I loved working with the Deepali Dewan on today’s feature story about how women are making ripped jeans a protest symbol in India. As a kid during a stint in 70s India, I remember desperately wanting a pair of jeans — and having a hard time getting them. I also recall going to India as a journalist in the 90s and being challenged by strangers on my western clothing choices. So when I saw a flood of images of Indian women in ripped jeans on Instagram and Twitter this weekend in response to an Indian politician’s sexist comments about a woman who dared show her knees, I knew I wanted to investigate.

No one better to do that for The Conversation Canada than Deepali Dewan. Dewan is a professor of Art History at the University of Toronto. She is also a Royal Ontario Museum curator in South Asian Art & Culture. In today’s article, she explains some of the meanings and messages behind the clothing we wear — and traces the protest of fashion all the way to Gandhi’s era. The symbol of ripped jeans today offers a collective dissent to a far-right leaning government that not only wants to control women’s bodies but has also been called out for the erosion of general civil rights in India today. The ripped jeans movement offers a glimmer of hope, Dewan says, that democracy in India prevails.

Also today:

All the best.

Vinita Srivastava

Producer | Director of Innovation | Senior Editor, Culture + Society
After an Indian politician recently tried to shame a woman for wearing ripped jeans, women’s responses were swift and sharp. (Twitter/@prag65043538, @sherryshroff, @ruchikokcha)

How women in India reclaimed the protest power of ripped jeans

Deepali Dewan, University of Toronto

After an Indian politician disparaged a woman for her lack of morals because she was wearing ripped jeans, an online protest erupted, reviving the original protest-culture of the ripped jean.
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