Beauty and the ban

BEAUTY CONTESTS HAVE evoked criticism for a variety of reasons, but the Uttar Pradesh Government's decision to ban them deserves to be condemned in the strongest terms. The State's Chief Minister, Mr. Rajnath Singh, has said the reason for prohibiting such contests is because they are ``against Indian culture'' - a justification that has, at once, both a familiar and a dangerous ring. In recent times, an imagined Indian culture has been served up as an excuse for bigots to conduct violent attacks on virtually anything they disagree with or are opposed to. Plays, cinema, music shows, painting - there is not a single area of creative expression that has not come under the wild and frenzied purview of the self-styled culture police. Whether it was the damaging of the sets of the film ``Water'' or the ransacking of artist M. F. Husain's residence, the justification was the very same: ``It is against Indian culture''. Given such a background, it is extremely disturbing to find a Chief Minister using the same argument to slap a ban on beauty contests. In the past, the role of the culture police was played by unruly bigots who portrayed themselves as saviours of the Hindu cultural ethos. In the case of the informal ban on beauty contests, we have the State itself appropriating the same role - an extremely dangerous development, to say the least.

It is another thing that beauty contests are not attractive events. They have a tacky underbelly and, as feminist groups point out, they play a role in encouraging the commodification of women. In a male-dominated world which puts far too much emphasis on the way women look, there is something retrograde about events which categorise women on the basis on appearances and accord such titles as Miss World and Miss Universe to the ostensibly prettiest contestant. In the face of strong protests all over the world, the organisers of beauty contests themselves have been forced to address and counter this criticism if only through unconvincing attempts to dress up such contests as tests of both ``beauty and brains''. A few mundane questions to ostensibly test the contestants' wit and intelligence hardly persuades anyone that the contest is about ``much more than good looks''. But their inclusion suggests that the organisers of such contests are under pressure to demonstrate that they are not the human equivalent of cattle shows.

Mr. Rajnath Singh and feminist groups may share a common aversion for beauty contests, but there is a radical difference in the nature of their objections. The latter's protests derive from apprehensions that women are being commodified - a progressive concern which has the betterment of women in mind. The former's beef is totally prosaic. It is grounded on the tired old argument that such contests promote insidious Western values that are inimical to Indian culture. And it stems from certain male chauvinist beliefs about how women should behave and what they should wear. There is an enormous difference between policing women's welfare and being a mere culture cop. It is one thing for people to register their distaste or even protest against beauty contests. It is quite another to ban it - whether via public fiat or through the indirect means that the BJP Chief Minister has evidently chosen to employ. Beauty contests may be countered through the politics of orderly protest and through arguments of reason. The important question is whether they denigrate women, not whether they violate some imagined cultural code. In his obsession to defend what he regards as the Hindu cultural ethos, Mr. Rajnath Singh has failed to recognise this important distinction.

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