Police blacklist backless cholis

AHMEDABAD/ RAJKOT: The Rajkot police are reported to be annoyed that girls were going out to garba venues dressed in ‘backless cholis’. It seems they had issued licenses to garba organisers on the condition they would not allow ‘obscenely dressed’ revellers to the venues.

The Rajkot police say this has been done to prevent untoward incidents from taking place at the venues over skimpily dressed revellers. And though garba organisers in Rajkot had welcomed the police decision when licenses were being issued, they are finding it difficult to enforce what they had promised.

For the last couple of years, girls going out to garbas have preferred backless cholis with patterns painted on their exposed backs.

Incidentally, the choli, which seems to be at the heart of the controversy in Rajkot, was once the traditional dress of Gujarati women worn round the year. Rajkot police are clearly ignorant of history.

Police commissioner of Rajkot, Sudhir Sinha, said garba organisers had agreed at the time licenses were issued to them that they would not allow women to enter their venues in ‘transparent dresses that looked obscene’.

“Obscene conduct in public is a criminal offence under Indian law,” he said. “We issued the licenses to the organisers on the condition that they would not allow into the venues people wearing ‘transparent dresses’ because such dresses frequently become a source of trouble.”

When asked about the controversy over the backless choli, Sinha said, “The  directive has been misinterpreted. It says ‘garba organisers will not allow on their premises, revellers wearing transparent (pardarshak) clothes.”

With inputs from Maulik Buch from Vadodara and Rishi Bannerji from Surat