Never has the fatigued asphalt of India’s highways seen such liberating exhibitions of color. Contingents of saree-clad women hit the roads in their sports shoes, their ebullient expressions belying personal histories of long-calcified dreams and atrophied fervor. Their strides, now ever so decisive, seem to send a resounding message: They are not just housewives interested in fitness. They are feminist compatriots united against enduring bastions of patriarchy.
The saree is a single, unstitched piece of fabric that is worn as a traditional garment by women in many South Asian countries. Lamentably, patriarchal notions of the saree “being a confinement” or representing “the Angel in the [House]” are abiding. Hence, to organizers and commentators of saree runs—recreational races in India in which women run in their sarees—the tradition is more than a fitness endeavor. The sight of women running in a saree is, in a way, an implicit display of resistance to stereotypes that circumscribe women to the household. At the very least, that was what organizers of saree-running clubs like The Saree Run had envisioned the spectacle would do—“break stereotypes with hundreds of inspiring women.”
While these events can be seen as a masterstroke of feminism in an otherwise stiflingly patriarchal society, it can also be argued that they remain a movement very much muted in comparison to other sartorial revolutions. Neither view is entirely accurate. Rather, saree runs fall in the middle of the presupposed binary: While they are an imposing spectacle, they remain but a budding attempt to dismantle gender stereotypes and institutional barriers. The movement could have leveraged its momentum to more explicitly exhort specific institutional changes.
A critical view may see the use of the traditional saree in this context as hardly revolutionary, rendering the run a mild contribution to India’s gender equality movement by promoting modesty. Today’s saree harks back to Victorian standards of modesty. Precolonial Indian women’s wear came in exceptionally diverse forms, such as the lehenga choli (a traditional outfit comprising a cropped blouse, a long skirt, and at times, a drape) and the Bengali saree (which is draped over the body to cover a woman’s chest without innerwear). The British deemed much of women’s wear then to be overly revealing and indecorous; upper-class women hence began incorporating elements of European garments, like the English blouse and petticoat, into the saree. Women also began pleating their sarees in the middle and draping the pallu—the loose end of a saree—over their chests. Thus, the imperialist roots of the still-modest modern saree symbolically undermine any emancipatory undertones of the saree runs.
Another critical view challenges the use of the saree in these runs as revolutionary at all, claiming they pale in comparison to other movements in feminist fashion. Alongside their fellow couturiers of the Roaring Twenties, Paul Poiret and Gabrielle Chanel famously jettisoned the corset in their designs, with Chanel later spearheading the social acceptance of trousers as everyday women’s wear. From Chanel’s trousers craze to other examples like the Suffragettes’ “white marches” and Japan’s burgeoning “genderless kei” trend, many epochal movements in feminist fashion share the following feature: the evolution of garments and sartorial codes themselves. Measured against this benchmark, India’s saree runs would appear relatively insipid.
While saree runs are unlike conventional movements in feminist fashion, which tend to discard garments rooted in oppressive or restrictive histories, their feminist message shines through the action of doing what is traditionally not meant for saree-clad women in a saree. Moreover, while the saree is a remnant of colonial influence, it has also been a symbol of resistance and empowerment. It has long been used to strengthen causes that esteemed women in India have tirelessly advanced. Sarojini Naidu, a staunch advocate of the Swadeshi self-sufficiency movement, accentuated her stance in political circles by showing up in khadi sarees, which are handspun and handwoven. India’s first Health Minister, Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, frequently presented herself in humble sarees that rejected the pretension of colonialism and monarchy, which befitted her role as a civil servant. Admittedly, the saree may not have been frequently used to amplify feminist causes specifically, but it has been irrefutably emblematic of Indian feminism, considering the centrality of (saree-clad) women in leading many historical and contemporary movements, including the saree run. Given this, does the empowerment of the saree run still appear muted?
Ultimately, the saree run has been neither entirely inconsequential nor astoundingly impactful; it would be injudicious to evaluate it on such a binary. While they have been optically and viscerally impressive, attempts by organizers to break down institutionalized patriarchy through saree runs remain woefully wanting.
What would be more precise is this: The saree run could have leveraged its momentum to more directly demand much-needed institutional reforms rather than remain a spectacle with regrettably vague exhortations for gender equality. Referencing the earlier call to “break stereotypes with hundreds of inspiring women,” saree-run pages on social media platforms abound with such indistinct calls to action. Considering how saree runs have persisted for nearly a decade, gathering thousands of participants in most instances, these cookie-cutter phrases of advocacy only betray the latency of the change making potential that saree runs have accrued over time.
Given their voiced goals of dismantling gender stereotypes, saree run groups could have fought for several institutional changes. Today, they still can. In addition to the criminalization of marital rape, formal grievance redress processes for sexual harassment victims and less judicial bureaucracy would be sensible remedies in the face of India’s protracted rape epidemic. There is also the deeper issue of a climate of impunity that political heavyweights live under, which may spur sexual misconduct and assault within professional spheres. For instance, the wrestling community in India was beyond stunned when a Delhi court struck off a sexual harassment case filed against former Wrestling Federation of India chief Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, whom prolific national wrestlers desperately sought to have the courts indict for two years. Further, given the troubling issue of still-pending criminal charges under his belt, India’s legal and judicial apparatus evidently needs fixing. There are plentiful injustices that saree runs could have been explicit about opposing.
Tempting as it may be to view the saree run as a feminist watershed in India—or, in the case of the critics, the dull cousin of other sartorial campaigns—a balanced judgment ought to be made: No one can deny the traction that saree runs have gained over the last decade, but the movement could have achieved more. Regardless, the backdrop of gender inequality in India has not vanished since. What better time is there to pick up the pace than now?