EVOLVING SYMBOLISM OF POWER DRESSING

LAWYERS sport it. Corporate executives flaunt it. Even callow job aspirants wear it. But when a newly-minted chief minister shows up in one in Tamil Nadu, it can raise eyebrows.

- MADHAVAN NARAYANAN

On that rests the power of symbolism and context in political dressing.

Power dressing has a whole new meaning in India, thanks to the bittersweet memories of the British Raj. It gets more complicated when dresses reflect contrasting shades of ideology. Given the pluralistic but chequered past of social conflicts in India, outfits can be read like tarot cards, with deep symbolism.

Tamil Nadu’s latest actor-leader thundered that his decision to wear a black jacket over white instead of the traditional ethnic clothes symbolised transparency and simplicity. “Is it meant only for people in positions of authority? There is nothing like that,” he said.

How things have changed, I said to myself in what seemed like the reverse of a reverse swing. Mahatma Gandhi wore his dhoti after shedding the lawyer suits he had sported for decades. The homespun dress led to Winston Churchill’s infamous description of him as a “half-naked fakir”, which in turn helped Gandhi invoke the spirit of swadeshi pride.

Things have come a full circle, because for at least four generations born at the time of India’s independence and later, the black jacket signalled not just British colonialism but a wider sense of authority. In that earlier significance, the choice was not between the East and the West, but between an elite and a commoner.