Love is interpreted by philosophers with different variations
Love is romanticized by the poets, who have their own narration
Love is painted in the movies in restricted dimensions
Love is confined by the television in a limited description
Love is hijacked by the greedy market forces for their vested interest to manipulate and twist information
Love is reduced to bundles of superficial honour, narrow nationalism, and patriotism by power-hungry politicians
Love is divided by the narrow concept of caste, territory, and religion and by paternalist notions
But amidst all this chaos, the way I understood, love is a rebellion,
Love is a revolution; Love is liberation
Love is the mutiny, not confined by the individualist expression or emotions
Love could not be restricted to profit or loss calculations
Love awakens the conscience and enables one to think beyond egoistic transactions
Love is not supremacy, prejudices, superstitions, or preconceptions
but love is a powerful expression that challenges all such delusions
Love is an expression that transcends the boundaries of territories, caste, class, or religion
Love is not about seeking the divine in temples; it is about admiring nature and all its creations
Love is harmony with nature, and preserving all natural species on the verge of extinction
Love is the rationality, wisdom and life’s celebration.
Love is a quest for justice, Love is about freedom and self-determination
In normal times,
Love is the grit of a mother teaching her daughter to dream and break age-old traditions
Love is the act of a father supporting his daughter to fulfil her aspirations
Love is the revolt of a lover who breaks all conservative traditions
Love is about shattering all stereotypical conventional illusions
Love is in the revolt of the citizen, demanding her entitlements and just solutions
Love is the roar of a worker who agitates against exploitation
Love is shattering the narrow walls of limiting traditions
Love is a brave act of demanding the elimination of poverty, starvation, excesses and immoderation
In the dark times,
Love is bending, molding, and transforming all unjust institutions
Love is challenging all forms of discrimination
In the times of repression, love is a pedagogy of revolution
Love is exposing the lies of those in power; it is an act of standing resilient against injustice and oppression
Love is an act of documenting the history of brutalities, violence and suppression
Love is speaking against all forms of subjugation
In times of hatred,
Love is bravery and courage to tell the truth with conviction
Love is testifying against the realities of tyrannies and domination
Love is seeking justice, righting wrongs, and reclaiming the spirit of the Constitution
Love is a sparkle of hope amidst all chaotic and absurd situations
Love is grit and resilience in times of autocracy and dominion
Love is countering misogyny, sexism, hate and detestation
Love is standing against all the gruesome hatred and division
In short.
Love is solidarity, a collective, imagining an alternative world founded on humane values, kindness and compassion.
Love is writing poems and stories in times of despair and depression
Love is singing songs of resistance and contestation
Love is a celebration of peace, justice, passion and collaboration
Love is creating a better world for future generations
Love is imagining a world free of treachery, cruelty and suppression
Love is dreaming of a world where crime against humanity has no place, there are no superficial separations
Love is a revolution; Love is liberation
Adv Dr Shalu Nigam is an activist, lawyer and a researcher working on gender, human rights, law and governance issues. Her latest books are Dowry is a Serious Economic Violence; Rethinking Dowry Law in India 2023; Domestic Violence Law in India: Myth and Misogyny, 2021 Routledge; Women and Domestic Violence India: A Quest for Justice, Routledge 2019; The Founding Mothers: 15 Women Architect of the Indian Constitution, 2016, co-author). She is a Tedx speaker.
