No shorts, only white shirts and grey pants: Bar Council 'recommends' dress codes for law schools

The incident involving Professor Nagaraj of the National Law School of India University professor in Bengaluru, who allegedly slut-shamed a girl in Bengaluru for showing up to class in shorts took social media by storm. Opinions were tweeted, anger spilt on Facebook and most leading dailies anchored their front-pages with this story. The latest, now, is The Bar Council of India’s (BCI) recommendation to all law colleges and universities to devise dress codes. Why? Well, it turns out that the Council has discovered a “gradually detracting standard of dresses by the students of law all over the country.” According to Legally India, a website on law-related matters, the BCI reissued a resolution originally taken in October 2015 to all law colleges in India  on 7 April 2016, recommending that colleges follow a dress code of white shits with black/white/gray trousers and that current standards of dressing do not give the “impression of proper dress code discipline specially for professional education.” While the merits and demerits of a dress code in educational institutes can be debated, one must not make light of Professor Nagaraj’s unkind and blatantly demeaning comments said to have been made against the student who attended class in shorts — “You can come to class without a dress also. That is how your character is, I’m going to ignore you.” The BCI’s meeting in October took place at the behest of Madhya Pradesh Bar Council chairman, Rajesh Pandey’s request to prescribe dress codes in all law colleges, according to the website Legally India.