Dress Codes: Culture or Patriarchy? By Nikita Azad

Dress Codes: Culture or Patriarchy?

By Nikita Azad

05 January, 2016
Countercurrents.org

A banner about the dress code for devotees put up at Sri Parthasarathy Swamy
temple at Triplicane in Chennai. — Photo: K.V. Srinivasan/The Hindu

2015 was an year of oppression and resistance, exploitation and revolts, demons and dreams. While on one hand, we were faceted with a strong Brahaminical fundamentalism, on the other, we created a strong communal harmony. While on one hand, we were mocked as aliens for our sexuality, on the other, we celebrated Queers. While on one hand, our homes were demolished in the name of beauty, on the other, we pledged to own our homes, our factories, our products. Where the state planned to sell higher education to WTO, and we said in huge numbers ‘Occupy UGC’ and ‘WTO Go Back’. 2015 was the year where we were preached that menstruation is a sin, but we said #happytobleed, doing away with all taboos that restrict our mobility.

With all the resistances that we put last year, we entered into a new year, pledging and hoping to make and see a better, egalitarian, just society. We welcomed 2016 to life, love, and struggle. But, while many people were still celebrating the New Year, we were given another gift on the very first day of New Year.

On January 1, 2016, many pilgrims had gone to various temples in Tamil Nadu to seek blessings from god for the next year, where women were turned back, and sent home for wearing western clothes, jeans, or shorts. It happened because in December the Madras High Court ordered temple authorities in Tamil Nadu state to refuse entry to anyone wearing jeans, bermuda shorts, skirts, short-sleeves or tight leggings to "enhance spiritual ambiance". Earlier in 2015, Prayar Gopalakrishnan, head of Devaswom Committee, Sabarimala Temple, Kerala had given another controversial statement that once a ‘purity’ checking machine (that checks whether women are menstruating or not) is invented, he will think about letting women enter the temple. Also, Mr. Abubacker, a leader of Sunni sect of Muslims said that gender equality is a myth, and women are fit only for reproduction. Continuing the legacy of patriarchy, women were given another archaic diktat which would control the amount of clothes they would put on their body.

Although Madras High Court dictated a dress code for men also, i.e. formal pants and shirt, or dhoti etc, but the scenario in the society at large is anti-women, which is why I choose to address the question from the lens of patriarchy. Secondly, the dress code that men were obliged to follow doesn’t include the ‘decent-indecent’ conflict; rather they are merely expected to look ‘sober’. Whereas when it comes to women, a lot of arguments are given like such clothes which reveal conventionally hidden parts of female body might distract the attention of people, incite sexual feelings, make women ‘astray’ i.e. break the sexual barriers imposed by society. Also, this isn’t the first time such a statement has come; thus we must see it in continuity rather than spontaneity. On November 23, 2015 the committee of Kashi Vishwanath temple gave a diktat that foreigners, or women who wear ‘revealing’ dresses will not be allowed entry, and also the temple placed 25 sarees at its entry point for them to change! Earlier in October, 2012 women wearing jeans were banned from entering Jain temples in Madhya Pradesh.

The relation of women with clothes has always been an issue of debate in society, from where the sexual nature of society is judged. If in a society, women do not cover their bodies from head to toe, do not wear bras regularly, etc, they are branded as ‘loose women’, and society is recognised as one promoting ‘promiscuity’. But, if women cover their bodies fully, they are referred to as ‘decent’, ‘homely’ etc, and society is called ‘closed’, or ‘well civilized’. However, this branding varies as we change the sample of judges, but in Indian context, this is the most appropriate categorization of societies, and women. Clothes have also become a symbol of societies, whereby we recognise societies, classes, castes by their clothes without interacting with people, and without knowing their profession. Clothes not only reflect economic condition of individual, but also social status, social acceptance, and social relations. We identify different cultures from the clothes they wear, rather than thoughts they bear. For example, if an individual wearing sturdy leaves or animal skin is shown to us, the first identity to which we relate the individual is Adivasi. The jungle, their dance, their music, even their faces, do not matter, but only their clothes. This is the level up to which clothes and culture are intertwined.

