Dress Code For Women?

A "pro-active" vice-chancellor of a University in Chennai decided to impose a dress code for women in his university as well as all the colleges that come within the jurisdiction of his university. Not surprisingly, that has generated a debate on the issue in many places, one of them being in The Hindu's Open Page published on sundays.

Of all the articles related to this issue that have been coming up in the past couple of weeks, I think the best one was this week by a nineteen year old girl, Poorvi Hattikudur. I thought it explained what the issue was all about most clearly and simply and, as they say, calls a spade a spade! At one point she asks "Why is there such a fear of woman's freedom and empowerment?"

From my own personal obervation, I feel there is indeed a fear and some insecurity among us men about the free and empowered woman( atleast in India). I find this fear mysterious! Should it not be very natural that women be just as free and empowered as men are? There is also this perception that women are to blame for the abuse and violence that they face from some men. To me nothing could be more preposterous than that. As far as I am concerned, if a woman wants to run about in the nude its upto her. If someone has a problem with that, well, simply don't look!