Introduction
In the 2018 Harvard India Conference, Sabyasachi Mukherjee, India’s leading fashion designer, said this among other things:
I think, if you tell me that you do not know how to wear a saree, I would say shame on you.
Women’s clothing in general has been a bone of contention among men, especially those in conflict with each other, since times immemorial. Much before the decontextualized images of some Afghan women in western clothing (miniskirts specifically) were used by detractors as evidence of the misogyny of the Taliban (valid) and by extension of Islam (invalid, or rather, subjective like all institutions), women’s fashion had been inextricably linked to war. In the twentieth century, the two World Wars were hailed as harbingers of the relaxation of women’s dressing norms in the West, and the rest of the world, as a whole. In cases like this, the body becomes the point of negotiation between the inside and the outside and sexuality, which is essentially centered in the female body, becomes political. In this essay, I will try to explore this by looking at the clothing item that dominated political discourses across the territories of Pakistan and the two Bengals in the context of the Liberation War and its aftermath, the saree.
Of late, right-leaning publications like the Swarajya magazine have articles whose comment sections are populated by men mourning the apparent loss of the saree among Indian women and the concomitant rise of the salwar kameez (the convenience of the latter for the working woman gets lost in these conversations, of course). However, what is glaringly missing since 1971 in any of these debates are women’s opinions regarding their own bodies- even in Bangladesh where the salwar-kameez still evokes ‘Bihari’ memories. There are ongoing government-backed attempts to revive the Dhaka Muslin sarees in the Islamic State of Bangladesh. This creates a disjuncture (which will be addressed soon) as in the last decade, there have been consistent and renewed efforts to promote the saree in the international market as something that is uniquely Indian.
In the 20th century, the saree is internationalised by the likes of Gisele Bundchen in a Suneet Varma saree with a drapery style not followed by the average Indian woman irrespective of religion. The saree as worn by Bengali women during the years leading up to the Liberation War is representative of a bygone era, of a currency system that no longer works. And yet both are sources of Indian pride, as India repeatedly projects itself as the ultimate winner of the Liberation War of Bangladesh. And this combined pride expectedly evokes derision from its western neighbour. The communalization of the saree was completed by its enhanced reception in the other two territories culminating in the Liberation War, and indicative of the notion that the saree post-’71 got snagged at the barbed wires of the borders.
The History of the Political Reception of the Saree
That the saree could embody the geography of the entire subcontinent enclosed by the patriarchal nation-state has a nationalist legacy dating back to the freedom struggle in the subcontinent (Kawlra). Before that, not only was the saree expected to be varied in its composition and drapery, but the differences in style were exaggerated and maintained by the taxonomically inclined British. All that changed with the advent of nationalism and the accompanying need to create a civilized ‘Indian’ past which was rooted in contemporary notions of feminine decency. In other words, the woman’s body was yet again entrusted with the burden of projecting national heritage and decency. This, of course, had to negotiate with the still-existing differences in region, class, caste, religion, age, physique and marital status simultaneously. But I argue that up until that point, nobody from the subcontinent tried to situate the saree politically, even when it draped most of the region- as famously encoded in Raja Ravi Verma’s 1889 painting ‘Galaxy of Musicians’ (banner picture).
Following the rise of nationalism, ‘[B]y postulating stitched clothing as the attire of foreign invaders of the ancient land – Mughals and the British, the discourse established an unbroken legacy and indigenous preference for the ‘unstitched’ or draped garment as emblematic of the emergent, primarily Hindu, nation’ (Kawlra).
Even after the Partition of 1947, in spite of the incipient murmurs surrounding the vigorous need for the newly formed land of the pure to claim Islamic authenticity, and the dominant elite in the new India to propagate their social control unimpeded, the saree remained untouched by and large. In fact, it flourished. The attire became a contentious political issue dominating the forefront only with the language movement in the then-East Pakistan, during which the women wore the distinct starched cotton saree to take to the streets. By contrast, in West Pakistan women participated comparatively less in public politics, nor did they make political, economic and cultural statements with their plain cotton sarees. This brought the Bengali women under international limelight. By the same token, it reinforced their ‘otherness’ in the eyes of the West Pakistanis. The divide would only increase henceforth, becoming its widest in India with Indira Gandhi, the ‘Durga’ figure who would take up the mantle to save the less-properly-clad East Bengali women in general and slay the Islamic[1] monster in particular.[2]
(Source: Wikimedia Commons)
[1] Different from ‘Muslim’.
