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Dressing to change

Sunanda K Datta-Ray

Indians are not alone in confusing modern with Western. But whereas in India it's reverse snobbery, photographs of an earlier Afghan Loya Jirgah - held on September 2, 1928 - remind us of how desperately many Asians tried to be as Western as they could.

Two incidents explain India's inverted consciousness of things Western.

First, a 1920s cartoon showed Deshabandhu J M Sen Gupta in full evening rig, glass of scotch in hand, calling for his white khadi 'meeting ka kapra'.

Second, Barbara Crosette of New York Times tells us that when Kunwar Natwar Singh decided to quit the foreign service, he acquired "a new wardrobe for the hustings where rumpled white cotton is de rigueur for high-born men trying to demonstrate their oneness with the masses".

When he told Indira Gandhi of his proposed sartorial transformation, she, apparently, looked him over and suggested that a thicker skin might be more useful.

Afghanistan's King Amanullah (great-uncle of ex-King Zahir Shah) tried in 1928 to make the masses Western. Whereas the tribal representatives this time were adorned in a variety of local attire, those who attended in 1928 were all buttoned uncomfortably into three-piece suits. It was the first time they had worn western clothes, but Amanullah insisted on it.

Underlying the sartorial difference are more significant social and political differences. Appearances matter but appearances can also be deceptive. Historically, China and Japan have demonstrated that modern clothes can camouflage medieval thinking.

In 1928, Afghanistan, like many other Muslim monarchies in what Ronald Reagan much later called the crescent of danger, was determined to be modern by adopting wholesale all the trappings of western statehood.

Only five years earlier, Emir (also known as Sardar) Amanullah Khan had himself proclaimed His Majesty the King. In the 19th century the British in India would not allow Afghanistan's rulers sovereign status. But the second round of the Great Game had not yet started in 1919 when a brief war with Britain secured Kabul's right to conduct its own foreign relations.

Amanullah imported teachers, military officers, doctors and architects from Turkey, France and Germany. Anywhere, in fact, but Britain and British India.

He did much to modernise his country but also spent a lot of effort on image-building, making European costume compulsory in certain districts of Kabul, especially the court suburb of Paghman. A costume ball, held there in the summer of 1925 by Soraya's sister, exposed the full folly of this sartorial obsession.

The guests wore Scottish, Burmese and Japanese dress, but some among them, including Amanullah and Soraya, wore local clothes. The royal couple liked to pretend that traditional Afghan attire was fancy dress in their Western-style court.

No wonder they forced all the delegates to the 1928 Loya Jirgah to wear jackets, waistcoats and neckties for the first time in their lives. One high-ranking courtier, who stands next to the king in the photograph, even sports the cutaway coat and striped trousers that dominated 19th century European chancelleries, but are now favoured only by Japanese (honorary white!) dignitaries. Though the photograph shows a scattering of European felt hats above bearded visages, not a single floppy turban is to be seen.

Iran and Turkey were similarly serious about clothes, especially headgear. Shah Reza Khan ordered all Persian males to wear European suits and the Pahlavi cap whose brim made prostration during prayers difficult. The Ottoman emperor Mahmud II banned turbans and brought in the sleek and more modern looking fez in 1825; exactly a century later the revolutionary Kemal Ataturk made it a crime to wear the fez, which had become a symbol of religious conservatism.

The cardinal error that these well-meaning rulers made was to confuse modern with Western. Often, their westernisation only compounded social imbalance by accentuating the gulf between outward appearance and inner responses.

The resultant difficulties revealed that a sartorial revolution by itself achieves little without education, economic advance and a progressive outlook. One of the most modern of surviving Asian monarchs today, Bhutan's King Jigme Singye Wangchuck, has never been seen in anything but his kilt-like national robe, the kho. Similarly, for all his flamboyant turban and flowing cape, the Simla-schooled Hamid Karzai is undoubtedly more forward-looking than the official in European court dress in the earlier Loya Jirgah.

One sure sign of progress differentiates the two assemblies. The only woman present in 1928 was Queen Soraya, who was the first consort of a Muslim monarch to appear in public with her husband. She did so before the better known queens of Egypt and Iran.

A wispy veil fluttering from the brim of her cloche hat was a token concession to Islamic orthodoxy. Otherwise, her short skirts and high-heeled shoes could have graced fashionable European royalty.

Apart from her, the 1928 gathering was an all-male affair, even if the males were dressed to kill. In 2002 the men wore robes and turbans, with some suits to highlight the diversity of modern life, but plenty of ordinary women sitting among them confirmed that true social change has not bypassed Afghanistan.

As for what to wear and what not to wear, the author of these lines said it all: "Hitler with his Brown Shirts, riding for a fall/ Mussolini with his Black Shirts, back against the wall/De Valera with his Green Shirts, caring not at all,/Three cheers for Mahatma Gandhi, with no shirt at all."

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