A group of young Indian women plan to send pink knickers to a Hindu radical organisation that attacked female students in a pub last month and is also threatening to target unmarried couples celebrating Valentine's Day.

The Consortium of Pub-going, Loose and Forward Women – which had more than 10,000 members by last night – is urging Indian women to defy the radicals by enjoying a drink at their nearest pub on Saturday.

Their website states:

Beliefs & Causes

Join Us on February 14, Valentine's Day, the day in which Indian women's virginity and honour will self-destruct unless they marry or tie a rakhi. Walk to the nearest pub and buy a drink. Raise a toast to the Sri Ram Sena

The group was founded on Face-book last week in protest at the Sri Ram Sena (Lord Ram's Army), which assaulted several young women last month in a pub in Mangalore, a college town in the southern state of Karnataka.

Pramod Mutalik, the SRS leader, said at the time that his followers were custodians of Indian culture who had prevented the women at the pub from going astray.

That prompted outrage from women's rights activists and stirred a national debate about culturally acceptable behaviour for women in a society that is changing but still deeply conservative.

Mutalik was arrested but has been bailed. He has vowed to force unmarried couples found together on Valentine's Day to either get married or to tie rakhis – string bracelets – on their wrists signifying that they are brother and sister.

The consortium responded by asking supporters to send in pinkchaddi– Hindi slang for underwear – which it will post to the SRS on Friday.

Nisha Susan a journalist from Karnataka, told The Times that she started the group after reading about the attack in Mangalore and the subsequent threats by the SRS.

Renuka Chowdhury, the Minister for Women, denounced the attack in Mangalore as a symptom of the Talibanisation of India, where Hindu radicals have also protested against kissing in Bollywood films and cheerleaders at cricket matches.

There was no comment from Mutalik, but he has made it clear that he will continue his campaign against Western deviations from Indian culture: Valentine's Day is definitely not Indian culture. We will not allow celebration of that day in any form.

Update: Bullies are Pants

21st February 2009. See article from guardian.co.uk

Fed up with moral policing by radical Hindu groups who had attacked women in pubs and targeted unmarried couples celebrating Valentine's Day, a group of women decided to fight back – with pink knickers.

The result was a remarkably successful dirty dissent. Not only did 40,000 items of rose-tinted underwear, much of it apparently unwashed, end up flooding the offices of the Sri Ram Sena (Lord Ram's Army), the non-violent act defused much of the tension surrounding the acts of vigilantism by self-appointed guardians of Indian culture.

Spearheading the new movement is A Consortium of Pub-going, Loose and Forward Women, a group of young female journalists, lawyers and academics, who began with a Facebook group protesting at the attacks on several young women last month in a pub in Mangalore, a university town in the southern state of Karnataka. Yesterday it had nearly 50,000 members.

On the other side of the ideological divide, the Sri Ram Sena is licking its wounds. Its chief mentor, Pramod Mutalik, was arrested on Valentine's Day and government ministers publicly rebuked him for wanting to Talibanise the country.

However the Sri Ram Sena say they will not stop saving Indian culture. We say we use clinical violence which will have a healing effect on society, said Vinay Singh, national secretary of the SRS. We welcome any legal challenges. We say Valentine's Day is just propaganda for the market. We say pub culture is ruining our country. Let them send us chaddis. We will wear them.

A Hindu nationalist group has warned it plans to target British women drinking alcohol in the beach bars of Goa, India's popular tropical tourist resort.

The Sri Ram Sena group's threat comes after a string of attacks couples courting in public and young women drinking in pubs.

The group has been denounced as a 'Hindu Taliban' for its violent protests against what it sees as the creeping westernisation of tradition Indian values and culture.

It launched a number of assaults on couples celebrating Valentines Day, and is believed to have been behind the kidnapping of a politician's daughter following claims that she had dated a Muslim boy.

Last month the group provoked nationwide condemnation when its supporters forced their way into a pub in Mangalore, Karnataka, and attacked middle-class girls having an after-work drink with male colleagues.

One Indian minister denounced the group and called on the country's women to go to the pub as a protest against the attack on their freedom.

Since then Sri Ram Sena leaders have been expanding their presence throughout India and now plan to target Goa's notorious tourist resorts to raise their profile further.

It's leader Pramod Muthalik said the former Portuguese enclave is the centre of an immoral culture which was now spreading throughout India, that his group will approach the government and the bar owners to persuade them to close down but will launch direct action if they refuse: We will agitate and create awareness against pub culture in Goa since this culture is spreading to other parts of the country.

His deputy Prasad Attavara, told The Daily Telegraph the group will discourage western tourists from visiting the resort's pubs and urge them to focus of India's spirituality instead: The pubs are corrupting our culture. Everyday girls are exploited by wayward boys who have adopted western culture. They are spreading immorality in society, unmarried couples sit together in these shady pubs, which is a cause of concern for us. Westerners in their countries lead a valueless life, we want them to lead a spiritual life in India. We will try not to hurt tourism but if necessary steps will be taken.

I have written before about the brilliant Pink Chaddi Campaign and highlighted the important role played by Facebook in helping the campaign go viral.

Briefly, journalist Nisha Susan set up The Consortium of Pubgoing, Loose, and Forward Women on Facebook and urged women to gift pink panties to Pramod Mutalik, the head of the ultra-conservative Hindu group Shri Ram Sena, in order to shame him into backing down from his threats to disrupt Valentine’s Day celebrations.

The campaign has become one of the best Indian examples of how a grassroots community can come together, collaborate and take collective action using social media tools.

The Pink Chaddi Facebook Group has been getting hacked throughout last month, and, instead of dealing with the hackers, Facebook suspended both the group and Nisha's account last week.

Before the group was suspended, the hackers changed the name of the group to A Good Bong is a Dead Bong and posted vulgar and violent messages on the group.

In an open letter to Facebook posted Nisha wondered if the first rule of Facebook activism is to not use Facebook.