Himalayan News Service

Kolkata, July 21:

Protests over a woman teacher’s choice of salwar kameez in a West Bengal school has led a minister to declare there is no restriction on the dress. The announcement was made by West Bengal Secondary Education Minister Kanti Biswas yesterday. Some male teachers at the Prasadpur Bhagyadhar Bidyaniketan school at Sonarpur on Kolkata’s outskirts staged a protest against a recently-appointed fellow teacher, Sudeshna Chatterjee, for wearing the salwar kameez to work. They unleashed a campaign against Chatterjee and asked her to come to school in a sari and with traditional bangles of conch and vermilion on the parting of hair to signify her married status. The salwar kameez, originally a north Indian dress, has made inroads in West Bengal, where the sari is the traditional attire.

Other women teachers at the school and headmaster Abdur Rafiq have come out in her support. Sudeshna said: “Men have over the times taken to wearing trousers and shirts instead of the traditional dhoti and kurta. Why then is a woman targeted for wearing an attire which is Indian and covers the body more than a sari?” In January, a woman teacher in a school in north Kolkata was reprimanded for putting lipstick. Last year, there was a furore in a district school after a teacher wore salwar kameez. In April, men teachers protested against a West Bengal Board of Secondary Education (WBSE) dress code barring teachers of either sex from wearing clothes considered too ostentatious.