[2]In Nilima Ibrahim’s Ami Birangona Bolchi, Tara Nielsen details her experiences in an army detention camp:
“We were not allowed to wear sari or a dopatta because they considered them a health hazard. Some girl in some other camp had hanged herself using her sari, we were told. So we only wore a blouse and a petticoat: torn and dirty, barely covering us. Once in a blue moon, they would bring a supply of cheap clothes and threw them at us, the way rich people distribute clothes among the beggars on the eve of a religious festival.” (Transl. Imtiaz)
And while women like Nusrat Bhutto would continue wearing the saree till the end of their lives, there would be no turning back for the political meanings of the saree in the three territories. The bodily practices of middle-class East Pakistani Bengali women, like wearing sarees, applying bindis on the forehead, flowers in their hair, would become provocative and visible symbols of resistance after the West Pakistani administration considered them un-Islamic because they were un-West Pakistani.
The reification of these meanings of the saree meant that the women in West Pakistani territories who had been traditionally wearing sarees or had partaken in the contemporary Karachi fashion were forced to give it up after it was banned by the military dictator General Zia ul-Haq (Imtiaz). Zia ul-Haq had become the military ruler of Pakistan after deposing Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who had attained notoriety for not being strong enough to hold on to the territory of East Pakistan, especially when faced with Indian forces. That the loss was also due to un-Islamic excesses like indulging in the sensuous East Bengali women is a sentiment that has been looked at by scholars like Zakaria, Salim and Saikia. Under such circumstances, the iron-handed Zia showed the way by returning to his interpretation of a rigorous Islam which involved banning the saree in 1981. While there were rebels like Iqbal Bano and Madam Noor Jehan who weaponised the saree, it was no longer for the average middle-class woman who wanted to avoid trouble. Even after Zia ul-Haq’s reign, Benazir Bhutto, whose saree-wearing mother Nusrat had been a style icon, and whose father had been disposed of under inglorious circumstances, found it prudent to appeal to the Pakistani masses in her shalwars and jackets. Interestingly, her niece Fatimah Bhutto, who has openly accused her aunt of killing her father, not only celebrates the saree-wearing legacy of her grandmother, but also wears it herself.
Nusrat Bhutto née Ispahani with son Murtaza Bhutto and grand-daughter Fatima Bhutto in Syria, 1989 (Source: Fatima Bhutto; Daily Beast).
Shifting Categories, Tottering Distinctions
As is wont to happen with praxis, the distinctions often tottered even during the war. This is brought out in contemporary Pakistani fiction featuring the Liberation War. In Aquila Ismail’s novel, Of Martyrs and Marigolds (2012) and Razia Fasih Ahmad’s novel Breaking Links (2006), one sees the myriad ways in which the saree features in the nation’s discourse via the woman’s body through the eyes of women in 1971. Suri, the non-Bengali protagonist of Of Martyrs and Marigolds, and her mother, express their love and allegiance for all things Bengali through their fascination with sarees, and when she wears a saree to visit her Bengali boyfriend Rumi, she feels like a bride. Sarees from different regions would have different connotations- Suri’s grandmother would send sarees from Lahore which were different from those found in the East Pakistani districts. At that time, the trade in sarees projected the integration of the two wings of Pakistan, while women coming to the Eastern wing to buy beautiful sarees at much cheaper rates showed the actual power relations between the two wings. In fact, this particular instance in Fasih Ahmad’s novel is illuminating:
All the shopkeepers knew Mrs Mirza very well because of her regular visits. The officers who came from West Pakistan on official visits always carried a long shopping list for their wives and Mrs Mirza was always willing to do the shopping for them. The shopkeepers treated her as a very valued customer.
…..
