Tash Golden (C) wears yoga pants as she leads a class at the Green Monkey yoga studio in Miami Beach, Florida.

Read this in Hindi:

अमेरिकी सांसद ने योगा पैंट पर बैन लगाने के लिए पेश किया बिल

WASHINGTON: Mahatma Gandhi would have been shocked. Or maybe not.The man who always found time for everyday concerns amid making of epic history may have empathized with the US lawmaker who thinks that amid global wars, economic challenges, climate change etc, people wearing yoga pants and other “provocative” clothing pose a challenge to America.In an episode that has many commentators snickering in their tight clothing, Montana representative David Moore , traumatized after some of his constituents rode nude on bicycles through Missoula town last summer, has moved a bill banning provocative clothing, which includes the hugely popular yoga pants, a mainstay of US’s $30 billion yoga industry.It’s not clear why Moore is stretching the law to cover provocative clothing when his constituents were completely in the buff at the ‘Dare to Bare’ ride last August, but at least one of Moore’s female legislative colleagues initially had a problem with the lawmaker singling out yoga pants and nipple exposure in his bill, pointing out that it unfairly targeted women.Consequently, Moore’s proposed law, introduced on Tuesday as Bill 365, seeks to expand Montana’s indecent exposure law to include any nipple exposure, including men’s. It also seeks to ban any garment that “gives the appearance or simulates” a person’s buttocks, genitals, and pelvic area.That, in Moore’s view, includes yoga pants (which he says “should be illegal in public anyway”) and Speedo pants worn by men. Some yoga buffs see in Moore’s strike a thinly disguised attempt to curtail yoga, which America has been embracing in a big way and whose universal spread is part of the Indian PM’s soft power agenda.A likeness of the Mahatma himself features in a popular online spoof of yoga in America. “Gandhi, chest towards the ceiling during the up-dog,” a blonde instructor tells the Mahatma during a yoga pose, in a parody of the yoga craze in America. “Oh, do you mean my urdhva mukha svanasana?” the Mahatma replies. Instructor: “No. Up dog. Don’t worry. You will learn the terminology.” “You are doing great,” the instructor tells him. “Maybe next time try and wear an appropriate yoga attire. Maybe a lycra top …there is a Lulu Lemon down the street.”Gandhi (baffled): “This is a traditional Indian dhoti…I spun it myself.” Whether the dhoti would have passed Moore’s law will remain a $30 billion question.