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💪When the women said no
In the name of ‘culture’, young women preparing for a beauty pageant in Rishikesh were told to “go home”. The women stood their ground, scoring a win.
They were taking a short break for lunch when the men barged in. The ring-leader was Raghvendra Bhatnagar, president of the Rashtriya Hindu Shakti Sangathan, accompanied somewhat conveniently by cameramen. He had a simple message for the 20 women rehearsing for the Miss Rishikesh pageant scheduled to be held the following day on October 4. Go home.
“He said, ‘The dress rehearsal is over. You can all go home’,” Muskan Sharma, one of the contestants, who went on to win the pageant, recalls of the shock intrusion.
In the video that went briefly viral, the angry man is haranguing the girls. “This is not our culture,” he says. They are in no mood to relent. “Why don’t you shut the shops where these clothes are sold?” Muskan asks.
“Don’t tell me what to do,” says the man who is telling them what to do.
Muskan continues. “There’s a shop out front that sells cigarettes and alcohol. Why don’t you shut that down?”
By now, other women and some of the organisers can be seen joining Muskan in the altercation. In the end, the show goes on and the only one who goes home is Bhatnagar, mission unaccomplished.
Crowning glory
“In a country where female visibility remains scarce whether in Parliament (14%), the higher judiciary (less than 6%) or even on playgrounds and parks, the pushback by young women from a small town is remarkable.
Beauty pageants have been criticized for their commodification of the female body and standardization of beauty standards. Yet, there is also acknowledgment that to participate or not is a matter of individual choice.
For many it has opened doors of opportunity. In 1970, Miss Asia Pacific was a young woman called Zeenat Aman. And in post-liberalized India, the twin-win of Sushmita Sen and Aishwarya Rai in 1994 not only launched their own successful film careers but lit the ambition of countless young women like Muskan in smaller towns and cities who dream of careers in film and modelling.
The pushback
For men like Bhatnagar, there is only one place for women and it is at home. Never mind that the home is emphatically not the safest place for women, with one in three subjected to domestic violence by a family member, according to the National Family Health Survey-5.
The objection to clothes is barely a fig-leaf. The official costume for beauty pageants in places like Bareilly and Rishikesh is either a sari or lehenga. But for the rehearsals, Muskan explains, the girls wear form-fitting clothes so that their posture could be corrected.
There is no objection to the Mr Rishikesh contest where participants are barely dressed.
The issue is not clothes, the issue is freedom and aspiration. How dare these young women be on a stage that could springboard them to a larger global platform? How dare they cross lines of honour and shame that a patriarchal society has imposed on them? How dare they exercise agency and choice? How dare they want more?
Interestingly some of the women and the organisers themselves can be seen placating the angry man saying they had obtained ‘parental consent’. It’s an unnecessary caveat. But parental consent perhaps needs clarification in an increasingly nanny state that has introduced anti-conversion laws that practically ban interfaith marriage and requires adult live-in couples to register their relationship status with local authorities.
When the women hugged trees
Bullies who claim to be custodians of culture might wish to first study their own histories. Uttarakhand has a long and proud association with women activists leading grassroots movements. The Chipko movement of the 1970s to save trees from commercial logging was led by Gaura Devi and a host of other women. The activism of Icchagiri Mai who once burned down a shop selling locally brewed alcohol and surrendered to the police is fresh in memory. It was women who organized into self-help groups to stop illegal mining in Almora and forced the government to withdraw mining licenses in 1982. Bachendri Pal, no activist, was another doer who became the first Indian woman to conquer Mount Everest.
With the imprint of women like these, a new generation has had enough of being singled out and humiliated on the specious grounds of “protecting culture” by its self-appointed custodians. Armed with education, young women aspire to lives beyond the home and hearth.
If the custodians haven’t yet received the memo, they might want to heed the lessons of Rishikesh. It could well be an early step in a larger movement where women reclaim half the sky that belongs to them.