Mrs Mirza asked for their price and moved on to the next shop without striking a bargain.
‘Don’t let them open the sairs when you don’t intend to buy anything,’ Sarwat said.
Pressing her hand, Mrs Mirza whispered, ‘just have a look- these people love to exhibit their stuff. They enjoy it.’
Then she said, ‘Listen, Sarwat would you rather buy carpets? They are beautiful and cheaper than in West Pakistan!’
‘Why are they cheaper here?’
‘Things are cheaper here, you know, because these Bengalis demand their share half-and-half in exported goods as in everything else. But there are only a handful of us West Pakistanis who could afford to buy them.’
‘I don’t understand. Why should they have so much stuff if they can’t buy it?’
‘You know, it’s the passion for equality. They cry to have equality and parity and God knows what else…I don’t understand these things. I only know that they don’t have the taste and money to buy them.’
…..
When they approached Azeempura, they saw a procession of women holding placards written in Bangla. Their faces were grim, determined and impatient, and a glimmer of fire lit their eyes. They were all clad in starched cotton saris with their hair done up in simple buns. Elderly women had their heads covered with the palloo of their saris, but the young ones did not cover their heads.’
Bengali women across religions were the first to defy the curfew under Section 144 imposed in East Pakistan in 1952 (Source: Londoni).
As seen through the characters in both the novels, the saree is the means to show varied political, emotional and physical commitments which always do not align with region and religion, subverting nationalist discourses. The saree is also a determinant of economy- Indian sarees were banned in the markets of Pakistan post-’65, while the Western wing never promoted the sarees from the East in its own territory. Finally, the saree was also typological- the servant, the daughter of a celebrated Muktijoddha, the wives of non-Bengali men who love and hate the Bengalis respectively, the seductress, the mentally disabled woman in the streets, the raped woman, the daughter of a newly designated ‘Bihari’, all wear their sarees differently, and their attires tell their unique tales. Thus, we see an emergence and existence of a different kind of marker, the political whose trajectories diverge in theory and in praxis. The saree also becomes camouflage for Suri when she visits the Intercontinental Hotel at Ramana Park with Rumi to talk to the international correspondents about the plight of the Bihari women, because it would have been impossible for her to move through the streets the day after Pakistan’s surrender even remotely resembling a non-Bengali. The same is the case with the character nicknamed Benu in Ahmad’s Breaking Links, who wears the saree to disguise herself as a Bengali in a public hospital after the war, having married a Bengali man. Her cousin Zari is less fortunate on account of her physique and failure at cultural acclimatization, because of which she has to leave the new Bangladesh despite having a Bengali husband herself.
From the other side of the barbed wires, Ayesha Khatoon’s Bhangan Charit Katha (The Tale of the Broken) (2012) offers yet another perspective. In a section of the novel she describes the ‘ekusher saree’, a white saree with black motifs of Bengali alphabets (women also wear yellow sarees with red borders to commemorate 21st February, the International Mother Language Day) and the sentiments it evokes, especially in the seller Dulal da. It also shows the readers how it fails in enacting the unity which might be conveyed by Sushma Swaraj and Sheikh Haseena’s saree diplomacy[1]. The woman in Kolkata for whom Dulal da sends the ekusher saree through the hands of the narrator, Iklimu, refuses to acknowledge both the saree and the existence of Dulal da for fear of being marked as an ‘illegal immigrant’ by the authorities. The intended recipient had run away to West Bengal with her father as a child following the army crackdown in Dhaka in ’71, and never returned. Here too, the borders dictate that the women’s attire excludes. The saree, which always had the potential to unite the two Bengals in a language of aesthetics, fails in the face of rising polarization. And this directly impacts the blue-collared working woman, who often has to move back and forth across the Bengal border as she has been doing before the borders were even contemplated.This is because the Bengali Muslim saree wearing woman, making up a huge chunk of this mobile working class, is unqualifiedly Bangladeshi in the Indian national imagination. Her saree does not save her, nor do her clothing cultures occupy much discursive attention owing to being less visible, unless when they are appropriated by the demographies who influence fashion.
