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    Transformations in Colonial India

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    Amrtha Saju
    During the colonial period in India, there were significant changes in male and female clothing due to both Western influence and Indians' efforts to maintain their cultural identity. Some Indians incorporated elements of Western style into their dress, while others rejected Western clothing as a threat to Indian culture. To resolve this dilemma, some men wore Western clothes for work but changed into traditional Indian clothes at home, or combined Western and Indian styles. These clothing changes had a turbulent history in India during the colonial period.

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    Transformations in Colonial India

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    Amrtha Saju
    3K views1 page
    During the colonial period in India, there were significant changes in male and female clothing due to both Western influence and Indians' efforts to maintain their cultural identity. Some Indians incorporated elements of Western style into their dress, while others rejected Western clothing as a threat to Indian culture. To resolve this dilemma, some men wore Western clothes for work but changed into traditional Indian clothes at home, or combined Western and Indian styles. These clothing changes had a turbulent history in India during the colonial period.

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    During the colonial period in India, there were significant changes in male and female clothing due to both Western influence and Indians' efforts to maintain their cultural identity. Some Indians incorporated elements of Western style into their dress, while others rejected Western clothing as a threat to Indian culture. To resolve this dilemma, some men wore Western clothes for work but changed into traditional Indian clothes at home, or combined Western and Indian styles. These clothing changes had a turbulent history in India during the colonial period.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as doc, pdf, or txt
    3K views1 page

    Transformations in Colonial India

    Uploaded by

    Amrtha Saju
    During the colonial period in India, there were significant changes in male and female clothing due to both Western influence and Indians' efforts to maintain their cultural identity. Some Indians incorporated elements of Western style into their dress, while others rejected Western clothing as a threat to Indian culture. To resolve this dilemma, some men wore Western clothes for work but changed into traditional Indian clothes at home, or combined Western and Indian styles. These clothing changes had a turbulent history in India during the colonial period.

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    Transformations in Colonial India 

    What about India in this same period?  

    During the colonial period there were significant changes in male and female clothing
    in India. On the one hand this was a consequence of me influence of Western dress
    forms and missionary activity; on the other it was due to the effort by Indians to
    fashion clothing styles that, embodied an indigenous tradition and culture. Cloth and
    clothing in fact became very important symbols of the national movement. A brief
    look at the nineteenth century changes will tell us a great deal about the
    transformations of the twentieth century.  

    When western-style clothing came into India in the nineteenth century, Indians
    reacted in three different ways:  

    One Many, especially men, began incorporating some elements of western-style


    clothing in their dress. The wealthy Parsis of western India were among the first to
    adapt Western-style clothing. Baggy Trousers and the phenta (or hat) were added to
    long collarless coats, boots and a walking stick to complete the look of the
    gentleman. To some, Western clothes were a sign of modernity and progress.  

    Western-style clothing was also especially attractive to groups of dalit converts to


    Christianity who now found it liberating. Here too, it as men rather than women who
    affected the new dress styles.  

    Two There were others who were convinced that western culture would lead to a loss
    of traditional cultural identity. The use of Western-style clothes was taken as a sign
    of the world turning upside down. The cartoon of the Bengali Babu shown here,
    mocks him for wearing Western-style boots and hat and coat along with his dhoti.  

    Three. Some men resolved this dilemma by wearing Western clothes without giving
    up their Indian ones. Many Bengali bureaucrats the late nineteenth century began
    stocking tern-style clothes for work outside the me and changed into more
    comfortable Indian clothes at home. Early- twentieth-century anthropologist Verrier
    Elwin remembered that policemen in Poona who going off duty would take their
    trousers off in the street and walk home in 'just tunic and undergarments'. This
    difference between outer and inner worlds is still observed by some men today.  

    Still others tried a slightly different solution to the same dilemma. They attempted to
    combine Western and Indian forms of dressing. 

    These changes in clothing, however, had a turbulent history.  

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