After ban on "half-jeans", Hindu Mahasabha to seek ban on half-dhoti
The Haryana unit of the Hindu Mahasabha has made a major clarification. The outfit, which yesterday sought a ban on girls and women wearing jeans and other such "revealing" outfits, today said it had said nothing as such. Instead, it had sought a ban on "half-jeans" (read capris).
"We are not against girls wearing jeans but we are against girls wearing skimpy clothes," Haryana spokesperson of Akhil Bharat Hindu Mahasabha (ABHM) Lalit Bhardwaj clarified, according to a PTI report.
According to sources, having run out of options with women, who they want fully covered anyway, many in the Mahasabha are now looking for more dummies to work on their spring-summer collection. For a first, there is learnt to be a demand in the making to ban short-dhotis for men. "The idea," said a man close to the goings-on, "is to enforce a thumb rule: no part of the knee should be visible, as this could trigger a kneejerk reaction and lure people."
It is learnt that the Mahasabha would subsequently call for a ban on short shirts and tee-shirts for men, although they would leave the kurta alone for now, as no one in the Mahasabha or the world outside has yet figured out the prime minister's sartorial sense and sensibility beyond his love for short kurtas and headgears.
"We can, of course, take no chances there, though there is a school of thought that feels short-sleeved kurtas and shorts could also attract the wrong chemicals in our right brain," said another member with close connections to Haryana's khaps, which had earlier called for a ban on chowmein, too, contending that the mean spices in the chows titillate the mind.
Asked about the fate of Indian economy in the event of an enforcement of such a strict dress code, as half of the nine-tenth of Bollywood films that make any serious money feature Salman Khan or Hrithik Roshan, who are known to walk, and work, around in what could be deemed "skimpy clothes", the members said the planning commission should be resuscitated to look into this issue. "One section within a minority school of thought in our sabha feels people should be made to pay an additional obscenity tax to watch such films. But we still request the actors to be suitably dressed in suits for such sequences," the member said, adding that they have already made a representation to finance minister Arun Jaitley to work out the modalities for introducing such a tax.
After going through the minutes of the Mahasabha's meeting, Roshan is learnt to have gone into a closed-door meeting with father Rakesh Roshan to look at the possibility of acting only in Krishh-brand films. Sources close to the family said storylines are being finalised for Krishh-92.
Meanwhile, on the lines of making dupatta compulsory for women, the Mahasabha, in its latest meeting, also discussed the viability of making mufflers compulsory for men but the idea was rejected after one volunteer read out a #Mufflerman joke, it is learnt.
Besides dress code, there are also indications that a hardline section of the Mahasabha supports a ban on cellphones not just in educational institutions but in offices as well to prevent harassment at workplaces. "This section feels only men and women who are covered from head to toe should be allowed to carry a cellphone to check the level of obscenity, which is growing at a rate faster than inflation," said a volunteer closely associated with spelling out the diktats in Sanskrit. Sources said these members believe cellphones should be allowed only in Saudi Arabia, Taliban-held parts of west Pakistan and some such areas where the head-to-toe cover rule is followed to some extent but are hesitant in coming out in the open for three reasons: a) they would be marked as preferring countries with minority rule, where the minorities are a majority; b) they might be sent to such far-off places as educational trips to pick up enforcement tips and face network connection problems; and c) they would stop getting jokes on WhatsApp.