Clothing — A Social History

• How clothing reflects social status, identity, and power.
• How sumptuary laws controlled who could wear what.
• Clothing and colonialism — changes in Indian dress under British rule.
• Swadeshi and Khadi — Gandhi's use of clothing as political protest.
• Women's clothing and social reform movements.

Clothing and social hierarchy

Throughout history, clothing was not just for warmth or modesty — it signalled:

• Wealth: expensive fabrics (silk, velvet, gold thread) = high status.
• Caste/class: different groups wore distinct styles.
• Gender: men and women dressed differently; rules reinforced by society.
• Religion: specific dress codes (white for Brahmin priests; yellow robe for Buddhist monks).

Sumptuary Laws

Sumptuary laws = laws that controlled what people could wear, eat, and spend — used to maintain social distinctions.

Examples:

• In medieval Europe, only nobility could wear purple (colour of royalty); only certain classes could wear fur.
• In pre-revolutionary France, cloth type, colour, and ornamentation were regulated by law according to class.
• After the French Revolution (1789), sumptuary laws abolished — dress became a symbol of equality; the top hat emerged as a democratic garment.

Clothing in colonial India

British attitude to Indian dress

• British viewed Indian dress as "uncivilised" — flowing robes, bare feet, turbans.
• Pressure to adopt Western dress to be seen as "modern" or get government jobs.

Indian responses

Three responses among Indians:

The turban controversy

• Bal Gangadhar Tilak wore Indian dress and traditional turban in court — refused to wear a hat.
• In South Africa, Indians were forced to remove turbans in official settings.
• Gandhi famously discarded Western suit and adopted simple dhoti-loincloth after seeing Indian poverty.

Gandhi and Khadi

Why Gandhi chose khadi

• 1905 Swadeshi Movement: nationalists called for boycott of British goods; burn foreign cloth.
• Gandhi went further: not just boycott, but spin your own cloth (khadi).
• Khadi = hand-spun, hand-woven cotton fabric.

Spinning wheel (charkha) as symbol

• Gandhi carried a charkha (spinning wheel) everywhere.
• Every Indian — regardless of caste, class, gender — could spin: an act of self-reliance and equality.
• Charkha on the Congress flag.
• Spinning for 30 minutes a day = a discipline; connected educated urban people to rural poor.
• Khadi became the uniform of the independence movement.

Women and clothing reform

Western reform — rational dress movement (1880s)

• Women's corsets and heavy skirts seen as unhealthy.
• Rational Dress Society (UK, 1881): promoted lighter clothing; trousers for cycling.
• As women entered public life (work, sport, politics) — clothing had to change.

Indian context

• High-caste women in some regions were required to cover themselves more.
• Lower-caste women in Kerala (Travancore) were forced to cover upper body only with certain types of cloth — a marker of low status.
• Nangeli (early 19th century, Kerala): legend says she cut off her breasts to protest the breast tax (a tax lower-caste women had to pay if they wanted to cover themselves).
• Reform movements and missionaries encouraged more modest coverage for lower-caste women.
• Over time, the sari became nationalised as "Indian women's dress" — cutting across regional differences.

20th century changes

• What were sumptuary laws? Give one example from medieval Europe.
• How did French Revolution affect clothing norms in Europe?
• Why did Gandhi choose khadi? What did the charkha symbolise?
• Describe three different ways Indians responded to pressure to adopt Western dress.
• How did women's clothing change in the 19th–20th centuries?

Open the Practice tab for graded questions on Clothing & Social History.