THE NATIONAL DRESS CODE
Gandhiji integrated the mass movement by simplifying the dress code to the swadeshi type. Even the Nehrus, whose clothes were laundered in Paris, had to wear swadeshi clothes. This nationalised the dress worn by Congressmen and effectively identified the leaders with the poor masses with Gandhiji in loin cloth its best exemplar. No wonder he was so popular with the masses and carried them with him in his bid for independence, albeit in his own way of passive resistance and non-violence et al.
Not very long ago before the Mahatma came on the national scene, Swamiji had exhorted Indians to dress in the dhoti and kurta and all other accessories of the Indian apparel. He was of the opinion that wearing the national dress as opposed to the European suit, coat, collar and tie was essential to expressing national identity.
Gandhiji carried it out in line with the Swadeshi and Boycott Movement of the Anti-partition days of Bengal and carried it rather to extreme measures of making a bonfire of European clothes much to the vexation of the poet Tagore who smelled in it the seeds of mass violence. Much as Tagore was worried about the consequences of stray revolutionary terrorism perpetrated by the Bengal revolutionaries, he was worried about the consequences of Gandhi's action in burning cloth thus.
Today, it seems, we have turned on a new leaf and have adopted European clothes, manners and means, with a gusto quite like our Anglicised ancestors of the days of Young Bengal when they preferred to quote from the Iliad and the Odyssey rather than from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. It is sad, indeed, to witness this modern spectacle of imitation of the West just like our infatuated ancestors did.
Mahatmaji, you have failed in your mission to Indianise us and we owe you for it an apology and a reassurance that we will redress this lapse of ours. We owe it to you, we owe it to Swamiji and we owe it to our dear motherland who has been the source of the finest yarn ever woven anywhere in the world in the annals of history, the Dhaka Muslin which was destroyed root and stem by the barbarous British who cut off the thumbs of the weavers before grinding down their mills.
Written by Sugata Bose
Gandhiji integrated the mass movement by simplifying the dress code to the swadeshi type. Even the Nehrus, whose clothes were laundered in Paris, had to wear swadeshi clothes. This nationalised the dress worn by Congressmen and effectively identified the leaders with the poor masses with Gandhiji in loin cloth its best exemplar. No wonder he was so popular with the masses and carried them with him in his bid for independence, albeit in his own way of passive resistance and non-violence et al.
Not very long ago before the Mahatma came on the national scene, Swamiji had exhorted Indians to dress in the dhoti and kurta and all other accessories of the Indian apparel. He was of the opinion that wearing the national dress as opposed to the European suit, coat, collar and tie was essential to expressing national identity.
Gandhiji carried it out in line with the Swadeshi and Boycott Movement of the Anti-partition days of Bengal and carried it rather to extreme measures of making a bonfire of European clothes much to the vexation of the poet Tagore who smelled in it the seeds of mass violence. Much as Tagore was worried about the consequences of stray revolutionary terrorism perpetrated by the Bengal revolutionaries, he was worried about the consequences of Gandhi's action in burning cloth thus.
Today, it seems, we have turned on a new leaf and have adopted European clothes, manners and means, with a gusto quite like our Anglicised ancestors of the days of Young Bengal when they preferred to quote from the Iliad and the Odyssey rather than from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. It is sad, indeed, to witness this modern spectacle of imitation of the West just like our infatuated ancestors did.
Mahatmaji, you have failed in your mission to Indianise us and we owe you for it an apology and a reassurance that we will redress this lapse of ours. We owe it to you, we owe it to Swamiji and we owe it to our dear motherland who has been the source of the finest yarn ever woven anywhere in the world in the annals of history, the Dhaka Muslin which was destroyed root and stem by the barbarous British who cut off the thumbs of the weavers before grinding down their mills.
Written by Sugata Bose
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