| Jairam Ramesh, India’s environment minister was wildly cheered at a graduation ceremony at the Indian Institute of Forest Management in Bhopal, when he discarded his academic gown and cap, denouncing them as “medieval” and “barbaric” colonial relics. Instead he addressed the graduates in the “more Indian” kurta pyjama.
“The practice of wearing a traditional colored gown during a convocation ceremony at any university is a barbaric colonial practice. Why can’t we wear simple dress instead of these gowns,” Ramesh said. “Why cannot we have convocation in simple dress instead of coming dressed up as medieval vicars and popes,” Ramesh said |
