Ms Beautiful banned in Bangladesh
Rajkumar Subramaniam
Sunday, April 26, 1998 Published at 13:31 GMT 14:31 UK
Despatches
Frances Harrison
Dhaka
The government of Bangladesh has instructed the
organisers of a beauty contest to cancel the event
because of opposition from Islamic groups. But the
organisers say the event was designed to promote
Bangladeshi culture and would have been the most
decent of beauty contests ever held in the country.
Our Dhaka correspondent, Frances Harrison
reports;
The organisers of the beauty contest that was to take
place this week say finalists were going to be fully
clothed wearing eight varieties of Bangladeshi saris on
stage. The idea was to promote the best of the local
textile industry alongside the most beautiful girls from
each district of the country.
But several religious parties as well as the cultural wing
of the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party
have held protests against the beauty contest which
they condemn as un-Islamic and exploitative of women.
Organisers say Islamic parties unfairly assumed a
beauty contest must involve girls running around in short
skirts and bathing costumes.
Twelve hundred girls applied to be Miss Beautiful
Bangladesh but it looks as if there won't be a winner
now.
Islamic organisations say beauty contests are obscene
in a country as poor as Bangladesh where most people
don't have enough to eat. A spokesman for the
fundamentalist party, Jamat-e-Islami, said the event
catered to the perverted sexual attitudes of men and only
a husband should be allowed to enjoy his wife's beauty.
There has been little opposition from mainstream women
activists who are more concerned with issues like rape
and sexual abuse. This is not the first beauty contest to
be held in Bangladesh which took part in the Miss World
competition.
But this time the government seems to have given in to
opposition demands for fear of violence.
"thamizh nAddil ayalavarukku enna vElai, thAvum pulikku nAy entha mUlai"
-ParathithAsan
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"tharAsai muthalil edai pOdu" ezhaththu kavi kasi Ananthan
"The great thing is to get the true picture, whatever it is".
- Winston Churchill (during WW2)
A coward dies hundred times, thamizhan once.
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