A TOP INDIAN fashion designer opened his mouth at a conference at Harvard university last week – and put his foot right in it. Now he’s trying to backtrack and limit the damage his comments have caused.
Referring to Indian women, Sabyasachi Mukherjee told the India Conference that if “you do not know how to wear a sari, I would say shame on you. It’s a part of your culture, you need to buck up and stand for it.” Oops. That set social media alight.
Women have been gaining confidence across the subcontinent in recent years, as some of the worst examples of sexual harassment and abuse have provoked mass campaigns for men to stop regarding women as objects and give us respect.
That confidence has grown even further in the last couple of months, with revelations of widespread sexual abuse across the film industry. No wonder women in India thought Mukherjee’s comments were not welcome.
Comments on Twitter condemned him for expecting women to wear saris, but not suggesting that men needed to wear the dhoti. “Why was it always women who have to keep culture alive?” asked one woman. Others complained that men telling women what to wear exemplified a degree of patriarchy which was no longer welcome – and one wondered why men were taking so long to evolve.
Mukherjee desperately tried to backtrack, posting an open letter on Instagram expressing regret and admitting that he should not have used the word “shame”. He said he had not intended to be “misogynistic, patriarchal and non-inclusive”.
It remains to be seen whether his high profile Bollywood clients will forgive him.
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