Lawyers sport it. Corporate executives flaunt it. Even callow job aspirants wear it to interviews. But when a newly-minted chief minister shows up in one in Tamil Nadu, it can raise eyebrows. On that rests the power of symbolism and context in political dressing.
Power dressing has a whole new meaning in India, thanks to the bittersweet memories of the British Raj. It gets more complicated when dresses reflect style, attitude and contrasting shades of ideology. Given the pluralistic but chequered past of social conflicts in India, outfits can be read like tarot cards, with deep symbolism.
Tamil Nadu’s latest actor-leader thundered that his decision to wear a black-and-white suit instead of traditional ethnic clothes symbolised transparency and simplicity. “Is it meant only for people in positions of authority? There is nothing like that,” he said.
How things have changed, I said to myself in what seemed like the reverse of a reverse swing. Mahatma Gandhi wore his famous dhoti after shedding the fancy lawyer suits he had sported for decades in Britain and South Africa. The homespun dress led to Winston Churchill’s infamous description of him as a “half-naked fakir”, which in turn helped Gandhi invoke the spirit of swadeshi pride that showed empathy for the suffering masses.
Things have come a full circle, because for at least four generations born at the time of India’s independence and later, the black Western jacket signalled not just British colonial domination but simply a sense of authority or an attitude. In that earlier significance, the choice was not between the East and the West conflict, but between an elite and a commoner.
The British Raj gave rise to dress options that spelt varying degrees of authority and what fashionistas might call mix-n-match elegance. We had Nobel-prize-winning physicist C V Raman and engineer-statesman Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya wearing Indian turbans with Western jackets. Many swapped trousers for the more comfortable dhoti or its southern variation, the veshti, tied without the formal folds.
It was different for B R Ambedkar, noted V S Naipaul in A Million Mutinies Now. The writer described the Dalit icon as somebody who consciously embraced Western dressing to show an affinity with the British so that it would help lift the depressed classes of Hindu society. Naipaul threw in the fact that most Ambedkar statues in Dalit neighbourhoods show him with a book, representing his wish to educate those left behind in a traditional hierarchy. Of course, the book he carries is the Constitution of India, which promises to empower the disenfranchised.
Tussles continue in some parts of India over Dalit grooms sporting turbans and riding horses during wedding processions, which are seen as sartorial markers of upper-caste dominance and invite push-back. Ambedkar’s dress code is thus highly relevant as an iconic assertion. In Tamil Nadu, Ambedkarite VCK leader Thol Thirumavalavan can sometimes be spotted wearing the complete Western ensemble including a tie, evidently inspired by his icon.
The Ambedkar-Gandhi dichotomy in engaging with British rulers persisted after 1947 in many forms. The corporate culture in ‘boxwallah’ multinationals and the social status commanded by executives in British companies (excellently portrayed in Satyajit Ray’s 1971 film Seemabaddha or Company Limited) ensured that the suit endured far beyond the end of the Raj. Officers of the Indian Civil Service and its successor Indian Administrative Service kept up the British practices.
Jawaharlal Nehru, described by some as a WOG or westernised oriental gentleman, made his nationalistic style statement with the Nehru jacket, a bandhgala attire. Its sleeveless variant is increasingly called the Modi jacket in what the ideologically astute might describe as sheer irony.
It is the elite symbolism of the black jacket that perhaps inspired Vijay, whose appeal to Gen Z voters may show what young Indians are looking for today is a modern sense of self-confidence rather than the anti-colonial appeal of earlier power-dressing. Political symbolism in dressing took a different turn in the South when E V Ramasamy Periyar’s Dravida Kazhagam adopted black as its colour of ideological assertion. For Periyar, black was the colour to show the historical enslavement of lower-caste communities. Though the veshti sported by him and his followers often stayed the traditional white. In contrast, leaders of breakaway parties like the DMK and the AIADMK embraced the all-white shirt-and-veshti ensemble.
Somewhere along the way, former PM Rajiv Gandhi and DMK leader M K Stalin made everything less fussy. The Nehru family scion was seen occasionally sporting the Western suit, at other times in the Nehru jacket and, for a marathon, even in a round-neck sweatshirt and track pants. Stalin has been photographed in similar outfits during his morning walks and bicycle rides.
By and large, dressing now seems more meant for social media banter than for political or ideological symbolism. A fashion faux pas may invite chuckles, but outfit variations are unlikely to invite a dressing down from Gen Z.
Immaculately dressed leaders like Shashi Tharoor, who sports Western suits and colourful ethnic weaves with equal aplomb, tell us that ordinary Indians are increasingly comfortable with elegance in various forms. The game has shifted from politics to aesthetics.
(Views are personal)
Read all columns by Madhavan Narayanan
Madhavan Narayanan
Senior journalist
Follow him on X @madversity