{"id":134,"date":"2008-02-05T10:25:00","date_gmt":"2008-02-05T10:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/2008\/02\/of-hem-lines-and-court-cases.html"},"modified":"2011-06-30T20:40:40","modified_gmt":"2011-06-30T20:40:40","slug":"of-hem-lines-and-court-cases","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/2008\/02\/of-hem-lines-and-court-cases.html","title":{"rendered":"Of hem-lines and court-cases"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hot off yesterday\u2019s presses (the television channels had a field day speculating) news of Sania Mirza\u2019s decision to not play in the Bangalore Open. Sania, who\u2019s only 21, has had a lot of \u201cflak\u201d from everyone who has a mouth, camera and media access, apparently. Her clothes are indecent, not covering her sufficiently, say fundie Muslims<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Haseeb-ul-hasan Siddiqui, a leading cleric of the Muslim organisation the Sunni Ulema Board, said: “The dress she wears on the tennis courts not only doesn’t cover large parts of her body but leaves nothing to the imagination.”<\/em><\/p>\n

Imagination is imagination. And it is subjective. If you aren\u2019t looking at her as a tennis player (that\u2019s why she\u2019s there in the first place), but as an object for titillation, then it\u2019s entirely your choice. Yes, she has legs, which we can see in this case. And she has arms, peeking out of her sleeves. And she has hips, and a chest and other essential biological paraphernalia. But so does every other woman. Just because she steps out on court, must she be dissected so ?<\/p>\n

As an aside, women are dissected, everyday, on the street, whatever they wear. This is politely called eve-teasing, but is in reality, sexual molestation. Commenting publicly on Sania\u2019s attire, however takes this to a whole new level. What exactly does a young woman perceive if a public, religious body, can comment on another\u2019s mode of dress and get away with it ? How must a woman perceive her mode of dress ? Always subject to criticism ? Always objectified ? Always a vessel of titillation ? How does a girl grow up free and un-fettered under such scrutiny ?<\/p>\n

Must she play in purdah now ? (There goes her World No. 29 slot). Then she was misquoted on her views on pre-marital s<\/a>ex. She\u2019s 21, an adult, and possess a brain. Hence she can have an opinion. But the fundies will have none of it. I say, who cares ? Why can\u2019t she have an opinion ? And even if she believes in pre-marital sex (and she said she didn\u2019t, but that\u2019s another story), so what ? <\/a><\/p>\n

Then, some innovative photographer photographed her from a curious angle, where it looked like she was pointing at an Indian flag with her feet<\/a>. Due to this accidental pose, \u201cMirza faces a possible prosecution under the Prevention of Insult to the National Honour Act. \u201c<\/em> I mean, poor kid. All she wants to do is to play tennis. But since she\u2019s a woman, she must please all the religious fundamentalists in India, sit and behave like a woman should, not speak her mind, and whet her appearance and advertisement schedules to make sure there\u2019s not a mosque or a flag in the vicinity.<\/p>\n

This is a lovely advertisement for Incredible India, if the travel advisories against female travelers to India<\/a>, were not enough. It is interesting to note that the Ulemas aren\u2019t picking on Muslim women in the Bollywood industry who wear smallish clothes. Why Sania ? Why not Katrina Kaif, or Malaika Arora Khan ? I\u2019m not advocating that they should, but why issue such statements against a girl barely out of her teens, who\u2019s clothing is incidental to her bread-and-butter ? It brings up the specter of the \u201cperceived\u201d corruption of the actress. Katrina, beyond redemption, let\u2019s not try to reform her ? Sania, poor kid, can still be rescued from descending into hell, by covering up those shameful legs ?<\/p>\n

Yes, religious freedom is a necessity, but who decides when religious ideology impinges on the rights of a person ? When can the state rise up and protect the rights of a citizen (say Sania) and \u201cgag\u201d a person\/body\/association making subjective accusations on a person\u2019s personal choices ? Sania understandably isn\u2019t wanting to ruffle any more feathers.<\/p>\n

Sania hasn\u2019t attempted to thwart Muslim ideology in an obvious way, but she doesn\u2019t fit into the role of traditional, good girl. Hence the nit-picking. I imagine it\u2019s a whole lot of un-needed pressure being subjected to such accusations, and court cases, without doing anything to invite them. And I can see why she wouldn\u2019t want to go out there and have it all happen again.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hot off yesterday\u2019s presses (the television channels had a field day speculating) news of Sania Mirza\u2019s decision to not play in the Bangalore Open. Sania, who\u2019s only 21, has had a lot of \u201cflak\u201d from everyone who has a mouth, camera and media access, apparently. Her clothes are indecent, not covering her sufficiently, say fundie […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"twitter_17000648_17000648":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9,35,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-and-society","category-dumb-things-people-say-and-do","category-india"],"aioseo_notices":[],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false,"post-thumbnail":false,"sow-carousel-default":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"amodini","author_link":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/author\/admin"},"uagb_comment_info":2,"uagb_excerpt":"Hot off yesterday\u2019s presses (the television channels had a field day speculating) news of Sania Mirza\u2019s decision to not play in the Bangalore Open. Sania, who\u2019s only 21, has had a lot of \u201cflak\u201d from everyone who has a mouth, camera and media access, apparently. Her clothes are indecent, not covering her sufficiently, say fundie…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":844,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134\/revisions\/844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}