Veiled menace......

"Poor Amina" said my roommate as she peeled off her sweat-stained shirt. "I saw her this morning. She was wearing a burqa to work."

I sat up on the bed. "Interesting", I said not wanting to say anything more revealing of my real feelings and yet wanting her to speak on. It was the summer of 2002 and I had just started my summer internship with Gillette and along with a lot of other students from different B-schools was in the MDI Gurgaon hostel. Amina was one of the many stuents, who lived across the hall from me and my room mate.

"I did not think her to be the type". To be sure neither did I. But I had talked to Amina , at least more than my roomie had, so I did not say anything except a "Hmm mmm" and buried myself in Hercule Poirot.

Amina was certainly not the "type". As the days went by I found her very "normal". Very like me, actually. Full of funny stories, quick to make friends, affectionate. I found myself spending more and more time in her room. The black burqa, hanging on a hook on the wall became less of a presence till I found her ironing it one evening.

"You wear it everyday" I ventured, still not sure if I should ignore it altogether.

"Yes" she smiled."It is very convenient really. No one ever gropes me and I always get place to sit even in very crowded buses. I figured, I might as well as prevent sun tans when I go out to work in Delhi this summer. Shocked my mother in Lucknow big time when I asked her for it".

Of course that changed everything. I thinks she still has pictures of me trying it on

This reminded me of that incident. Honestly, I have had very mixed feelings about the burqa. I do think that the diktat women should cover themselves/be modestly dressed and the religions that enforce it are misogynistic to the extreme. I think it sexualizes children to have them understand the difference between "modest" and "immodest" dress early on and force hijabs on little girls. I find it as much child abuse as I find little boys from sikh families wearing patkas or children from Hindu families speak of kids who have parents professing other faiths as "different" or try to label religious observances as "good " or bad"(I do follow Dr Dawkins in not labelling kids by the religion their parents bring them up in). And let us not even talk of circumcision or other culturo-religious practices.

The veil , however confuses me. I find the basic idea of covering up to prevent others from getting tempted, unadulterated nonsense. But there are those who choose to. I might find that choice stupid, or ill-informed or even regressive. But then so do I find Stay at Home Mothers or Beauty Queens. But their right to remain that way, that I completely agree with. Just as I do not prefer their personal opinions about how I should live my life dictate me, I cannot let my tastes dictate their chices , however poor they seem to me.

So I may (not to say I do!) roll my eyes at woman clad in a shuttle cock burqa , shake my head at a young teen in a hijab , or even snigger at a burqini (Disclaimer: I never laugh at others clothes, am always too busy worrying about my own)- but I cannot understand why a democratic nation would want to impose a dress code. That kind of things are done by the absolutely batshit crazy right (so right they are that side of wrong). I like the sentiment of equality and liberty for women. I appreciate the idea of keeping public spaces as free of religious symbolism as possible (in my version of Utopia there is no religion, but in that land, people realize the idiocy of religion by themselves and not through a state rule). If those be the real aims, they are going about it the wrong way. Because a ban on the burqa, far from forcing these "oppressed"( woe betide me if they are "I am so by free choice" types) women to remove their shackles, would force them out of public life. After all patriarchal families that force their women to dress modestly (provided such indeed is the case) would lock them up instead of letting them go about uncovered. There goes freedom out of the window for you. The fact that "these"(this is beginning to read like so classist, or racist, but I cannot use other words) women are in the public eye should help the "liberte, egalite" to seep down in a generation or so. And then there is the secular part of it. Does France really want to make martyrs out of its religious people? After all the religious love screaming martyrdom for imagined slights. A ban on dress takes on "real supression" dimensions. (Imagine if the US outlawed male circumcisions or made Christmas a working day- the latter would ofcourse give Bill O' Reilly an apoleptic fit -btw I NEVER thought I would reference that man on my blog- NEVER say NEVER). And martyrdom has this way of making religion and its observance all the more attractive, no matter how oppressive it is.

And then there is the other thing. A little thing called Islamophobia. The "otherization" of people based on their dress observances and the overarching assumption that "this must be misogyny" seems to be at the root of this. I do hope it is not, I would like to think it is not, but right-leaning governments use patriotism/ respect for values as thinly disguised form of xenophobia. And Europe does have this uneasy history with Islam. I cannot help but wonder what really is provoking this dress code idea.

Religion is a powerful (though inherently useless) meme. Like a disease it spreads by human contact. It perpetuates by discussion, by public discourse, and by paying attention to it. Bans, or overt displays too often have the same impact. The best resistance to the disease probably is exposure, then indifference. It will eventually go away if it is not over emphasized. Attention positive and negative will both make it as powerful- after all ideas travel through minds.

As a final thought, I wonder about the whole religious symbol thing. If no overt religious symbols are to be allowed in public spaces in France, does this mean they are closing ALL the pasta places?

EDITED to ADD: And here is another view. From a non-burqa wearing Muslim female. Makes me think. About how evils like Sati were removed from Indian society, b a blanket ban. But of course, that was from the root at the place where it flourished, not in any foreign country where the practice was alien and probably not carried out.

And yet another piece. Thank you Inferno.

And while I find the "banning of the burqa" in the West very Islamophobic, I will not completely disagree with what she says either. But again, its personal choice, no matter how socially ingrained.

Incidentally I find it very funny that people who follow other traditional religions get so up in arms at the burqa being repressive. Sure, it would appear so, if it is a social requirement, not a personal choice, but then so too are the million and one requirements of all paternalistic religions, the taboos, the do's and don'ts regarding women, their dress their inferiority to men, their "uncleanliness". I wonder why it is easy to "accept" those things, repressive as they be, is it because their presence is not that manifest. And lets leave religion aside, isn't the portrayal of women either as sex symbols or goddesses as repressive too? Just wondering why we rarely notice those social conditionings, just the ones that seem to be "oppressing the other"?