Just after eyewear retailer Lenskart faced public backlash for a style guide banning bindis, Air India is facing the heat for issuing similar employee guidelines, according to the Hindustan Times.
Air India’s internal grooming guidelines for its cabin crew surfaced online earlier this week, sparking outrage over rules prohibiting crew from wearing sindoor, tikka or bindis.
The cabin crew handbook said, “Tikkas, sindoor of any colour on the forehead is not permitted.”
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Reaction from Air India
An Air India spokesperson told the Hindustan Times that airline crew are allowed to wear bindis, and the document circulating online is from an “outdated manual.”
“Air India would like to clarify that its employees have the choice to wear a bindi. The images being circulated online are from an older manual that is no longer in use,” the spokesperson said.
Earlier, Lenskart had provided a similar argument after facing the heat for its policy, which allowed in-store employees to wear hijab on duty, but forbade bindis or kalawa.
It appears that this problem runs much deeper.
— Pranav Mahajan (@pranavmahajan) April 18, 2026
Here are some pictures from the Air India Cabin Crew Handbook. Bindi, Sindoor, Tilak etc not allowed.
Why are they doing this so blatantly?#SocietyFromStreet pic.twitter.com/uqVRbXBwwF
The Lenskart debate
Lenskart issued an updated style guide after the religious discrimination row erupted, while claiming that an older document circulating online does not reflect the company’s current policy. The company’s founder and CEO, Peyush Bansal, also took to social media to apologise.
Bansal disowned the document as an older version that does not reflect the company’s current stance. Lenskart has “no restrictions on any form of religious expression, including bindi and tilak,” he said.
“The document currently circulating is an outdated internal training document. It is not an HR policy,” Bansal had clarified on X.
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“That said, it contained an incorrect line about bindi/tilak that should never have been written and does not reflect our values or actual practice. When we discovered this on February 17, well before this became a public conversation, we immediately removed it,” he noted.
Lenskart issued an updated and standardised style guide for all in-store employees on April 18, which greenlit “religious, cultural or family marks (such as bindi, tilak, sindoor or any other)”.
