While publications on heritage textiles and costumes abound, it is much rarer to find writings which connect the dots with colonial history. This volume bridges the gap. Tracking evolving changes in how people used different textiles and clothes, influenced by social and professional mores during colonial rule, Jasvinder Kaur’s Influences of the British Raj on the Attire and Textiles of Punjab seamlessly links past with present.
It underlines how material culture was not experienced in isolation but as an entwining of the personal with the larger national narrative. With a focus on Punjab the author’s in-depth research together with oral histories, photographs, letters, newspaper clippings, objects, topical advertisements unfold a history of textiles influenced by the zeitgeistof that period to bring about lasting changes which are still visible.
New lifestyle
In the introduction, Kaur writes that from the mid-18thcentury right up to 1947, western influence pervaded all aspects of Indian society and culture. “Indians were exposed to a new language, new types of food, new lifestyles, such as sitting on chairs, eating at dining tables... Inevitably, the influence crept into their ways of dressing, and was visible not only in the adoption of Western wear by Indians, but also in the westernisation of Indian clothes.”
If men took a fancy, she says, to wearing not only a fully western outfit, but also combinations of European and Indian apparel, women changed the style in which they tied the sari, and began to wear fancy blouses — as Satyajit Ray showcased in his Tagore adaptation, Ghare Baire (‘Home and the World’) — and petticoats.
There were different codes of dressing for different functions — a uniform for the armed forces, formal attire for the court or durbar, office wear, sport wear. From the wearing of trousers, waistcoats and overcoats to a hybrid mix of clothing that combined traditional wear with the contemporary, these shifting patterns of clothing and accessories responded to the times. Pyjamas began to be teamed up with coats, under the coats men often wore kurtas.
In the world of women, the changes wrought were more subtle and the author has delved into these hidden histories. With the introduction of dining and ‘living rooms’ and ‘formal’ entertainment,embroidered items went beyond the Phulkari to include bed-sheets, tablecloths, cushion covers, napkins, sofa-back covers and other items that were now embroidered in the European style with patterns taken from imported women’s magazines. These magazines played a part in impacting design — needlework and knitting magazines, pattern guidebooks on sewing with pull-out iron-on transfers were easily accessible in Punjab. Specialised shops that traced and transferred designs and patterns for embroidery and sewing complemented the craze for the new and modern. While women’s clothing largely remained the same, there were changes in material where ‘vilayati’ or foreign cloth was often in use, albeit before the swadeshi movement. Other changes were equally subtle like the addition of cuffs, collars and sleeves similar to men’s fashions that were added on to women’s kurtas along with the donning of embroidered ‘vaskat’ or waistcoats. Children wore frocks with smocking and the fashionable used cosmetics and curled their hair.
The strength of the publication also lies in its exploration of the many ways in which the past has shaped our present material culture of dress and attire.This marvellous publication must set the way for others to follow as there are many more such hidden histories from across India still waiting to be written.
Influences of the British Raj on the Attire and Textiles of Punjab; Jasvinder Kaur,Rupa, ₹2,500.
The reviewer is founder-trustee of the Craft Revival Trust and editor of Asia InCH Encyclopaedia and Global InCH Journal of ICH.