It is quite amazing how a thing of need, clothes, which humans invented to cover their bodies, became a tool of division among the very humans. The invention of agriculture, development of productive forces, private ownership of animals, slaves, and finally land, paved way for the transition from matriarchal society to a patriarchal one. The urge of major owners of means of production (man) to transfer the ownership to their legitimate children required a strict discipline on sexual nature of women. The first monogamy was imposed on women, to get a legitimate heir to the land of father. From this sexual control, started the first cultural manifestations of patriarchy in ideologies that preached that women are subordinate to men in every respect, and are fit only for homely purposes. Many justifications were created in order to counter every resistance, and question, which included developing an inferiority complex within a female with respect to her own body. She was excluded from direct production processes, and made to perform household functions. Most importantly, the work she did in home was perceived as her duty, not as labour, while ‘work’ meant labour that men did beyond the realm of home. However this strictness was more practiced in land-owning classes, whereas in landless classes, there was certain flexibility. This was also because the sexual availability of lower class-caste women was at the discretion of upper class-caste men. Lower class-caste women were considered as objects of manual labour, as well as sexual labour. Within this structure, clothing was decided. Where on one hand, women were forced to remain within homes, cover themselves up completely; on the other hand, Dalit women were forced to make multiple sexual relations with men from the upper castes. This hypocrisy is manifested in the tradition of 19th century Travancore where lower caste women (Nadar climbers) were not allowed to cover their bosoms to punctuate their low status.

The reason why I am placing these arguments historically is that today when fundamentalists talk about ‘preserving our culture’, maintaining ‘spiritual ambience’, and regulate the behaviour of women, they tend to hide the heinous oppression in their very ‘Great Indian Culture’. The statement of Madras high court said that western clothes are inappropriate for a place like temple, but stripping Dalit women naked, making them run naked over a donkey, raping them to ‘remind’ them of their status, is far more inappropriate, and a great threat to our plural culture. On May 15, 2015 four dalit women were stripped naked in the middle of the village by upper castes because a girl of upper caste had eloped with a boy from a dalit family. Later on August 19, 2015, khap panchayat of Baghpat village, Meerut ordered that a dalit woman and her sister be raped because their brother had eloped with a woman of upper caste. Facts state that 21 dalit women are raped each week, and many a times, rapes are celebrated as victories in wars, as assertion of rights.

Temples, which are exhibited as pride of the nation, were made only for upper castes, whereby all Dalit were refrained from going in. Till date, menstruating women cannot go into temples in the name of culture and tradition. Moreover, temples which are viewed as places of virtue are also perpetrators of crimes. In these very temples, women were married to deities and forced to have sex with priests under the Devadasi Pratha. On 26 October, 2015 a 10-year old girl was raped by a priest in a temple in Faridabad, and earlier on May 2, 2015 a woman was raped in temple premises by a priest. Such anti-women, sexist atmosphere of temples, and Casteist, patriarchal priests have absolutely no right to decide what a woman wears and what not. The priests who justify gender oppression as an extension of nature, as a gift of God, have no authority to dictate whether a man, or woman, or transgender enters a temple, or not.
The question, here, is not about entering the temple, but about putting restrictions on a woman’s behaviour, routine as well as sexual in the name of culture. This is not just patriarchal, but also political. Regulating women’s choices is the politics of maintaining the classist-castiest-patriarchal power relations. Diktats regarding clothes, hostel timings, night outs, relationships, sex, are not given because men have a special psychology, but because the state structure and corporates need patriarchy to extract maximum profit from the labour of masses. The state makes one section of toiling masses, men, to stand against another, women, by propagating, and instilling patriarchy through various ideological and coercive apparatuses, and makes the loot easier for itself. Relating women to ‘honour’ and secluding them from public places is the biggest politics that state has ever done with its people. By doing this, it has made half the population, a mere spectator of state’s policies and crimes, which is celebrated as ‘decency’ of women by another half.

Within this context, comes the attitude of temples, colleges, workplaces and other institutions. On 21 September, 2015 an engineering college in Chennai gave orders to women that leggings, tight pants and tops, lose hair hairdo, short kurtis etc are not allowed within the campus. This system of making choices for women is very deep-rooted, and we need to look at it comprehensively and historically to find the correct answers and solutions. This is not the first time a temple has given such a diktat, but this is not even the last. We need to find ways by which we can change society, by which we can break the internalization of patriarchy within the minds of women. We need to address the questions of caste, class, gender with an embracing intersectionality, and forge a struggle against oppressive structures with a correct ideological basis.

Meanwhile, I would like to say, that this year is also going to be a struggling one for us, for masses.