12 October, 2025
Web desk
Recently, in Rishikesh, members of the Rashtriya Hindu Shakti Sangathan (led by Raghvendra Bhatnagar) attempted to prevent young women from doing a ramp walk in Western clothing, claiming it was “against the culture of Uttarakhand” and “contrary to Sanatan Dharma.”
While such incidents may currently be few, they are becoming more vocal and, worryingly, are gaining ideological legitimacy.
Those defending these disruptions argue that Western dress is immodest or inappropriate for a religious pilgrimage town. But this conflation of a style of dress with moral virtue is deeply flawed.
First, it misreads tradition as static and monolithic. In fact, Indian and Hindu traditions have always been plural, evolving, and permeable. Religions do not nor should they freeze in time. Second, there is nothing in authentic Sanatan Dharma or Hindu philosophy that gives men the right to dictate what women should wear or how they should behave in public.
When culture, tradition, or religion become tools for moral policing, they stop being sources of meaning and become weapons of control. In a constitutional democracy, individual rights freedom of expression, personal liberty, dignity must take precedence, unless there is a clear legal violation.
What the women in Rishikesh did was more than stand their ground against a protest they reasserted that custom should never be a straightjacket, that tradition must mirror diversity rather than suppress it.
