Video clips of some youth dancing with girls on a running tractor-trailer in Mugalkhod village of Belagavi district were widely shared on social media on Monday.
The boys wearing saffron shawls were seen dancing to the tunes of Hindi film songs. They were holding hands with girls wearing colourful dresses. The tractor has two trailers attached to the engine. The engine and the trailers carried flags with images of Sri Basaveshwara.
The clips attracted a lot of varied comments. One person said: “Boys with dance girls atop a moving vehicle. This is not UP or Bihar. But our own Chikkodi in Belagavi.”
Another said: “This is the hypocrisy of the Hindutva brigade. On the one hand, they say they respect women. On the other, they bring professional tamasha girls to dance with them in public.”
However, some one countered this by saying that miscreants were trying to malign the Hindutva forces. These mischievous boys are wearing saffron shawls only to insult Hindutva organisations, he said.
Yet another suspected that all the boys were drunk and did not know what they were doing.
However, the reactions on the ground were different. Rajshekar Hiremath, a villager, said that the dance was organised by members of sugarcane cutting gangs who were celebrating harvest.
Ashok Mantagi, a private company employee, said that the girls were professional dancers from the Maharashtra tamasha circuit who were brought to the village by outsiders.
