Hours after Karnataka Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappa said he wont allow pub culture in the state,one of his daughters Umadevi said: Its for women to decide if they would like to visit pubs or any other public place,and that government,politicians or outfits like the Sri Rama Sene cannot restrict their movements. If she is an adult woman,its for her to take a call on whether to go to a pub or not. If she is not an adult,the issue is then essentially between the child and her parents. There is no role for anyone else in this, Umadevi told The Indian Express. Umadevi,who runs Candor Business Solutions Pvt Ltd,a BPO in Bangalore,said individual freedoms cannot be regulated and agreed that Bangalore is also known for,among other things,its pubs. Its essentially a clash of values between the families who are comfortable with pub culture and the families who are not. Its therefore for the parents to decide for their children,and the adults then to take a call for themselves. Others dont have a role in this, said the 37-year-old entrepreneur who has never been to a pub. She said her siblings,including two sisters one a homemaker and another a government official would by and large agree with her views on individual choices. Yeddyurappa has been under pressure from the RSS not to be seen as soft on pub culture on the one hand and also from civil society bodies to ban the Sri Rama Sene whose activists assaulted women in a Mangalore pub. We will discuss the issue of banning the Sene, he said today. But arrested Sene founder Pramod Muthalik asked him to desist from any such move,saying keep in mind how the BJP was wiped out in UP.
