When Muskan Sharma, 23, stood up — in her black dress, her feet squeezed into pencil-heeled shoes — there was no sign of discomfort. Instead, her shoulders pulled back, she looked straight at the man she was talking to and said, “Sir, you cannot break someone’s passion. What culture are you talking about?”

That day, October 3, Raghvendra Bhatnagar, president of the Rashtriya Hindu Shakti Sangathan, had barged into a room in Rishikesh where Muskan and other women were rehearsing for the Miss Rishikesh pageant, and hectored them about wearing “clothes that are against the sanskriti (culture) of Uttarakhand” . In a video that has since gone viral, Bhatnagar is heard saying that he would not allow the event to take place and asks the participants to “do it at their homes”.

But it’s the p

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