This post was written a while back, and the issues outlined may not seem as pressing as they did when I wrote it, but hey…

Image Courtesy of Cartoon Stock

Okay, so the details surrounding this impending ban on mini-skirts and revealing clothing in Sri Lanka has been very fuzzy. Some people claim that the whole story was fabricated by the JVP and UNP to discredit the government. If that is really true (and I sincerely hope not, because that would speak volumes about the joblessness of our politicians), then I only have one question for these politicians, “Is that all you’ve got?” I’m not able to connect the dots and see any relevance to basically anything, but whatever.

But if this story actually has some basis to it, and if we can derive the validity of such an impending ban from comments made by spokespeople and representatives from the Ministry of Culture, Ministry of Heritage, Ministry of “How-to-be-Sri Lankan” and Ministry of “I-can’t-deal-with-any-problems-in-the-country-so-let-me-fabricate-a-story-so-I-can-save-my-ass,” then it raises a lot of questions.
Sri Lanka is a developing country, we’re also extremely cultural, we are home to UNESCO World Heritage cities and a culture spanning so many years behind us. We’re an amalgamation of so many good things, including cuisine, dance, theater, performance and language that we managed to derive from the Indians, Portuguese, Dutch and most importantly, ourselves.
We’re not the freest of all societies, we face media repression, but for the most part, the urban, and more privileged societies in Sri Lanka, living in the posh suburbs of Colombo, Kandy and other relatively prosperous cities have been able to engage in a culture of their own. Undeniably, the influence of the West is creeping on us, and Bollywood continues to influence us much more than any derivation or version of “One-Shot-One” would do, and yes, at a time like this when we’re on a machine that’s making its way full throttle towards globalization and the amalgamation of culture, we need to stop and think, “But wait, I don’t want all this great Sri Lankan-ness to disappear.”
Don’t get me wrong, the coming together of cultures is beautiful. If my experience abroad has taught me one thing, it’s that learning about other cultures, engaging in them first hand, is one of the most enriching experiences in life. Marrying someone from another religion or ethnicity can also be a great thing. I’m not advocating marriage within our own races and castes and what-not so we can all remain one pure homogenous society. Boring. But, being conscious of our culture, our surroundings, whether we are in Sri Lanka, Somalia or Sweden is important. In our rush to learn English and put on our fake accents and thinking that we are a touch superior to all other fellow-country people because we speak accented-English and can carry out almost-haut-couture fashion with a passable level of validity, we sometimes forget to learn our own native languages, whether it be Sinhala, Tamil, or anything else. Sometimes, some of us learn enough phrases to ask how much a three-wheeler ride to Odel costs, and to tell our ‘chauffeurs’ to pick us up from school at 1.45 pm and no later (I say this all only with the uncomfortable knowledge that I, like so many others, have been guilty of such actions in some point or other of my life). In such a context, stopping to appreciate and engage in our culture could have a lasting effect not just for us, but for future Sri Lankan generations that follow.
Even if there’s no basis to the mini-skirt ban story, the fact that it has taken up any media space at all raises some important questions. Firstly, there is the question of aesthetics and the very deep space where conversations over the human body are held. I am no expert on this, but don’t our very own Veddhas wear sparse garments, and when we flock to Sigiriya every now and then on our ‘trips’ with disinterested cousins from England or Germany to look at the frescoes, do we prohibit our eyes from looking at the bare breasts of those maidens engraved into the rock? If this is what history tells us about the way Sri Lankans dressed, then isn’t it possible to argue that the idea of clothing, of covering our ‘private’ parts, is in itself, a very Western concept? And now we’re trying to counter the oncoming danger of ‘Westernization’ to maintain something that is essentially a very Western concept? I need a day to wrap my head around that concept.
But what I need a lifetime to wrap my head around is the idea that we can ask people to stop dressing or being some way. Using religion to form a basis for law is dangerous, as we have already seen in countless examples around the world. Religion in itself is another topic for lengthy debate, but the fact remains that the same religious text can be interpreted in 345 ways by 345 different people. And we want to codify that in to uniform laws? Impossible.
Asking us to wear longer skirts doesn’t make us any more pious. While I am the biggest advocate of regulating what we wear to places of religious worship, simply because they are sacred public places that call for the utmost respect of every other person in the vicinity, I am opposed to asking people to wear long Victorian style skirts, and underwear under our sarongs (I hope for the sanctity of every Sri Lankan, that that proposition was only a rumour and nothing more). People don’t like living in a repressive society that dictates everything we do, from what we say to what we wear.
Religious institutions and advocates of such a law need to understand that such restrictions cannot be implemented by the law. Those are choices that we make on our own. Remember the Prohibition Era in the USA, when alchohol was abundantly available and gangsters and cartels rose to fill the void that legal purchase couldn’t? Well, it may not be the best analogy, but just think of what repression does to society: it brings out their most enterprising, most desperate and most angry side of human beings in society.