Clothes and culture: Legal status of dressing choices

In a recent incident, members of a fringe Right-wing outfit stormed into the rehearsal for the Miss Rishikesh pageant and objected to women contestants wearing “western clothes”, claiming it “polluted the culture of Uttarakhand”.

- Jwalika Balaji

This is not an outlier —it is part of a long history of using clothes to curtail women’s participation and access to public spaces.

Women’s bodies have long been, and continue to be, the site of policing and the imposition of collective morality. In India, clothes are not seen as mere self-expression but as symbols loaded with affective meaning. In some schools and colleges, the hijab is seen as antithetical to education; in temples, the lack of a head covering is read as immoral or westernised; in public spaces, short skirts or sleeveless tops are equated with promiscuity. One politi-

cian even compared women in “bad dresses” to Surpanakha from the Ramayana, whose punishment was to have her nose cut off.