New Delhi, April 16
Richard Gere's repeated kisses on the cheeks of Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty in an event to promote AIDS awareness sparked protests across the country today with demonstrators burning effigies of the actor.

The Hollywood star had joined Shetty, the winner of the "Celebrity Big Brother" reality TV show in the UK this year, in a safe sex campaign among truckers in India, the country with the world's largest number of people living with HIV.

"No condom, no sex," an ebullient 58-year-old Gere shouted in Hindi to thousands of truck drivers who roared his words back in unison at a dusty fairground in New Delhi late yesterday.

They whooped with delight and whistled loudly as Gere swooped down on a visibly delighted Shetty to kiss her on her hand and a number of times on one side of her face.

However today, groups of men shouting "Down with Richard Gere" burnt the Hollywood star's effigies and kicked the smoking remains in the northern Indian cities of Kanpur, Meerut and Varanasi as well as in the central city of Indore. The protesters said Gere's kissing of Shilpa was against Indian culture.

Some burnt Shetty's posters, shouting "Death to Shilpa Shetty", and danced around the smouldering ashes, TV footage showed.

The kissing scenes were repeatedly being run on TV news channels with viewers commenting on the Hollywood star's actions.

Others said there was too much fuss over a few kisses.

"I think he responded as an actor. He was playing to the gallery," said Anjali Gopalan, head of Naz Foundation India, an anti-AIDS prevention and care group.

"I don't see anything bad," she said on Headlines Today television. Shetty's spokesman said TV networks were going overboard.

"The media should concentrate on promotion of the cause of AIDS awareness rather than make issues out of Gere's kisses," Dale Bhagwagar said.

The Indian authorities have been focusing on high-risk groups such as truckers, who have spread the virus across the country as many of them have sex with prostitutes during their journeys and infect their wives back home.

"It is the emotional barrenness of the job which is the culprit," Gere told reporters before the event.

"The trucker community has to help each other out to change their behaviour. That's where real change will come."

In Varanasi, Shiv Sena activists as well as Muslims staged protests in various parts of the city and burnt effigies of Gere and Shetty to protest against their "indecent behaviour" which, the protesters claimed, was "an attack on our cultural ethos".

In Kanpur, protesters, mostly students, burnt effigies and demanded that Gere should go back from the country while demonstrators in Bhopal threatened to boycott Shetty's forthcoming films.

Reacting to the issue, Shetty said, "I understand this is his culture, not ours. But this was not such a big thing or so obscene for people to overreact in such manner.

"I understand people's sentiments, but I don't want a foreigner to take bad memories from here." The BJP here disapproved the act, saying that it is not part of Indian culture.

"Such a public display is not part of Indian tradition," said party spokesperson Prakash Javadekar. — Reuters, PTI