ABSTRACT
Valentine’s Day, celebrated on the 14 February of every year, was introduced to larger audiences in urban India in the 1990s. Valentine’s Day started as early as in the mid-nineteenth century in Victorian England, expanded to USA in the second half of the same century, and further spread across the globe in the twentieth century, mostly related to neoliberal economics and social change. Celebrated worldwide by ritualizing — and legitimizing — romantic sentiments of two people, Valentine’s Day in India is nevertheless a highly contested and politicized occasion for many, both critics and supporters. Romantic love, as “emotion work,” following feeling rules, navigates between economic and political spheres as well as the immediate experience of the body. In particular, in the days leading up to Valentine’s Day, an imaginary space forms for a moral panic about the display of erotic love in public and love relationships transgressing and thus questioning social borders, e.g., between caste or religion.
