Author: Rashmee Z Ahmed
Publication: The Times of India
Date: June 9, 2004
They're not quite at the bra-burning
stage just yet, but Britain's half-a-million strong Hindu community has
begun a determined protest against the launch of designer swimwear and
lingerie emblazoned with Hindu deities at strategic places.
The bikinis, with an image of what
looks like Lord Ram as the main motif, have been designed by Roberto Cavalli
and this sort of offensive material really crosses the line, said an anguished
Bimal Krisna Das of the UK's umbrella body for Hindu temples.
Das's National Council of Hindu
Temples officially claims to speak for more than half of Britain's 140
temples.
The campaign comes just months after
Britain's increasingly-vocal Hindus protested against a Merchant-Ivory
film's plans to cast "sex icon" rock star Tina Turner in the role of Kali.
The new protest, somewhat blasphemously
dubbed by some commentators as the "holy bikinis row", includes angry letters
to Cavalli's sprawling, sensuously-designed headquarters in Milan and the
posh London stores stocking his wares.
Cavalli is routinely described by
swish stores throughout Western capitals as the "self-proclaimed king of
Italian excess". He is just the latest of a long line of European and American
commercial enterprises to fall foul of Hindu sentiment.
Till now, toilet seat covers, boxes
of tissues, shoes, sandals and finger puppets have all been tracked down
as bearing "offensive" images, variously of Lord Krishna, Ram, Saraswati
and so on.
Now, Cavalli may have pushed Hindu
sentiment over the edge. In a new warning note of exasperation about the
risk of repeated and blase re-offending, Das declared Western companies
no longer had the right to offer a lame apology and the excuse that they
don't know anything about Indian culture and Hinduism.
"The world is quite small these
days," he says.
Cavalli's PR spokeswoman in London
told this paper "it's nothing to do with us". His Milan headquarters was
unable to find anyone to comment.
Das, a veteran of 15 years of protest
against the alleged offensive portrayal of Hinduism in the West, denies
the overseas Hindu is protesting too much about too little.
"Hindus are naturally tolerant,
but there has to be a limit if the line is crossed," he says.
"These deities are deemed holy and
worshipped by millions of Hindus all across the globe and these garments
in question are not just any garments but underwear and bikinis to be worn
by women flaunting their half disrobed bodies," fumes the official protest
letter to Mohammed al-Fayed, chairman of upmarket Harrods.
The protest has so far drawn no
more than a stunned silence from the Cavalli empire, which is thought to
be heavily dependent on plundering new ideas and cultures to tempt customers.
The company does not hide its pride
in the upward spike of its 2001 turnover, which it puts at "147,000,000
euros, 60 per cent from exports".
Cavalli's 2003 collection "journeyed
to the lands of the Rising Sun". Fashion analysts said that this year he
may have wanted to sample India. But he might just wish he looked elsewhere.
Das said the campaign had drawn
strong support from the VHP (UK) and the president of the main Sanatan
temple in the Indian-dominant English Midlands town of Leicester.
