Transformations in Colonial India
Transformations in Colonial India
Transformations in Colonial India
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:
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.