It is the curious case of the pajama that is the funniest and most indicative of my points actually. In the east, at least in the 70s, while there were distinctions of course, the men had it comparatively easy in terms of the integration among the religions due to the pan-geographical popularity of the pajama, dhoti and the gamcha, so much so that the Central Asian (and thus Islamic) origins of the pajama was gradually lost in the discourses of even the staunchest of nationalists. And obviously, it was easier and savvier to wear the pajama on the dais than the dhoti. Ironically, it is the pajama that has ended up binding the average middle-aged male politician across the three countries more than anything else.
The Men with the Means of Production
Thus, the saree as something uniquely Indian, propagated proudly by India after independence and pejoratively by Pakistan after the Liberation War of Bangladesh, becomes impractical to hold on to. The example of the Banarasi saree in its city of origin, the only type of saree whose Bengali variant was deemed worthy of promotion in West Pakistan during the pre-Liberation War days, is a case in point. Pravina Shukla writes:
‘Banaras’ population of Muslim weavers numbering two hundred thousand according to an estimate by weaver Shameen Ansari create the saris in one of the city’s weaving neighborhoods: Madanpura, Sonarpura, or Alaipura. National friction between Hindus and Muslims registers tensely in Banaras. The city is, according to many accounts, about forty percent Muslim and sixty percent Hindu. Most of those involved in the sari trade are Muslims, and they have the last name Ansari.’
So the presumption that the saree is exclusively Hindu by both Hindu and Islamic nationalists is as preposterous and unfounded as the West Pakistanis regarding the muhajirs and the East Pakistanis as lesser Muslims. Because whether it be the weavers of Varanasi or those from Bengal delta, they are the bearers of community traditions which are ancient.
Rather, what should be given greater attention is the fact that as material practices, the clothes worn by women are mostly made by men- whether it be the saree or the salwar or the lehenga. Regulating decisions on clothing thus often becomes a negotiation between the government and the businessmen, as already evident in the aforementioned sections on the regulation of the saree markets during the ’71 war. The consumers are at the receiving end of this chain, facilitating processes only by money and taste, which too are often dictated to them. So while problematic, it is not surprising that women really have very little say when it comes to the consumption of their own garments. The exertion of agency through the saree in times of conflict is thus an exceptional phenomenon contingent on nationalism. Female designers entering the domain of fashion is a very recent phenomenon in the subcontinent, and they are not strong enough yet to change entire traditions of clothing.
Conclusion
It is difficult to reify national costume owning projects simply because the particular costume in question predates the nations, and the religions as we know them today. While religion and money do get intertwined at some point, it is difficult as of now to solve the inherent contradictions which arise from this. Nusrat Bhutto once said something interesting to a reporter. She was oblivious to any alienation brought forth by her subject, and as such, she could in fact have described any saree-wearing woman in the subcontinent from any region and any religion:
“In my country, we do not show our legs. We show a little here,” (she said, gesturing toward her neckline), “and a little here,” (pointing to her midriff). “But not our legs. We do not have the miniskirt in Pakistan, you know” (Imtiaz).
Bibliography:
- Ahmad, Razia Fasih. Breaking Links: A Translation of Sadiyon ki Zanjeer. Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2006.
- Imtiaz, Saba. ‘Borders’. Fifty Two, All Things Small, 21st May, 2021. https://fiftytwo.in/story/borders/
- Ismail, Aquila. Of Martyrs and Marigolds. South Carolina: CreateSpace, 2011.
- Kawlra, Aarti. ‘Sari and the Narrative of Nation in 20th-Century India’. In Global Textile Encounters. Edited by Marie-Louise Nosch, Zhao Feng and Lotika Varadarajan. Oxbow Books, 2014.
- Khatun, Ayesha. Bhangan Charit Katha. Kolkata: Prativash, 2012.
- Shukla, Pravina. ‘Evaluating Saris: Social Tension and Aesthetic Complexity in the Textile of Modern India.’ Western Folklore, Vol. 67, No. 2/3. Western States Folklore Society, 2008. https://www.jstor.org/stable/25474912