Bindi–Hijab Row Erupts at Mumbai Lenskart Store
- A Muslim BJP leader entered a Mumbai Lenskart store amid a bindi-hijab controversy and applied tilak to staff. - He said act protested company policy on religious symbols affecting employees, drawing local media and political scrutiny. - The episode adds to the national debate over workplace religious expression and corporate rules (indiatoday.in).
A group led by Bharatiya Janata Party Minority Morcha leader Nazia Elahi Khan entered a Lenskart store in Mumbai on April 21 and applied tilak to employees. (indiatoday.in) Videos circulated on April 21 showed Khan confronting staff inside the showroom, tying kalawa on some wrists and raising slogans during the protest. Reports identified the store as being in Mumbai’s Andheri area. (timesofindia.indiatimes.com) Khan said she was protesting an alleged company rule that discouraged bindi, tilak and kalawa for employees while allowing hijab and turban. The row grew after screenshots of an internal style guide spread online in mid-April. (theweek.in) The dispute had already reached Lenskart founder and chief executive Peyush Bansal before the store protest. On April 16, he said the document being shared was outdated and did not reflect the company’s current policy. (moneycontrol.com) By April 19, Lenskart had issued a public apology and released a revised “In-Store Style Guide.” The company said employees were free to wear symbols of faith including bindi, tilak, sindoor, kalawa, mangalsutra, kada, hijab and turbans. (economictimes.indiatimes.com) That sequence turned the Mumbai protest into a test of whether the company’s clarification had ended the issue. Instead, the store visit kept attention on how private employers write appearance rules and how quickly old internal documents can become public flashpoints. (business-standard.com) The criticism came from one side of India’s workplace-religion debate, which often centers on whether uniform policies treat different faith markers equally. In this case, the viral document was read by critics as permitting some visible symbols while restricting others. (cnbctv18.com) Lenskart’s response was to say there are now no curbs on religious expression at work. Bansal said the company had revised its grooming guidance over time and apologized for the confusion caused by the older version circulating online. (ndtvprofit.com) The immediate next step is no longer about what was in the old guide, but whether the revised one settles the argument on the ground. After the Andheri protest, the company’s store policy is now being judged in public, one showroom at a time. (hindustantimes.com)
