Photography: Hot and spicy

The Bombay Manhunt male model contest, photographed by Dayanita Singh, could soon be too risque for the new moral climate of India. Peter Popham keeps his shirt on

Modernisation in India has been a tortuous process. If this is true in business, in industry, in infrastructure, in economic thinking, it is even truer in the modernisation of culture. The task of moving India into the same orbit as the rest of the world has been slow and tentative, beset by obstacles and setbacks. It has also been hindered by the perception of a great many Indians that such a process is unnecessary and even wrong.

This is why Dayanita Singh's photographs on these pages of something that happens in other countries around the world with very little fuss or public attention - talent contests for aspiring male fashion models - are rather startling. Can these handsome young hunks in tiny briefs, with their gleaming pecs and practised leers, really be Indians? And the chortling, delighted and highly stimulated ladies, Indian women? This with hardly a sari or shalwar kameez in sight?

The event is called the Gladrags Manhunt, and it is the way that the fashion business - not only here but in dozens of other countries, too - has turned the quest for new male modelling talent into a commercial event, in the format of a beauty contest. From hundreds of applications, the organisers select a shortlist of "22 audacious boys, 22 fine specimens, 22 distinctively attractive young men" and send them down the catwalk, first in suits, then in swimming trunks. Finally, they have to answer - "spontaneously", though they seem well drilled - a question put from the audience. "Would you rather be an international model or the Indian prime minister?" asks one woman. "If you were dancing in a disco and you discovered that the woman you were dancing with was not a woman, how would you react?", asks another.

Indian prudery is not easy to fathom. This is not an Islamic society, where the prevailing moral code is fundamental to the national religion. On the contrary, if Indians wanted the best possible excuse to strip off their name-brand "innerwear", they need look no further than Hinduism and its lascivious deities, lusciously licentious statuary and classical erotic texts.

In fact, the impulse to do that is still present: the Hindi musical film, for example, is essentially a string of dance numbers, the leading couple doing endless, elaborately choreographed, bumps and grinds. The whole genre is a whisker away from pornography.

Yet it follows rules of the most painfully strict decorum. No nudity. No kissing. The odd exposed navel. Large bosoms, well wrapped up. Any number of gushing fountains, springs spurting from suggestive rocky orifices. Forbidden (by whom, one wonders?) from depicting sex and love in a direct, adult way, these films are quite childishly hung up on the subject.

It would be nice to report that the Gladrags Manhunt is a step in the right, grown-up direction, but that would be clearly overstating the case. What one can say, however, in the light of what has happened in Bombay over the past few months, is that the organisers can consider themselves lucky to have got away with staging it at all.

Bombay, a well-travelled Sikh friend said to me, is "our only real city". It's a thoroughgoing Victorian city, a monster Manchester or Liverpool, that has hung on to the trade that was always its lifeblood and developed on that basis, into a poor, teeming, insanitary but always plausibly modern and metropolitan city. There are little shops, cafes and kiosks; a brilliant restaurant scene; cinemas; public phones on every corner - the hard camaraderie of successful cities everywhere.

And, like its cousins in the First World - New York or London or Hamburg or Hong Kong - Bombay grows a frothy, frivolous, commercial life, too. Local editions of magazines such as Cosmopolitan and Elle, the showcase for the local fashion industry, jostle for space with home- grown imitations. The fashion trade needs male models as well as female ones. The Gladrags Manhunt is a commercially cute way of tracking down this year's batch of - as the MC at the show puts it - "seriously distracting- looking men".

But Bombay has its hinterland, too, and it is the city's misfortune that it is the populist representatives of the Hindu heartland - Shiv Sena or Shiv's Army, after a 17th-century king - who run the place. It is Bombay's further misfortune that the coalition government at the centre is led by the Hindu nationalist BJP, Shiv Sena's long-standing ally. Both parties hold moral purification dear, and now in Bombay, Shiv Sena is vigorously imposing its puritanical will.

Stage plays have been shut down for being too risque, foreign rock bands have had their lyrics examined for obscene content, and their audiences have been exhorted to behave decorously. The nationally celebrated artist MF Hussain issued a grovelling apology after local zealots trashed his home and destroyed paintings in retribution for his having once painted a Hindu goddess (traditionally naked and voluptuous) in the raw.

And so it goes on. So far, those suggestive Hindi musical films have escaped unscathed, perhaps because the family of Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackerary is involved in film production. Michael Jackson likewise survived his visit, despite his crotch-grabbing routine, by the simple device of kowtowing to the Thackerarys.

So if the audience in these pictures seem to be enjoying themselves slightly more than you would think reasonable, and if the models look slightly more diffident and nervous about the whole thing than you might expect, here's the reason. In Bombay, both the models and the audience are out there on the very edge of what is considered permissible. And, who knows, this may be their last chance to have such a hearty guffaw in quite a while

Make like a star: Balbir, winner of the Mr Gladrag Manhunt (above), salutes the audience with a naked show of exuberance that his fundamentalist government might soon not tolerate. Left to right: catwalk moves - dress rehearsal for the real thing; down to the swimming trunk basics; the youngest contestant is quizzed the judges during the preliminary rounds

Not a sari in sight (clockwise from top left): contestants strut their stuff for the largely female, and appreciative, audience; the victorious Balbir faces the press - a press that might soon be forced to condemn shows like Mr Gladrag; hair care - slicking down for the judges; bantering backstage; some last-minute exercises to get a little extra muscle tone

Not quite the full monty (facing page): the 1997 winner, Zulfi, prepares for this year's contest with a relaxing face pack. Clockwise from main picture: the boys from Bangalore on the day after winning; whipping up the audience during the final show; Ayaz, fifth winner of the Gladrags Manhunt, with his family; contestants square up to the preliminary-round judges (too much bare talent for modern-day India?); limbering up backstage