In India, You May Not Kiss the Bride
India may be the land of the Kama Sutra, the ancient treatise on pleasure, but public displays of affection remain taboo in the country’s hinterlands, as an Israeli couple found out.
They were fined about $11 each for embracing and kissing after marrying in a traditional Hindu ceremony at a temple in the northwestern Indian town Pushkar, according to a Indo-Asian News Service report published in the Asian Age newspaper last week.
The Israeli Embassy in New Delhi confirmed the incident and identified the couple as Alon Orpaz and Tehila Salev, who decided to get married while visiting India. The embassy did not provide additional details.
The agency report said priests at Pushkar’s Brahma temple were so incensed when the couple smooched as hymns were still being chanted that they filed a police complaint.
A court in Pushkar then charged them with indecency and ordered them to pay the fine or face 10 days in prison, the report said.
“We will not tolerate any cultural pollution of this sort,” the newspaper quoted a priest, Ladoo Ram Sharma, as saying.
The report said the priests planned to ask the government to require tourists to be appropriately dressed when visiting the holy town and its temples.
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