The fatwa against mini-skirts in India

Padma Rao:

A new wave of prudishness is washing over India. It's striking the country's prosperous technology capitals and has led to fatwas and campaigns against India's most popular celebrities. And when Playboy hits the newsstands for the first time later this year, its hallmark Bunnies won't be exposing their birthday suits.

The walls of the country's temples are decked with acrobatic friezes of copulating couples. Erotic fables tell of the Hindu God of Love flirting outrageously with naked milkmaids bathing in a river. And next to its philosophical considerations about happiness in marriage, the Kama Sutra also offers useful tips for the entire palette of sexual delight. India's ancient history is studded with unabashed sex.

But what about a female tennis star who wears shorts and a sleeveless t-shirt? Or what happens when an actress so famous her fans dedicate temples to her begins to share her views on condoms and pre-marital sex? Smooching pairs in discotheques? Lovers holding hands on the beach?

By Krishna, no.

In recent months, political opportunists in India, acting in the name of "protecting the innocence of India's youth" and "Indian morality," have campaigned a crack-down against sexual liberation in the world's largest democracy. They have brought the work of parliaments to a halt, they have incited mobs and they have successfully pushed for changes to the laws. In a country that has traditionally been better known for the pleasures of the flesh, enforced virtue is fast spreading.

When a South Indian movie star, a 35-year-old actress who goes only by the name Khushboo, dared to suggest in September that Indian men should abandon the "outdated thinking that a woman must be a virgin at the time of her marriage" and urged the use of condoms to prevent the spread of AIDS in a country where it has become an epidemic, conservative political and community groups immediately went into overdrive. They staged rowdy demonstrations, pelted the vociferous AIDS prevention campaigner with tomatoes, rotten eggs and filthy abuse and filed more than 24 defamation and public interest suits. After her initial arrest, authorities released Khushboo on $100 bail and ordered the actress to keep her mouth shut.

Even the chief minister in Khushboo's home state of Tamil Nadu got into the act, accusing the actress of having committed a "violation of Indian culture." Nor did she get any support from India's health minister, medical doctor Anbumani Ramadoss, who said: "It is not that we Indians don't have sex. It's just that we don't talk about it."

India's teenage tennis star, 19-year-old Sania Mirza, likes to pair her skirts with saucy t-shirts with slogans like "I'm cute, no shit," and during the past year, she has risen to become the country's most popular youth icon. As Mirza notched up success after success on international courts -- she went from 987 to 34 in the ATP ratings in just 4 years -- an obscure Islamist group in Mirza's southern hometown of Hyderabad issued a fatwa against her. The Muslim teenager's clothes on court, it claimed, were "un-Islamic" and it ordered her to cover up.

"As long as I am winning, people shouldn't care whether my skirt is six inches or 6 foot long," retorted fast-talking Mirza. "How I dress is a very personal thing." But when Mirza stepped in to offer her support for the safe sex message given by beleaguered actress Khushboo, it suddenly became too much for the country's prudish Hindu majority and furious mobs in southern India went on the rampage again. Effigies of both women were burned, Khushboo went underground and Sania was forced to take bodyguards. Under intense pressure, both women made public apologies.

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