Sari saga: Where did I go wrong?
SHASHI THAROOR
Feedback is, of course, the life-blood of the columnist, but sometimes you
get so much feedback it amounts to a transfusion. That’s what happened to
your beleaguered columnist after the appearance of my appeal to ‘Save the
sari from a sorry fate’ (March 25). Practically every woman in India with
access to a keyboard rose up to deliver the equivalent of a smack across the
face with the wet end of a pallu. Emails flooded in to all my known
addresses, including to my publishers and agents; the blogosphere erupted
with catcalls, many of which were duly forwarded to me by well-meaning
friends. Having digested as many of them as i can take, the only fashion
statement i’m left in a condition to make would be to don sackcloth and
ashes.
So where did i go wrong? It seems my innocent expression of concern at
the dwindling appearance of the sari on Indian streets and offices was
offensively patriarchal. It reflected the male gaze, demanding of the female
half of the population that they dress in order to be alluring to the
masculine eye. Worse, by speaking of the declining preference for the sari
amongst today’s young women in terms of a loss for the nation, it placed
upon women alone the burden of transmitting our society’s culture to the
next generation. And this was unacceptably sexist: after all, my column only
called for the sari’s survival, never demanding that Indian men preserve the
dhoti or mundu. These arguments were made, with varying degrees of emphasis,
by a variety of critics, most notably in a lengthy email from Vinutha Mallya
and in an ‘open letter’ addressed to me by a blogger who signs herself Emma.
(There were other nasty digs: a toi.com subeditor’s careless rendering of
the word ‘ubiquitousness’ as ‘iniquitous-ness’ prompted much hilarity at my
expense, for a mistake i didn’t make.)
Let me admit right away that all these points are valid ones, as far as
they go. Yes, i wrote as a man, because that is wh-at i happen to be. If
colu-mnists were all obliged to be Ardhanarishwaras, we might be more
even-handed in our judgme-nts, but i doubt very mu-ch that all our columns
would be worth reading. The purpose of a column is to offer an individual
perspective – with which the reader is, of course, not only free to
disagree, but encouraged, even invited, to disagree. I apologise if my point
of view offended any of my female readers, but i do not apologise for having
expressed my point of view on this subject, as on any other. If a female
columnist were to expatiate on the merits of tight jeans on male hips, i may
not agree with her, but i would not excoriate her for taking a female view
of male attire. What other view could she take but her own?
What about my unreasonably demanding of women that they preserve and
transmit Indian culture? I have to concede that Indian men have abandoned
traditional clothing in even larger numbers than women have put aside the
sari. At the press conference i described, there were a few men in mundus,
but the vast majority was in the western shirt-and pant combination that
dominates working attire in our country today. For every Karunan-idhi or
Chidambaram who adorn our public life in spotless white mundus, there are 10
others in trousers. And, as several of my critics pointed out, my argument
was a bit rich coming from someone who spends his working days in a western
suit and tie.
Point conceded, but i should hasten to add that this is not a result of
my own preference, but of the norms of international officialdom. Early in
my UN career i turned up at work in an elegant cream kurta, only to have my
Danish boss ask disparagingly, “who do you think you are – a surgeon?” I
still wear kurtas all the time after hours, at least when the climate
permits it, and mundus in Kerala; but it was clear to me that if i was to
represent the United Nations to the world, i was expected to do it in a suit
and tie. Indian women in India, on the other hand, would face no disdain for
sporting the sari: if they choose not to, it is because they choose not to,
not because their employment obliges them not to.
And let’s face it – whatever the aesthetic merits of the dhoti or mundu,
they pale in comparison with those of the sari. It’s fatuous to suggest, as
several of my critics did, that the two are equivalent. Ask a fairminded
jury of women and they’ll agree that the beauty of a well-crafted sari is a
source of non-sexist pleasure – to them, not just to men – in a way that no
dhoti can possibly match.
Saris may well be a hassle to wear, and less convenient to get around
in, but those are points i already conceded in my original column. What they
are, though, is special – and to my relief a handful of Indian women wrote
to say they agreed with me. Shreyasi Deb sent me a blog post in which she
declared that “i know that the ultimate weapon in my kitty is the sari…
This Sunday i have taken down my Ikat, Chanderi, Puneri, Laheriya, Bandhej,
Bomkai, Gadwal, Narayanpet, Maheshwari, Kantha and Kanjeevaram saris and
stroked them in the reflecting sunlight.” (I guarantee no man would ever
think of doing anything similar with his dhoti collection.) And Sindhu Sheth
wrote that she would heed my appeal: “i have decided to wear a sari (instead
of my regular churidar-kurta) – once a week, to begin with.” In that “to
begin with” lies the hope that my column will not have been entirely in vain