It’s not related to culture

IN a country where the Prime Minister talks of 'nari shakti' and the Leader of Opposition raises the pitch on 'smashing the patriarchy', we collectively end up enabling — and often brazenly promoting — patriarchy. The controversy around actor Kriti Sanon's outfit in a Raksha Bandhan advertisement for a jewellery brand tells us that no wordsmithery on shattering sexism in the country and empowering women will translate into meaningful change in the foreseeable future.Consider this. An actor does a brand campaign for the festival of the brother-sister bond. She wears what she finds stylish and is comfortable in. The ad is made and telecast and suddenly, the collective and fragile sense of propriety of our society gets triggered. The cleavage is too much for a festival, we decide. It outrages the tradition’s purity, we declare. Women need to know how to dress appropriately, we announce. And the actor's defence notwithstanding, the brand issues an apology, claiming it has the "highest regard and deep respect for Indian culture, traditions and festivals", and withdraws the ad.The targeting of Kriti Sanon's clothes has nothing to do with culture or tradition or festivals. This is precisely because India has no one single culture or tradition or idea of festivals. The country embraces within it so much plurality that any one sense of culture or tradition is impossible. This outrage is about our idea of a woman and her place in society. The ire is directed at women exercising agency and not adhering to social norms. It is about policing women. It is about patriarchy.The saga is but another chapter in the thick book of patriarchy in the country, yet another reminder of how we expect women to look, behave and dress. The company's spineless reaction is hardly surprising. The ad and marketing world has often reinforced social stereotypes about women. Remember Fair & Lovely and the ad that told us what women's skin colour should be (Fair & Handsome emerged much, much later). Or, the Santoor young mother ad, because, God forbid, fathers need validation of their youth or looks. And when the ad world dares, we work even harder to pull it back. For example, the outrage around actor Alia Bhatt's Manyawar Mohey's bride brand campaign, which questioned the traditional Hindu wedding ritual of Kanyadaan.What better can we expect from a nation that has given its women voters their due after decades of relegating them to the periphery because their votes matter electorally but denies women proportionate political representation and real power? From a nation that ensures women are identified by their relationships even in policymaking — she is the 'Ladli Behna' or 'Lakhpati Didi', after all? From a nation that tells women not to step out after dark, not to dress 'provocatively', lest they invite a man's lust? From a nation where cinema has made its women pander to the male gaze? And from a nation where women fast to pray for their husband's long lives, because how can she not make a small sacrifice for a man? From a nation where a teenage girl's use of abusive language comes as a 'cultural shock' to even the PM because, unlike boys, only the utmost decency is expected from our 'betiyaan'? And from a nation where women are bound by a common factor: being second to men across their identities, whatever be their caste, faith, demography or ethnicity?So no, the shrill outcry over Sanon's advertisement has nothing to do with the spirit of festivals or traditional values, but with the idea of how we expect women to behave at festivals. Just as we expect women to behave everywhere, all the time.Ruhi Tewari is a senior journalist

It’s not related to culture

It is about policing women; it is about patriarchy

Ruhi Tewari

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