Wardrobe Wardens!

Me while running. Always shorts and singlet. 

Moral policing. When you hear the phrase, you invariably think of conservative old men dictating what women and girls can wear, how they should behave, and who they are allowed to be. You think of couples in public parks being subjected to needless intimidation and harassment by lumpen elements.

But imagine a situation where a man is the target. Difficult to picture? Of course. As a nation, we barely blink when men relieve themselves in full public view across the country. We look away when they treat women with disrespect, or turn outright abusive. Morals, it seems, are designed by men - strictly for others.

Yet, it happened. To me.

I was back in my hometown for a couple of days to sort out some work related to my father’s inherited land (a perennial source of various woes over the years). I have recently gotten back into a fitness routine, mostly hitting the gym a few times a week because the battle with the bulge has gotten entirely too real. Not wanting to break my rhythm, I packed my sports gear and set out for a long walk.

One of the most popular - and serene - spots for a walk or run in town is the local railway station. Because trains are an anomaly here (there is just one daily train to Bengaluru), the platforms and the paths around serve as a public place for the health-conscious. It is also a favored haunt for elders to sit and pontificate about a world gone by.

Dressed in my usual shorts and a singlet, I set off. As I was pacing along the platform, someone called out loudly. Assuming it wasn’t meant for me, I kept moving. But the voice persisted, cutting through the quiet, forcing me to turn around.

“I am calling you only. Come here!”

It was a policeman. I wondered what could have possibly drawn his interest. “My beard?”, I mused.

Not wanting to risk escalating the situation by ignoring him, I walked over. He gestured for me to follow him inside the station. I complied. Inside, an inspector sat at his desk, flanked by a couple of other officers standing around.

Before I could even ask what the issue was, the inspector barked in a booming voice, “What kind of clothes are you wearing? You should wear a t-shirt and come!”

I felt a surge of irritation, but I didn’t want to descend into a slanging match. I calmly told him I was there to exercise and was wearing appropriate gear for it.

“This is a public place. You can’t come dressed like this.”

“What’s so inappropriate about my clothes?”

“What you’re wearing is not acceptable.”

“Why? This is what a runner wears.”

“This isn’t a t-shirt!”

Losing my patience at the sheer absurdity of the exchange, I snapped, “Says who?”

“I say so.”

“You can say anything. It doesn’t matter.”

“You shall wear decent clothes from next time!”

“These *are* decent clothes. If you find them indecent, go read up on running gear and stop harassing me.”

With that, I turned on my heel, walked out of the station, and continued my pace. Part of me half-expected them to give chase, but thankfully, no further scene materialised.

The outfit that raised the hackles!

Still, as I kept walking, the incident refused to leave my mind. I have been running and walking at this very station for over a decade. I have always worn shorts and singlets because sleeves annoy me when I sweat; they chafe against my arms. Never once had I faced an issue. At marathons, it is entirely commonplace for runners to shed their shirts entirely to beat the heat (or, occasionally, to show off their hard work). Yet here, in my own hometown, the experience rankled and rattled me.

If a minor, fleeting encounter like this could sting so deeply and occupy my thoughts for days, it offers a sobering window into a much darker reality. I am a man, protected by a lifetime of systemic privilege, and yet a brief brush with arbitrary authority left me feeling exposed and violated. It forces a harrowing realization: what I experienced as a rare, jarring anomaly is the daily, suffocating reality for women and girls across this country.

For them, moral policing isn’t an isolated incident at a quiet railway station; it is the  pressure of everyday life. It is the constant, predatory surveillance of their attire, their laughter, their ambitions, and their autonomy, carried out under the guise of "protecting their honor."

What makes this machinery so terrifyingly effective is that its custodians aren't just men in uniform or radical groups in the streets. The tragedy of patriarchy is its ability to colonize the minds of the very people it oppresses. It recruits mothers, grandmothers, and sisters to enforce its code, because within a broken system, submission is often the only way to survive. 

When power has no real crimes to fight, it invents them. It targets a peeking bra strap, sleeveless top, a couple holding hands, or a woman walking alone at night, because controlling bodies is far easier than fixing broken systems. 

Consider the hypocrisy: a man must bare his chest to enter a temple, yet a woman is shamed if she isn't covered. This obsession with insisting women dress "decently" isn't confined to temples either; it extends to mosques, churches and all religious places. Through it all, men mostly get away. The rules designed to enforce decorum rarely apply to the gender that created them. Men are free to treat the public square as their personal wasteland—urinating in the open, yelling obscenities, or harassing women on the streets. Not all men participate, of course. But when public nuisance happens, it almost always wears a male face.

Walking away from that station, I realized that the fight against moral policing isn't just about the freedom to wear what we want. It is a battle against a deeply entrenched mindset that fears individual freedom above all else. It demands that we all remain small, quiet, and neatly tucked into boxes of someone else's making. And not ask questions.