Guwahati, April 18: It all began perhaps with the Ulfa (Independent) banning Hindi songs during Bihu, a diktat that only Zubeen Garg, for all his often-unsavoury stage antics, has consistently defied over the past few years.

Bihu function organisers who wanted to toe the line without looking bad themselves, did the next best thing: they stopped calling the famed Zubeen-Zublee Baruah duo to perform.

Last evening, though, the Pub Guwahati Bihu Xonmiloni at Chandmari in Guwahati set a new moral policing, in this case, a largely anti-women, milestone. It prevented Zublee - who they had invited to perform, alone - from getting onstage "because she wasn't wearing the traditional Assamese mekhela sador", as Ranjan Bora, the president of the Bihu committee said this evening. "And that was based on a contract," he added.

Zublee's discordant dress sense, according to the committee, comprised a salwar kameez she had worn for her performance. Her retort, that it was made out of Karbi and Tiwa fabrics, didn't cut ice with the organisers. "Had I been from an indigenous community (such as the Karbis and Tiwas) it would have been okay, they told me," Zublee told The Telegraph today. "This just goes to show their ignorance. Don't they realise the Assamese community is made up of indigenous people?"

The flak came in fast: "This is Talibani behavior," said Ambar Das, Mumbai-based musician from Assam, whose brother, late Bhaskar Das, was an accomplished guitarist who played for years with Bhupen Hazarika.

"If they want it like that, the organisers too must be dressed in traditional Assamese dhuti-suriya (a kurta won't do because that's not Assamese), there must be no stage, no western instruments, and Bihu must be celebrated only out in the fields."

"The organisers, were, first and foremost, being anti-women," said Mumbai-based lyricist and sound engineer from Assam Ibson Lal Barua.

"Rather than do all this, the organisers would be better off taking a look at how so many obscene songs are being sung these days. I am certain Zubeen must have at some time sung that Bihu song about how you 'choose your woman by the size of her thighs' on that same stage."

Said journalist and activist Maini Mahanta: "This is pure gender bias. Assamese men got into trousers the moment the British came and 60 years after they left, they are saying such things to Assamese women."

There would be no gainsaying, of course, that on that very same stage at Chandmari, only two days before the Zublee incident, there were hundreds of screaming youngsters swaying to Angaraag Papon Mahanta's co-vocalist Rehanna singing a Goalpariya lokageet set to reggae, with some holding up the sign of the beast, the trademark of the anti-Christ metalhead.

And, of course, none of the band (barring the lady who was in a mekhela sador) was traditionally dressed.

The same held true for the Chandmari Bihu Committee members as well, as they sat addressing the media this afternoon, pontificating on Assamese culture. Their dress code, for themselves, in this season of Bihu, the spring festival and new year of the Assamese: shirts and trousers.

Bora, for his part, did agree, though, that there was a "certain drop in cultural standards but that is something that requires a community debate".

And why were they not dressed in dhuti-suriyas? "It is true that we weren't wearing dhuti-suriyas but we have seen from when we were young that our men wear trousers and shirts while our women wear mekhela sadors. But I think there should be a debate on this too."

As for Zublee and her controversial salwar kameez, that is what she would wear, she told The Telegraph, for her concert tonight at Pathsala, some 90km away from Guwahati.

Touche.