Saree Power: celebration after the passage of the bill reserving 33% of the seats in legislature

The upper house of India’s Parliament passed a bill Tuesday that would amend the Constitution to reserve one-third of the seats in India’s national and state legislatures for women.

The feminist in me approves of this bill and the constitutional amendment. I am actually saddened that one needs a constitutional amendment for this. There are 51% women, if all was well, there would be 51% lawmakers in Delhi and all other state capitols – 33% is very reasonable.

Rajneeti Poster with Katrina as Indira – Saree Politics and Beyond

I greatly admired Indira Gandhi. Not that I am condoning the practice, but many people I know, to this day, long for the general civil environment that “Emergency” created. There was fear, but there was also a sense of fair dealing.

The petty corruption at all level was practically wiped out – and I can see how one can romanticize that.

Anyway, I am really looking forward to the images from Rajneeti (god knows I have no patience to watch a hindi movie, unless I have a remote in my hand).

Party Crashers

A saree will get you in anywhere it seems. A recent state dinner at the White House in honor of PM Monmohan Singh and his wife received a pair of unexpected guests. Washington D.C. socialites Tareq and Michaele Salahi thought it would be fun to try and sneak into the state dinner and it worked. Though they had no invitation and weren’t on any guest lists, they managed to make their way through security. Maybe it her chic lahenga saree and his snazzy tux that made security think they were guests? They weren’t even discovered as party crashers until they bragged about getting in to the party online.

Image timesofindia.com

Sonia Gandhi: An Inspiration

As a foreigner living in Kolkata, I sometimes find it hard to get by. Though I’m comfortable with the material things I have here like my apartment, food, clothing, and so on, I am often hit by a sense of outsiderness. I doubt that is a word but the meaning is clear. A foreigner can never become Indian, so to say. My future lies in this country and with these people though, and as such, I feel a deep desire to “fit in”. I wear Indian clothing everyday (salwar kameez or sarees for special occasions), I eat with my hand as is the Indian way, and I’ve been studying Bengali for over a year so I can communicate with a certain level of ease. Regardless of these attempts to integrate into Indian society, I still get looks from passersby and strangers coming up to me to say “welcome to India”. What a stressful and discouraging process this is.

When I doubt my ability to one day be accepted as part of this society I look for role models who I can relate to on some level. Sonia Gandhi, India’s Italian-born Congress Party President, is one woman whose history and influence has truly inspired me. Knowing that she has come so far in a society that is not her own gives me hope. Now, as I am told, Indian’s think of her as one of their own, not as an outsider. Perhaps there is hope for me yet!

I admire her character as well as her style. She is one very powerful woman yet shows no signs of placing her importance on a pedestal. Her wardrobe too shows her conservative and humble nature. Sonia almost always makes public appearances in a saree; simple, cotton, nothing glamorous, the kind of saree women wear daily on the streets in India. Granted, she is a widow and in India widow’s tend to wear plainer sarees, but I think her choice of saree is also a social statement.

After all, who says a saree has to be extravagant to be beautiful? In my opinion, it is the way a woman wears the saree and the history behind it that makes it beautiful. I’d like to do more posts on the average Indian woman’s saree style and women’s everyday fashion to share with you what India is like in my eyes, the eyes of an American living in Kolkata. …I just need to find some time to hit the streets with my camera.

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Image1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gandhisonia05052007.jpg

First Lady Gursharan Kaur at the white house in Saree : Part I

First Lady Gursharan Kaur of India, First Lady Michelle Obama, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India, and President Obama arrived for the state dinner.

She was wearing the same/similar saree when they met Bush

So clearly there is some significance there that I don’t understand.

One of the sarees that I remember making a note of was the once she wore at the SAARC meeting.

I have seen her a lots of different sarees, unlike the color of Manmohan Singh’s turban, her sarees display a lot more variety.

Ruby Dhalla : One of the 15 Hottest Women in Politics

I am just quoting Manolith

Ruby (above, HOT) not only nabbed a seat in the Canadian Parliament as one of the first two Sikh women ever to do so, but she’s a Chiropractor by trade. That means wicked nice massages available for the lucky guy that goes home with the little miss. If that’s not enough for you, the icing on the cake is that she spent some time in India as an actress in Bollywood movies.

She looks great in a saree.

Ruby Dhalla (born February 18, 1974) is a Canadian politician. She has represented the riding of Brampton—Springdale in the Canadian House of Commons since 2004 as a member of the Liberal Party. Dhalla and British Columbia Conservative MP Nina Grewal are the first Sikh women to serve in the Canadian House of Commons.

A perfect picture for the Saree Politics category!

No post for a week, did you miss us? Gorgeous saree pics

I know you did! I have gotten more emails than the highest number a chicken can count. Oh.. chicken can’t count? darn… Anyway, you get the idea!

Liza was busy in Kazakhstan with with her fashion show, Rupa is always writing a book and lets just say I was busy with a client!

I wanted to share some gorgeous saree pictures from the election. Some of them are breathtaking.

And the last one

They don’t call it purple revolution for nothing.

I am generally pleased with the election results, for the sake of stability if nothing else.

We’ll get back to the saree design issues pretty soon.

Priyanka dons Indira’s sari for campaigning

Rae Bareli It’s not just Priyanka Gandhi’s nose, but also the wardrobe she inherited from Indira Gandhi which brings back to the people memories of her grandmother as she campaigns in this traditional seat of the Nehru-Gandhi family.

“This is Indiraji’s sari. She was shorter than me. I have to do some modification in wearing it as I am taller than her,” 36-year-old Priyanka, campaigning for her mother Sonia, said on Tuesday with a giggle when reporters pointed out that she resembled the former prime minister and even dressed like her.

On her wedding in 1996, Priyanka was dressed in the family heirloom- a pink sari worn by her mother Sonia and grandmother Indira, who was assassinated 25 years ago, at their wedding.

Asked what she would do after April 30 when polling concludes in Rae Bareli, the mother of two said, “I will take care of my children and will get their home work done”.

Priyanka has so far said that she will only campaign in Amethi and Rae Bareli where her brother Rahul and mother Sonia Gandhi are contesting respectively.

Asked whether her joining Rahul at Barabanki public meeting on Monday was any indication of her plans to join full fledged politics, Priyanka said there was no “political thinking” behind it.

“I had not seen my brother for more than 10 day. So when I went to meet him at the airport he asked me to accompany him. There was no political thinking behind it. I did not even deliver any speech there,” Priyanka said.

Source Express India