Bra & Panty: The “Cuss Words” Offending Delhi Govt’s Cultural Wing

Students from Kamala Nehru College’s theatre society were disqualified for these “cuss words” in a play about women

Imagine asking girls to not talk about something as simple as bras and panties while talking to their friends.

That’s exactly how the Mahavidylaya Theatre Festival of Sahitya Kala Academy wanted actors from Kamala Nehru College’s theatre group to talk when presenting a production about the lives of six college girls.

In a play replete with actual expletives, as is the way young people often talk, the judges took offence to the words “bra” and “panty”, reportedly disqualifying the college students’ play.

‘Lakshya’, the theatre group of Kamala Nehru, was performing their play Shahira Ke Naam on Friday at Sahitya Kala Parishad. The society’s faculty convener Monami Basu wrote a public post that the play was disqualified for “not using cuss words, but inappropriate language”.

She said that they judges couldn’t even bring themselves to say the simple words which their sensibilities found so abhorrent.

So traumatised were the organisers by the words that they choked on them and could not bring themselves to spell out those “appalling” “disgusting” words while telling us the reason for disqualification. When the students asked them, they ran away from them.

She further pointed out the hypocrisy of a society which readily strips down a woman to her undergarments yet cannot say those words or hear them in conversation.

Seriously disgusting. We just have to pretend disgusting things like consensual sex, women’s undergarments, menstruation, sexual desire don’t exist. 

The society’s president Radhika Dhawan also criticised the event in a post saying something as trivial as women’s undergarments had become obscene for an audience.

Being a girls college, it’s easy to feel how sexist the world is; but difficult to accept that learned theatre professionals consider jokes on women’s undergarments more vulgar than men passing lewd comments about women’s physique and character.

It’s a society which will “use sexually violent language yet cannot tolerate a woman talking about her undergarments”.

We reject this kind of perversion which prevents youth from healthy discussions on sex, desire and yes, even BRA PANTY which are pieces of clothing. If it titillates you, it is your problem. We reject your pretentious hypocritical propriety, we reject your taboo-isation of the most normal day-to-day things like periods, sexual desire, consensual sex and BRA PANTY.

Monami Basu

More power to the women speaking up against the ridiculous and hypocritical censorship imposed on them and their bodies.