Col Indrajit Gupta 🇮🇳

What ridiculous antics the self-appointed guardians of religion get up to sometimes! Kareena Kapoor has worn an emerald pendant engraved with Ayat al-Kursi from the Quran. This piece of jewellery from the royal family of Bhopal came to her through Saif Ali Khan’s family. Some Muslim leader has sent her a legal notice over photographs of her wearing it. The photographs must be deleted, and Kareena must apologise publicly—or face further legal action. Why? What catastrophe occurs if someone wears a pendant engraved with a Quranic verse? A pendant is meant to be worn around the neck. Naturally, it will hang near the chest. Or is the objection that Kareena’s cleavage is visible? Do they think Allah did not create cleavage? That Satan did? The entire body is Allah’s creation, but when it came to a woman’s breasts, Satan slipped in to do a little handiwork? How amusing! What a bizarre notion of sanctity! Letters engraved on an emerald deserve respect, but a woman of flesh and blood does not. To defend the honour of those letters, a woman can be harassed and pressured into apologising. If sanctity is destroyed merely by coming close to a woman’s body, then hatred of women has been built into that very notion of sanctity. If you consider a verse sacred, by all means do. But why impose the burden of your belief on someone else? Another woman must dress, wear jewellery and pose for photographs according to your beliefs—what an absurd demand! Surely your hurt feelings do not give you a licence to take away someone else’s freedom. People are fed up with these merchants of wounded feelings. Century after century passes, yet they never stop showing the world that they do not know the first thing about tolerance! They keep watch over everything, from the pendant around a woman’s neck to her cleavage. This policing of women’s bodies in the name of religion, this intimidation, this bullying to extract apologies must stop. I see no reason for Kareena to apologise. The apologies should come from those who are going out of their way to turn a woman’s harmless choice of clothes and jewellery into a crime.