British Navy for first time allows female personnel to wear saris at mess dinners | India News

LONDON: The Royal Navy has announced its personnel will now be allowed to wear cultural dress such as saris as part of their formal dress code to make its uniform policy more inclusive.
Personnel are now permitted to wear saris, salwar kameez, lehengas and other cultural dress, beneath their mess jackets at formal mess dinners following lobbying by the UK service’s race diversity network. They will also have to wear a black bow tie and white shirt on top of the sari to maintain existing standards of identifiable naval uniform above the waist. This is how it is with the wearing of kilts and tartan dresses.
The new cultural mess dress policy applies to anyone in the Royal Navy (RN) entitled to wear mess kits and is only applicable at formal mess dinners.
An RN spokesperson told TOI: “Wearing cultural mess dress is an established tradition within the Royal Navy and personnel of Scottish, Irish, Welsh, Cornish and Manx (relating to Isle of Man) heritage have been permitted to wear a kilt for some years as part of the uniform. We have extended this recently to include other types of cultural dress below the waist. We are proud to welcome people from a variety of backgrounds.”
Lance Cpl Jack Kanani, chair of the RN race diversity network, announced the new policy on Linkedin with a photo of British Pakistani Hon Capt Durdana Ansari wearing a white sari beneath a mess jacket, with a shirt and bow tie. Existing RN cultural mess dress policy had been updated to “include wider forms of British cultural identity,” he wrote. “The network canvassed opinions from ethnic minority service personnel to understand how widening existing policy on cultural mess dress would made them feel able to celebrate both their RN and cultural heritage,” he added.
His post sparked strong reactions on Linkedin with some veterans saying the point of the armed services is to look the same, be the same, feel the same and fight the same, and this is “woke culture gone too far”. Others praised the initiative, saying it allowed people to keep their cultural and religious identity and serve.
Rear Admiral Philip Mathias (Retd) wrote: “The reason for uniform in a disciplined fighting service is to achieve a common identify, not to accentuate the differences. Having commanded in two wars/conflicts, I would be more interested in the RN leadership focusing on instilling a culture of war fighting, rather than obsessing about DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion).”