CLOTHES MAKE THE MAN 

Kanishka, The Headless Warrior, is the name given to a fragment of a stone relief from the 2^nd C AD depicting the Kushan  king. He is wearing a knee length tunic and trousers gathered at the ankle, new to a region where clothing was of unstitched cloth. Later years, especially after the arrival of Muslim dynasties, saw the evolution of a dazzling array of finely stitched clothing – the angharka, sherwani, peshwaz, farshi pajama, that reached its pinnacle in the Mughal courts.

Men wore layers of embroidered silk garments, necklaces, bejeweled armbands, earrings and rings, intricately fashioned turbans and embroidered shoes. 

Rural communities and tribes had their own distinct form of carefully classified styles of clothing and turbans. Not only did you recognize a man’s tribe by his turban, beard and moustache, but also the place he occupied in his tribe.  Clothing has been seen both as identity, or inclusion in a group of people, as well as exclusion of those outside the group.

Once in the departure lounge of Dubai airport, when it became evident most passengers are Pakistan bound, I was acutely aware that this disheveled motley crowd of tired travelers bore no resemblance to the heritage of elegant clothing and style the region was known for.  The only time they are likely to be stylishly dressed was at a wedding or Eid. What happened to the elegance of the everyday, to body language that carried the flow of the river, the swell of the desert dune, the stature of mountains?

How did we get reduced to rolled up trousers, tucked up shalwars, and generic black sadri waistcoats?

Women have still kept traditional clothing alive in its classical or contemporary evolutions, not only for special occasions but in daily life.  But by and large, with the exception of cultural crusaders like Yusuf Bashir Qureshi, men gave up their pagris, their angarkhas and most certainly the jewels, necklaces, and earrings. In South Asia the obvious reason was the downfall of the Mughal and other regional kingdoms, and the unravelling of the social and cultural ecology by the British colonizers.  It is a common response for the courtiers and upper classes, male and female,   to adopt the dress, language and manners of new rulers. The Muslim rule had introduced the Persian language, and fashions of the court quickly filtered through to the many kingdoms that made up India.  Adoption of British fashion was more selective – a jacket worn with a dhoti, a fur coat with a sari.

The Macaulayian solution to the administrative problem of a handful of Britishers managing a huge nation of a people, was the creation of an administration that must necessarily adopt the values and systems of the rulers, naturally leading to the adoption of not just language, but also dress code and manners. In fact the British would have preferred natives did not try to adopt the dress code, preferring to retain difference and maintain their superiority.

This was not unique to postcolonial societies but a global trend. Beginning with the French Revolution when it was prudent to dress down, there was a general sobering of men’s wear. The Puritans who made the journey across the Atlantic to escape religious persecution, adopted a severe style of clothing. Beau Brummel epitomized the transition from the lavish to subtle stylishness.  However, by the   Victorian Era, religious modesty and austerity was imposed on both men and women, with rising middle class values, the pragmatic needs of professional work environments, and to impose authority in the colonies. The period between the World Wars, saw the establishment in 1930, of The Great Male Renunciation created by the psychoanalyst, John Flügel, and others of the Dress Reform Party, that encouraged men to give up adornment. The war was a sobering experience, and masculinity and readiness for action became the focus.  The world of men’s fashion had changed.  Men must be men, and women must be women.

Post independence, this is the world the newly formed Pakistan found itself in. While there was a return to local languages and to some extent local styles of clothing, there no return to the bejeweled clothing, and elaborate turbans. As we looked to following the model of the modern industrialized state, there was, in fact, the continued adoption of first, British and then American clothing styles as they evolved from three piece suits to shorts and T shirts.

Clothing not only affects confidence and mood, but it also conveys a message.  That message is not only about cultural identity but, in recent years in Pakistan, has taken on a polarizing political message. Rather than between traditional and western clothes it has become between western and ‘Islamic’ clothing. However, there is a return not to Burqa but Hijab, not pagri but keffiyeh, what Irit Rogoff calls geographical displacement.  Clothing as cultural expression is barely preserved at weddings, in tribe, in rural areas or specialized communities like jogis and malangs.

Cultural identity was first displaced by colonization, followed by consumerism, urbanization and again, by the current politics of religion.  “Clothes have been used to assert power, challenge authority, and instigate social change” says Emma Tarlo in ‘Clothing Matters’. Where that challenge was embodied in the past in the Khadi movement, Gandhi’s langotee or the Ali brothers cloak and crescent cap, today it’s a rootless drifting between anode and cathode.  One cannot be unmindful because, as  Karen J. Pine, writes “When we put on a piece of clothing we cannot help but adopt some of the characteristics associated with it, even if we are unaware of it.”

Durriya Kazi

May 2017