Just Like That | Culture, tradition, religion not weapons to curb women’s choice

Recently, Rashtriya Hindu Shakti Sangathan (led by Raghvendra Bhatnagar) members objected to young women performing a ramp walk in Western attire in Rishikesh

Recently, members of the Rashtriya Hindu Shakti Sangathan (led by Raghvendra Bhatnagar) objected to young women performing a ramp walk in Western attire in Rishikesh, calling it ‘against the culture of Uttarakhand’ and ‘against Sanatan Dharma’. Unfortunately, such protestations—although still isolated—have been increasing, and even worse, finding new ideological legitimacy.

Men who feel that women must conform to their notion of the ‘chaste Hindu nari’ are also under the misconception that tradition is static, uniform, and always prescriptive (IANS)

Those who defend the disruption or express sympathy with it argue that ‘Western’ dress, often conflated with being immodest or ‘revealing’, is against the ambience of a religious pilgrimage town like Rishikesh. It is also argued that beauty pageants are colonial imports, and somehow alien to ‘our values’. They will thus wrongly impact the youth, female propriety, family values, and even lead to a breakdown of social norms.

Frankly, I think these arguments are rubbish, although personally I am not enamoured of beauty contests. I think to judge women on the basis of their bodily attributes is a highly outdated and primitive idea. Neither women—nor men—are just a sum of their physical parts, and their attraction cannot be gauged simply by the narrowness of their waist or the bulge of their biceps. The whole spectacle where men ogle while women parade themselves is so passé that I seriously wonder about the level of intelligence of the men who throng such events and the women who vie to participate in them.

Be that as it may, I strongly oppose the bullying that happened in Rishikesh in the name of Sanatan Dharma. As a long-standing student of Hinduism and of its profound philosophy, I don’t think our religion is so weak or so brittle as to be challenged by such things. On the contrary, Sanatan Dharma—while having a very strong and verifiable core of beliefs—is remarkably assured and flexible. The four highest purusharthas or goals of the Hindu worldview—Dharma, Artha, Kama and Moksha—give philosophical validity to both wealth and sensual pleasures, provided they are pursued in proportion and not in exclusion.

Moreover—and far more importantly—there is nothing in Sanatan Dharma that gives sanction to men to decide what is appropriate for women. Women are free to make their own choices within the larger rubric of public decency as defined by law, and have no need to be dictated to by misogynist and self-anointed arbiters on what they should wear, whom they should meet, what they should drink, and how they should behave. The truth is that ‘culture’, ‘tradition’, and ‘religion’ are often a façade to hide a regressive patriarchy that revels in misusing power and authority to dominate and control women. Culture then gets weaponised, trampling upon all kinds of freedom of expression—be it art, theatre, films, artistic performances, and, of course, beauty contests.

Men who feel that women must conform to their notion of the ‘chaste Hindu nari’ are also under the misconception that tradition is static, uniform, and always prescriptive. But Indian culture—from its very inception—is plural, heterogeneous, assimilative and evolving. Our religious texts, historical art, temple sculpture, regional customs, poetry and literature are much more liberal than the derivative Victorian morality that is sought to be imposed upon them today. A living tradition like Sanatan Dharma is enriched—not threatened—by diversity and change. Tradition does not freeze; it reinterprets itself. To prescribe one style of dress or public behaviour as canonical, especially for women, is to deny tradition’s pluralism—and to risk reducing religion to a narrow and partisan ideology.

Even from the point of legality, the Indian Constitution guarantees freedom of expression, personal liberty, equality and dignity for all. Unless there is a clear legal violation (e.g., indecency under law), moral policing through protests or disruptions threatens individual rights. The legal precedents for this were clearly established by the Supreme Court when some conservatives protested violently against the Miss World gala in Bengaluru in 1996.

The Rishikesh disruption, in short, is wrong in principle. It is not wrong because participants wore Western clothes, nor because beauty contests exist—but because the act of disrupting them presumes that religious tradition trumps individual autonomy, consent, and pluralism without argument. To believe that Sanatan Dharma requires uniformity of dress or public performance ignores its rich history of diversity, its internal debates, and its capacity for adaptation.

Contestants in such events are not simply objects of display; they are human beings with aspirations and with agency. They deserve respect, not moral policing. What these misguided and culturally illiterate religious evangelists do not realise is that we live in a democracy where rights are enshrined, and bullies who take the law into their own hands can—and must—be punished.

Indeed, the women in Rishikesh who stood their ground—who insisted that culture cannot be defined simply by clothes—did more than defend themselves: they defended a principle. They reminded us that tradition is not a stick to beat people with, but a mirror that must reflect many faces.

(Pavan K Varma is an author, diplomat, and former member of Parliament (Rajya Sabha). The views expressed are personal)