers. In 1873, he began selling Christmas cards in England and brought them to the United States the following year, earning him the moniker "father of the American Christmas card".
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