Lalin’s Column: Dress codes do not a Taliban make

When I was in school we debated with a Girls’ school whether a bride with a dowry was better than a bride with a degree. The girls opted for the degree, at least in the debate. We had to win .After all it had to be our decision as we were debating about brides and not bridegrooms.

Now in a Kandy school a duo are swinging their anti Taliban sabres about mothers/daughters etc being asked to wear saris/salwar kameez/long dresses when visiting their old school. Not one mother has protested. Guess what will prevail and why?

Both men think there is a whiff of ‘Talibanism’ whatever he thinks that means in this move. (Taliban actually means students-not necessarily in such schools - which follow their holy book to the letter).What the Taliban is doing in their country, Afghanistan, is fighting the invader which Afghans have been doing successfully throughout history. Guess who won and will win now?

If Taliban means anything else such as forceful implementation of their interpretation of the dress code of the Shariya law, that is there business, however much we may or may not approve. If this school has laid down a dress code for mothers, that is the business of the school, hopefully supported if not fully but mostly by the mothers. Which mother in Kandy will object to being told to wear sari to her son’s school. Which son will disapprove? Surely it is their business whatever two old boys with an axe to grind think.

Amaranath Paul (AM) has written in the Island (12 Jan 11).He says he went to that school too. If it is the school that has as its motto 'Respice Finem', it is is also the school I went to (but not that referred to in the debate which was the one by the sea). If so he would remember that school set the highest standards in all what it did whether it was in education, promoting using the vernacular (swabasha) in education (during the age of Fraser around WW One- when many other schools and certainly politicians had not even given thought tof it), and looking after social outcastes in Kandy with the first and most vibrant and dedicated school social service society.

It saddens me that AM has thought it fit to go public about a dress code that his school has laid down not only with the best of intentions but also thinking far in the fragile society we live in. After all it concerns the public not much if at all. Not one mother has protested.

This school has had a dress code for the boys too amongst other things from the inception nearly 150 years ago. Boys came not only from all and every part(s) of Ceylon/ SL but also from Uganda, Burma and India. English, Scottish, Austrian and American boys whose parents were in SL (then Ceylon) attended too and accepted that code. Teachers came also from UK (there were about ten in the 1950s) and India as well and they too had a dress code as did other schools.

There was an unwritten yet perfectly understood dress code for fathers too as in all schools. Others will surely as night follows day follow this code if they haven’t done so.

AM has become ‘infuriated’ and ‘distressed’ with the dress code (sari) laid down by the school for visiting mothers. He thinks the school authorities have become unduly ‘agonized’ by ‘short frocks’. Are there any mothers or for that matter fathers who have objected or is it that a few very old boys like him are upset that the sari has been made ‘de rigueur’ and for very good reasons. Great men like Napoleon did take pains to set standards for schools including in dress for women so that one high and acceptable standard prevailed. So why this school should not set standards for visiting mothers’ dress too?

AM recalls a ‘number’ of teachers’ daughters in the 1950s wearing ‘the ‘famous can can’ frocks ‘for special occasions’ whatever ‘can can’ frocks famous or not were. Is he advocating them for mothers too and 60 years on? Mothers then and now everywhere in SL didand hopefully do not wear the same dress their daughters do/did and if they did it would certainly cause the ‘hullabaloo’ he did not see when he attended school. Neither did fathers/sons too. I cannot remember more than a couple of teachers’ daughters being around in the school and while admired their dresses did not create any ‘hullabaloo’ or ‘can can’ sensation either.

The school did not have the ‘biggest boarding house’ but many houses in the biggest boarding school in the island. Probably 400 of the 600 boys were boarders.AM may also remember there was one girl in the school a Miss Kumaraswamy whose brother was a doctor who served in the Army later. She wore a frock or was it a sari and attended the 6th form science class. She certainly wore a sari on special occasions like prize day. I don’t think her mother ever came to the school in anything else than a sari as she too would not have had any idea of wearing ‘famous can can frocks’ on special occasions ‘showing decent portions of the leg’ as though there are indecent portions too. Certainly there was no ‘hullabaloo’ too.

What is ‘distressing’ is that AM thinks the dress code laid down for mothers of the school boys, the sari, is a ‘draconian’ (extremely severe) measure which unfortunately has ‘infuriated’ him and is surely not. What is extreme in asking mothers to wear what is one of the recognized national dresses of SL? After all the sari especially the Kandyan one is about the most elegant dress for SL ladies if not for all women. Yes it takes time to dress in but which SL son could say that his mother would look better dressed in ’can can’ whether visiting him at his work place or her grandson son in school, one that those who attended it believe it to be the best?.

Why then this attack which looks a bit politically motivated and coordinated with the government being dragged in too? Laying down the sari as a dress code does not mean that anyone far less the school authorities are ’unduly agonized’ by short frocks which never even came up in the discussion. Of course if any mother backed by a doting husband or father, likes to create a sensation, that school is not the place for such dramas although there is a place where such people can be safely admired if not cared for until they recover sanity.

The school has two sister schools, two are for Ladies (in Colombo and Kandy) and the other is in Jaffna(St John’s). No mother in Jaffna would try to go to that that school in anything but a sari. Thank God that this school ‘in the hills’ too has conservative guide lines for mothers’ dress as the people there fought the westerners to the last to maintain their way of life. It reposes the most admired traditions of the Kandyans which Sinhalese.Tamils, Muslims or Burghers who attended understood, understand and do not object to or criticise.

Is AM suffering from a delusion when he says ‘ours is an ‘unassuming society’ and compares it with little subtletyto one in which gun cultures prevail (USA) but does not name. Why what is the relevanceand the reverence for the USA?

Our ‘unassuming society’ has seen 30 year of war, nearly 200,000 killed in 3 insurgencies / terrorist conflicts from 1971.There are now 2,000 murders, rapes and KIA s in traffic accidents annually . Not exactly a dream word that should be fighting the wearing of the sari as its next battle, it should be ‘assumed’.

AM says an IGP’s off the cuff remark that miniskirts are responsible for rapes may not have impressed a ‘number of learned men’ but it must have impacted on the 80-90% of murderers and rapists that get away scot free after committing them. What this has to do with his old school dress code for mothers even if it it’s the government that is being not very subtly taken to task.

AM finally draws attention to bill boards promoting lurid films which he says should draw the attention of the government and ‘those concerned passionately with culture ethics and morality’ who wish to allegedly ban the ‘mini’ from the public gaze. What this has got to do with mothers wearing a sari to their son’s school? But take it from there. What do the boards show? He says it is ‘celluloid muck’...totally unhealthy almost obscene footage. Yes what do they show? Is it what he or another are advocating for mothers visiting his old school? So what side is AM on?

Pity the Principal of the school. Was this tirade really meant for him? After all he is also being criticised by another on the same subject for including the President’s son at the most famous rugby match in SL as Guest of Honour.(Not Chief Guest please note). In the 1950s the Governor General and in the 1970s the President of SL came to watch the match so what if the President’s son at his own volition comes to witness it in 2009 and is pampered by being made Guest of Honour? In 1954 (around the time AM refers to) the Australian High Commissioner was present too .

‘The shield’ was handed over to the winning captain (Lucky Vitharne) at Bogambara by the Principal. There was no chief guest then. These are post 1960’s innovations that have become tradition. There was also no problem about the school’s hold on the Asgiriya grounds then as there is now? Is it OK if we take some pre emptive action for reasons that may not be obvious? After all we appear to be from the same school and should be on the same side. Let’s keep national politics out of the school.

Let AM not say down with the sari and up with the ‘can can’ skirts in his old school.

- Asian Tribune -