The essential concern is one of freedom of individuals to hold their views and pursue their life style, whether it is sexual orientation, attitude to religion, having a drink of their liking, the question of who to love and how to express ones love. Modernity with its associated cultural phenomenon of enlightenment brought a new sense of individual rights and freedom; they brought freedom from the tyranny of the church in controlling all aspects of people’s lives, including that of science and intellectual thought. It is this consciousness of individual rights that became the bedrock of modern democracy and secularism. This is being assaulted from all direction. And, this is happening in a state that touts of its literacy, development and exposure to the global community.
Religious fundamentalism is raising its ugly head and all sorts of communal outfits are calling the shots and dictating terms to the political class both of the right and left persuasions. Both the political class and the religious obscurantists pay obeisance at the altar of mammon, the god of wealth. They cannot appreciate love, its finer manifestations, its tenderness, its giving in total self-abnegation; they only know violent intrusion with callous disregard for the other. That is what they call love; and in the dark of night they seek their illegal gratification. Since they do not know love, they become intolerant of all true and genuine expressions of it.