Bhopal college enacts 'saris-only' dress code for women teachers
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COMMENTS 
The people’s participation committee of a Bhopal college has decreed that women teachers can’t wear clothes that make them look like students, and that female students will soon also be told what to wear
A dress code for college students -- mainly girls -- is practised in some colleges across India, but a government-run college in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, has recently imposed a dress code on its female teachers as well. The ban extends to all types of clothing except the sari!
The rationale behind the ban is bizarre. Teachers are not accused of wearing jeans or dresses, but they do wear salwar-kameez and this makes them indistinguishable from students, which is apparently a bad thing according to the college’s Janbhagidari Samiti (people’s participation committee). Panel member Deepika Narolia said the code had become necessary because it was becoming difficult to differentiate teachers from students.
Students will also be prescribed a dress code from the next academic session, which will ban all ‘western dress’. Male students and teachers have been requested not to wear ‘tight’ trousers and T-shirts.
Dictating what girls and women should wear is not new in India. In 2009, students of Physiotherapy College in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, were told they could not wear jeans, T-shirts and other ‘western’ clothing. A similar ban on western wear failed at St Xavier’s College in the same city, but it is being enforced in L D Arts College where students are fined and their parents summoned if they are found ‘guilty’.
St Xavier’s College, one of Mumbai’s top colleges, initiated a similar ban a few years ago.
In 2005, the vice-chancellor of Bombay University, Vijay Khole, shocked women and the nation when he linked the rape of a teenage girl to a fashion for skimpy clothing. “Scantily clothed students could be one of the reasons why rape happens,” he was quoted as saying. He was backed by Arun Sawant, the university’s pro-vice-chancellor who declared that “there should be no exposition (sic) of flesh,” by girl students. “I’m not saying the arms should be covered to the palms,” he said magnanimously, “but no sleeveless tops should be worn.”
Right wing political leaders have made similar statements, and the argument that so-called ‘provocative’ clothing encourages and even justifies rape and sexual harassment of women is fairly widespread.
That records and statistics show that rape of minors and of poor and defenceless women who do not wear western-style clothes account for most rapes cuts no ice with India’s self-appointed moralists. Nor does the argument that rape and sexual harassment is a form of violence committed by men, for which they should be penalised not women.
Source: The Indian Express, December 10, 2010
PTI, December 9, 2010