Mandira Bedi's Saree

Indian cricket hardly stays out of controversy. The latest one involves Mandira Bedi. On the final, in the pre-match discussion show, co-anchor Mandira Bedi wore a Saree that sported national flags of all 16 participating nations and the Indian flag, which was the largest one, was placed below her knee- close to her feet.

Indian people didn’t like it and where the web was immediately flooded with objections (thanks to web2.0 interactivity), Sony Max, the channel also started getting calls. In the lunch time, when the show resumed, Mandira had changed her Saree and immediately apologized to the audience. She said that she didn’t mean to hurt anyone.

Indian law does not allow anyone to display the national flag of India on one’s clothes. This is a serious offence and where I can understand that Mandira wasn’t aware of the law, I am surprised that Puneet Nanda, the designer of the Saree wasn’t aware of the law either. And also I am surprised that Sony’s legal department allowed that to happen.

Mandira’s apology didn’t really calm people down. Two complaints have been registered against her and a court in Kozhikode will hear the case on 10th of may. Mandira and the designer of the Saree face upto three years of imprisonment for showing disrespect to the national flag. But I think they will get much milder punishments as the disrespect was not intentional.

Mandira Bedi has been quite a controversial character ever since Sony appointed her as a co-anchor for the match discussion shows. Her knowledge of cricket was as good as nothing and her comments many times put off the audience. Now that she has built some knowledge of the game over a long period of time, she still continues to be in controversy for something or other. Lets see where this onegoes.