Struck by St Valentine, this BJP MP hails love

On the occasion of an informal tete-a-tete with famous personalities whose marriages preceeded intense love affairs, BJP MP Pradeep Rawat, o...

On the occasion of an informal tete-a-tete with famous personalities whose marriages preceeded intense love affairs, BJP MP Pradeep Rawat, one of the participants, today proclaimed that nobody has the right to be the ‘‘moral or cultural police and the society should be wary of them, since people like Osama bin Ladens are born this way — they do not sprout in a day.’’

Rawat, who fell madly in love with Asha, his wife for 27 years now, warned that the moral police had no right to dictate terms on what is right for the society and that they may want women to wear burkhas.

He said: ‘‘I truly believe that nobody needs to take the burden of preserving one’s culture and nobody has the right to decide the ‘limits’. What comes out of this kind of discipline is hypocrisy and a compulsion for people to wear a mask.’’

On the eve of Valentine’s Day, local BJP leader Sandeep Khardekar and BJP corporators, Mukta Tilak and Medha Kulkarni had organised a discussion on Love: An experience of sentiment that comes from within under the banner of Lokmanya Tilak Manch. For this they had invited well-known couples who had love marriages. These included M.P. Pradeep and Asha Rawat and former hockey player Namrata Shah and Ketan Shah.