Public Affairs: Club entry only for colonial clones

The Prime Minister of India, Mr Narendra Modi, will not be allowed to enter five clubs in Chennai and the premises of innumerable clubs in Delhi, Kolkata and Mumbai. Nor will be the home minister of India, Mr Rajnath Singh. Nor Mr Manmohan Singh, A.K. Antony and leaders of several other parties. Nor will be a host of India’s most celebrated citizens, famously including in the past Supreme Court’s Justice Krishna Iyer and several legendary figures from the world of music among a host of others. According to the rules of these clubs — in varying degrees — men wearing Indian clothes, including formal Indian clothes, are not deemed to be “properly dressed”. Inter alia, club rules dictate that men entering these clubs should wear trousers and collared shirts and perhaps ties and jackets as well on some occasions.

The very first issue which requires my clarification is that I freely concede that clubs are private organisations governed by groups of individuals, and as long as members of the club accept the rules, they are free to create such rules as they deem appropriate to regulate entry into their premises. I do believe that this matter has been agitated in courts of law with the same conclusion. Having conceded the obvious, it is open to citizens of free India to voice their opinion regarding these rules, and to call upon fellow citizens to ponder over the issue.

Needless to say, any citizen entering a public place ought to be decently and appropriately dressed. For example, nobody should interpret freedom and democracy as including the right to come in underwear to the formal meeting room of a private club or anywhere else. Equally obviously our national dress is always appropriate wear, whether a kurta-pyjama or a dhoti and shirt. In a tropical country like India, the sheer absurdity of insisting upon western attire that’s patently unsuited to our hot and humid climate and making men sweat it out in closed shirts, trousers and shoes is inexplicable. The latest tale in the saga is the denial of the right of entry into the premises of a Chennai club to a judge of our high court and some advocates on grounds that they were attired in dhotis and shirts. It is nothing short of ridiculous.

I will resist the temptation to ridicule the oft repeated preoccupation of some with a colonial hangover. This is a mindset, well-known to all.
However, my plea would be for citizens to think if there should be places in our country, public places, even though they may be technically “private” clubs with their own rules for the purposes of a strictly legal argument, where the Prime Minister of the country or the home minister will not be allowed to enter in their Indian attire? Particularly when a large majority of these clubs are the beneficiaries of government largesse in the form of large tracts of subsidised land, and also obtain from government the all important bar licenses, and numerous other clearances and permissions? When this issue occurred in Karnataka, a fierce debate ensued in the Karnataka Assembly, a committee was appointed and several decisions taken.

Strangely enough, this is perhaps the only issue which I can think of in our country, where women get better privileges! Women are allowed to wear our national attire, the sari, or salwar kameez, wear chappals or slippers, or if they so desire, wear the western clothes that have so captured the minds of the management of these clubs. I have often wondered whether this leniency is because the clubs consider women to be beneath their rules, that it does not matter what they wear?

Or is it because they would prefer the women to be clad in Indian clothes and not be susceptible to the oft talked about “corrupt Western influence”?
Whatever the reason, the club-going elite women of our country may justifiably rejoice, because, in this one issue at least they have trumped the men.
The sociological implications of these club rules relating to men are very interesting. Do the clubs want to perpetuate a kind of exclusivity? In Parliament, for instance, members are formally and professionally dressed mostly in Indian clothes, which really promotes inclusivity and national integration.

Why would a club disallow what is allowed in that most hallowed of our democratic institutions, our national legislature? Is it because the dhoti-clad are considered to be the hoi polloi, and the trouser-clad triumphantly entering the club are superior to them merely on account of dress. Does this, in fact, make them superior?
This only reminds me of a wonderful Tamil movie where well-known thespian M.R. Radha proclaims to his staff that all dhoti-clad men should be seated on the floor, and trouser-clad men in chairs! That was meant as satire, but club rules, and entry, have alas, far more serious consequences.

Author Ruth Rubenstein has written a wonderful book analysing dress codes where she discusses the semiotics of clothing. “Clothing signs,” she says, “indicate behaviour mandated by those in authority such as police uniforms and garments worn by priests. These are required for the efficient discharge of their mandated duties.”
“Clothing symbols,” she adds, “like jewellery and expensive designer clothes indicate achievement of cultural values relating to wealth beauty and success.”

“Clothing tie signs”, like the Jewish Hasidic dress and other such distinctive clothes, emanate from the hopes and fears of minorities outside the mainstream. Witness the huge debate over the burqa ban in France. Thus clothes do not just make a man or woman, they represent a host of other issues — sociological, cultural and political.
Identity politics, exclusivity, territorial possessiveness, perhaps these could be the underpinning of anti-Indian-clothes rules of some clubs. But while reiterating their right to regulate themselves, perhaps the time has come for the management of these clubs to rethink the relevance of these rules in a no-nonsense, modern India.

The author is a political activist and the views expressed in this column are her own