Taking a cue from their sanskari brethren from across the border, a Pakistani university is reportedly rebranding Valentine’s Day as ‘Sister’s Day’.
The university is also marketing the holiday widely by handing out headscarves and shawls to its female students.
The University of Agriculture in Faisalabad, which is behind the entire rebranding told The Quint that the change had been taken to promote ‘eastern culture and Islamic traditions among the youth’.
UAF vice chancellor Zafar Iqbal said:
In our culture, women are more empowered and earn their due respect as sisters, mothers, daughters and wives. We were forgetting our culture, and Western culture was taking root in our society
The university spokesman Qamar Bukhari told reporters that the UAF was seeking donations to complete its aims of giving headscarves to at least 1,000 of its 14,000 female students.
These scarfs will be distributed by the university administration and not their fellow male students.
Valentine’s Day is popular amongst the youth of Pakistan with many of them have taken to the custom of buying cards, chocolates and gifts etc.
But the country remains a deeply conservative Muslim society where many disapprove of western traditions.