CULTURE-BANGLADESH: Planned Beauty Contest Revives Fundamentalism

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Tabibul Islam

Dhaka, May 13 1998 (IPS) - Islamic fundamentalists have not only got a planned beauty contest postponed but also used it as an opportunity to show off their muscle.

The ‘Miss Bangladesh,” contest would have taken place two weeks ago except that Islamic and social organisations decided to turn it into an issue and mobiise people to demonstrate on the streets against it.

By whipping up religious sentiment, the fundamentalists used the issue to good effect to score political points against the government of prime minister, Sheikh Hasina which believes in ‘secularism,’ and peace among different religious groups.

But with mounting street agitatations, spearheaded by the Jamaat-e-Islami, against the beauty contest, the government had little choice but to back down and order postponement of the contest.

It did not help that the contest, organised by Model Watch, an advertising firm and Lever Brothers, was in aid of mentally retarded and physically handicapped people and also promised to promote local culture and tradition.

The threats were unambiguous. Political parties led by the Jamaat warned that the site of the pageant would be burnt to ashes unless the events dubbed “anti-islamic and anti-humanity” was called off.

Pro-Islamic groups wanting to make Bangladesh an Islamic republic formed an alliance called Islamic Action Council, specifically to oppose and resist the Miss Bangladesh contest,

The Council held a rallly in Dhaka city on April 21 and organised country-wide demonstrations against the beauty contest on april 25. It also held a grand rally in the city on April 27.

Addressing the rally, Maulana Delwar Hossain Saidee, memeber of parliament and leader of the Jamaat, said the beauty show was nothing, but vulgarism and a ploy to earn money by showing off the “biological structure” of women.

Terming the contest as “repugnant to Islam and humanity,” he said it would never be allowed in Bangladesh, the second largest Muslim country in the world.

“Muslims of Dhaka city will not stay in their houses if the organisers continue their efforts to hold the beauty show,” Maulana Saidee warned.

Maulana Zainul Abedin, chairman, Islamic Action Council, said the pageant was a part of a “Jewish conspiracy.” to distort and destroy Islamic culture and tradition in a very subtle way.

According to the maulana (teacher) youths were the precious wealth of the country and squandering it in the name of beauty contests was a sure way to lead them astray.

Another religious leader, Maulana Azizul Huq, who leads the Bangladesh Khelafat Majish said “the arrangment to show the half naked bodies of young women was an insult to the half-fed people of this poverty-stricken country.”

Sensing trouble, policy makers quickly declared themselves against the holding of the pageant and ordered the special branch of the police to ask the organisers to postpone the contest.

Interestingly enough, there were no violent protests against the contest when the preliminary rounds were held at the six divisional headquarters on different dates between February and March of this year.

Eighteen beauties, 3 from each division, qualified at the divisional level contest to vie for the title of “Rupasi Bangladesh” at a posh Dhaka hotel.

Mild opposition at that time was mainly confined to press statements by some Muslim clerics although some others issued fatwas (religious edicts) against the show.

But one week before the show, it dawned on the fundamentalist groups that they had a good weapon to humiliate the present government with. The Jamaat-i-Islami took the lead from there and launched agitational programmes against the beauty contest.

The Jamaat, which suffered a crushing defeat in the general election of 1996, is yet to recover from the shock. Only three candidates of its candidates were elected to parliament in that election against the 18 in the 1991 polls.

In their tirade against the beauty contest, Jamaat leaders in different parts of the country targetted the present Awami League government. “Islam is in danger …… Islam will not be safe so long as the Awami League government is in power,” Jamaat leaders

said in their speeches.

If women’s rights activists also opposed the pageant they did so from an academic point-of-view. But the fundamentalists nevertheless capitalised on it in their war against the government.

Farida Akhter, an women’s rights activist said beauty pageants turned women into commercial goods. “Trading over women’s bodies in the name of beauty contests makes them forget their entity as human beings.”

“Pageants only help to promote consumerist culture which seeks thrives on the exhibition of women’s bodies – we cannot support it,” Akhter said.

Sarker Amin, a columnist, said he was personally against any sort of beauty contest but he criticised the fundamentalists for triggering of frenzy and hysteria across the country in the name of opposing the beauty contest.

“These people are now raising the bogey of Islam, but during the liberation war of 1971, the Jamaat and other Islamic parties had collaborated with the Ppakistani army in raping thousands of women,” he recalled.

Subarna Mostafa, a television superstar said at a time when “obscene” programmes were being aired over satellite-TV and pornographic material was freely available there was not meaning in the government stopping the beauty contest.

Tasmima Hossain, editor of the , feminine weekly magazine ‘Ononna, ‘ said postponing the beauty contest showed the government’s submission to the threat of fundamentalists.

It exposed the weakness of the present Awami League government which came to power through a popular mandate, she added.

Dismissing the charge of vulgarism, Reza-ul-Islam who own Model Watch said the contest was arranged with the purpose of promoting Bangladeshi textiles and the traditinal jamdani saree and presenting new faces to the country.

The contestants, in any case, were asked to wear sarees rather than western-style costumes at the pageant at the divisional level. In fact, entrants who wore skirts and shorts were rejected by the board of judges at the district level.

Participants who made it to the top three positions at the divisional level contest had to give undertakings that 25 percent of their incomes earned from modelling and acting would go to the rehabilitation of handicapped people.