Recently there was a small news item amongst all the excitement about the trust vote about women two wheeler riders in Pune. To protect themselves from heat and pollution, a lot of them cover their faces with scarves, which now the police find to be a security threat as one cannot determine the identity of the person with the scarf.
Oddly enough, there was also a woman from the NCW who must've felt she is in some surreal nightmare as she defended the right of the women to cover their heads and faces. A two wheeler rider also felt that if women can wear burkhas and ride bikes, then why can't she wear a scarf over her face. Even stranger was the normally ultra-conservative police force asking women to NOT cover their heads and faces.
This brought to mind a legislation in France a few years ago, which made the display of overt religious symbols an offence, where burkha clad women protested saying its their right to wear what they want to wear. And the modern, secular, gender-sensitive state cracks down on them. Orhan Pamuk's Snow speaks of a similar irony in secular Turkey where wearing the burkha, even out of choice and not out of compulsion, is seen as a sign of fundamentalism and chauvinism.
Secularism and modernity contradict themselves all the time. Yet, it's odd to see and hear things like these, when one more or less thinks the lines between two polarities have been clearly etched and the two sides very easily definable. So does one say that in one case, allowing women to cover their heads is okay and in another it's not?
Or does one simply wear a helmet on a two wheeler?
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