In August, the jewellery brand GIVA released a commercial about its new Pet Collection, in time for Raksha Bandhan. In it, the actor Kriti Sanon ties rakhis both on a man playing her brother, and on a smile-inducingly cute dog. The ad was withdrawn after a controversy sparked regarding Sanon’s attire, specifically the décolletage and exposed midriff of an embellished Indo-fusion outfit. The idea that an Indian woman would wear such an ensemble in front of her brother was too much for some critics to bear. Sanon responded: “Culture is in the heart, not the neckline.”
Raksha Bandhan is a festival that is cherished in India, but it has unmistakably patriarchal origins. Its entire basis is men providing protection, with women’s only agency being in the form of praying for their male relatives (this also happens during Varalakshmi Nombu and Karva Chauth). This is not to say that tying a rakhi is not sweet or special, which is it is to many.
The conservative ire about this ad, however, comes from much darker layers in the coding of the institution of the family. Women are often told to keep themselves covered up even at home, especially if they have male relatives. Entire generations of women wear bras at every moment, day and night, except perhaps when bathing. A pair of shorts is contraband in some households, as is a tank top. Unheard of is the notion that healthy people do not cast a prurient eye on every person of a gender they may be attracted to, and that a man who is eyeing a girl or woman in his household who is not his partner is the problem.
Around the same time, a video of a woman in a short dress getting out of a car, falsely identified as Tamil Nadu Industries minister S Keerthana, also went viral. She was shamed by some quarters as a result. Then, the Minister herself made an unfortunate remark that the woman in the video was dressed “arakura”, or inadequately, in a speech in which she otherwise called out the misogyny of the original post. That misogyny is unmistakable, and while it was targeted at the politician, the woman who was actually in the video, a foreign national, also released a clip talking about how stressful the incident had been for her.
While thinking about these brouhahas, a third incident involving women’s apparel caught my attention. During the recent tragic floods in Nepal, a pilgrim from Tamil Nadu named Poonguzhali used the sari she was wearing as a makeshift lifeline, thus saving 21 lives during a landslide. The quick-thinking act was rightfully praised. In a culture where women are routinely shamed for what they wear, how they wear it, and what they don’t wear, the very act of removing one’s clothing in public could have resulted in censure. It hasn’t on any public level though, and this is refreshing in a gloomy way. Modesty is a concept that is so often taken to ridiculous levels in India, after all. The onus of maintaining that modesty is also always placed on women, and not on those who cast the gaze.