Bikini round of Mizoram pageant draws flak

THE MHIP SAID EXPOSURE OF WOMEN’S BODY WAS ‘DEMEANING TO WOMENFOLK AND UNCHRISTIAN’

GUWAHATI: Three years after the organisers of Miss World beauty pageant did away with the bikini or swimsuit round, it has returned to raise the hackles of the apex women’s organisation in Christian-majority Mizoram.

The bikini round of Miss Mizoram 2017 beauty contest, whose grand finale is scheduled on March 10, was held on February 18. The televised show helped the organisers — Zonet Cable TV — improve viewership, but the Mizoram Hmeichhe Insuihkhawm Pawl (MHIP), a women’s body, said it was against the tenets of Christianity.

In a statement last week, MHIP said exposure of women’s body in the bikini round of the beauty contest was “demeaning to womenfolk, un-Christian and against our culture”.

Insisting they were not against the beauty pageant, MHIP’s general secretary Saipuii said: “Can a beauty pageant not be organised with modest dresses?”

Te-a Boitlung, one of the organisers, said the contestants and most viewers had no issues with the bikini round. “People have the right to express their opinions and have thus taken to social media,” he said.

The Mizoram Journalists’ Association (MJA) has the rights of Miss Mizoram contest that was first held in 1983.

The pageant has been irregular, and the last one was held in 2014 after a gap of nine years.

The bikini round had been the most popular segment of the pageant, but the publicity this time has been the widest because of a cable TV entity hosting it.