Today our topic of discussion is Dress and Ornaments .
Dress and Ornaments
As woman’s role changed and she got access to the world outside the home, her dress and appearance too became objects of reform. Women’s dress in the traditional Hindu andarmahal of the well to do was a light sari worn without undergarments which gave a semi-transparent look.
The Brahmo dress reform which laid great emphasis on ‘covering the body with more clothing was largely influenced by the puritan reaction of the English missionaries and colonists to such scanty attire.
Distinctions were drawn along lines of class and culture in the mode of dress adopted by Muslims. Ibrahim Khan had observed: “Among the poorer classes lengths of cloth called ‘gamcha’ were much in use.
Village women wore coarse woven saris. Men and women of bhadro [sic] families 91 wore dhotis and saris then as they do now.” The writer referred to well-to-do rural households. Only munshis (secretaries) and maulvis (religious leaders) wore the “lungi’ favoured by peasants in East Bengal (which later became the most popular dress in the region).
The maulvis and those who considered themselves Ashraf as against Atraf, had their own dress code a throwback from Mughal times loose trousers (pajama). tunic (choga), vest coat (chapkan) etc., topped by a topi or cloth hat. The dhoti was considered a typically Hindu dress – but many New Muslims took to wearing it.
A similar political and class dimension insidiously crept into women’s attire. Though the picture is far from clear, women of high sharif culture seemed to favour the dress imported from northern India (such as kurta, shalwar, churidar, gharara, dopatta, etc.) rather than the indigenous sari. Several interviewees remember remnants of these ‘north Indian dresses in old trunks, and tales of marriages where brides wore such garb.92 This mode of dress was however, limited to a very confined elite.
None other than James Wise, the British commentator whose work is much esteemed, recorded the Islamization in dress reform which was taking place in the latter half of the nineteenth century with a certain nostalgia: of late years they [Bengali women] have laid aside the graceful sari and adopted a jacket with long sleeves which does not add to their comeliness.
The prejudice toward ‘non-Islamic garments was articulated by some publi- cists who took part in the ‘politics of dress in those days. Opinions were expressed against wearing of saris (though, admittedly this opinion was not widespread).
Meherulla (of Khulna) in his manual Islam Kaumudi published in 1914 recommended that women should give up wearing ‘half-nude or ‘Bengali’ dress and take to Arabian or Turkish attire.95 This strain of thinking continued for some time.
The Behesti Zewar had declared that ‘western garments’ were na-jayez (not allowed in scriptures). When the text was translated into Bengali in 1961, the particular passage was transmuted thus: “Wearing of Saris by women is a violation of Sunna (that which is desirable because of its advocacy by Prophet Muhammad)”, 96 Moreover, he pointed out, Bibi Fatema, and Hazrat Ayesha never wore the sari.
An article in Islam Darshan (1925) pointed out that not only menfolk. but Muslim girls of good family were rejecting traditional dress such as ‘ijer-tahban’, ‘kurta-chadar’ with relief in favour of “fine, semi-transparent saris from Farashdanga” and modelling themselves on Hindu heroines in novels. But, the writer added in a note of praise for the Brahmo and Hindu models: “But alas! Where is the high ideal of Ashalata or Anupama in her life? She has managed to emulate only their attire. More than this she failed to absorb,”
Such opinions revealed that there was a section in society, however small, that perceived woman’s dress as a symbol of tradition and identity and was unwilling to relinquish the authority that would determine its mode and style to the ‘Bengalicized’ camp, Dress, to a degree lesser than in language, was a contested site for ethnicity and identity. The issue, like many other apparently innocuous matters, was politically potent.
The process of modernization among Bengal Muslims, concomitant with the growth of a middle class, also effected a cultural transformation (termed ‘Bengalicization’). A new dress code came into being with the emergence of the new Muslim middle class-which was modelled, to a large extent, on the reformed dress of Brahmo men and women.
Men took to a long shirt or tunic and pyjama, chadar or shawl, the more westernized ones favoured western dress trousers, shirt, coat, bow-tie, etc. Women went for the Brahmika sari, the chemise, the jacket, etc.
In the sketch of Nawab Faizunnessa drawn by a contemporary, she was shown wearing a sari, and a long sleeved chemise. Petticoats and shoes soon came into vogue. By the 1920’s the sari was adopted both by the middle and upper class and families hitherto conscious about their ‘sharif’ status accepted the indigenous forms of dress.
Rokeya and Mrs M. Rahman had also deplored the semitransparent Fara- shdanga saris and uppergarments worn by the dweller of the traditional andarmahal.
But unlike the male writers above, they advocated the refor- med dress of Brahmo women the jacket, the Brahmika sari, the chemise. petticoat and shoes. By the early twentieth century, most of the Muslim educated women of the emergent middle class looked very similar to the Brahmo and Hindu bhadromohils.
That such attire was also popular among the Muslim bhadromohila was (indirectly) attested by Khairunnessa’s appeal (1905) to Bengali women to forsake foreign goods in support of the Swadeshi Movement:
Sisters, come let us pledge to discard foreign made saris. The English bodice, chemise and socks should not gain favour anymore. Let us use rose scent instead of lavender perfume and free ourselves from stumbling in a lady shoe [sic])… Let us take to handloom and silk saris from Bombay, Dhaka, Pabna, Murshidabad 98 and Nadia.
The one item of clothing quite unique to Muslim women was the burga- which surprisingly was also a part of dress reform.
An amalgam of cloak, hood and veil, it was essentially a travelling garb meant to be worn over regular clothes. No respectable woman of the nineteenthth century would step out of the andar without it. Though it had evolved from certain items of covering in Western Asia like the veil and the chadar, it was a peculiar innovation of Muslims in India.
The burga as a ‘reformist innovation came into use in India when women of the upper class started to appear in public. Formerly women who performed public functions did so behind a curtain (purdah) and in their public appearances wore a veil. For instance, Munno Jan the 18th century zamindar of Hughly. There are no references to the burqa in connection with these horseback riding women.
One must infer that it was designed for the ‘modern’ reformed woman who may now be needed to step out into the outside world. Thanawi recommended its use on these occasions. It was paradoxically both a device of liberation and bondage. It was designed for the woman who had to traverse the world of men (no need of a burga in the women’s quarters).
Simultaneously, it was also meant to render the woman ‘invisible to the male eye, in keeping with perceived Koranic injunctions. The burga was a hallmark of women of the upper and emergent middle classes. Lower class women then as always could dispense with the niceties of genteel modesty.
But no sharif woman would be caught dead without it. We can find an extreme example of this in one of the episodes of Aborodhbasini (1928), Rokeya’s diatribe against purdah. In the said episode, a lady fell on the rail-tracks and her burga got so entangled that she could not free it, nor would she discard it and show her face in the light of day.
She preferred death. Though part of Rokeya’s polemics, the episodes of Aborodhbasini to a large extent reflected the reality. In ano- ther of her essays titled “Burqa”, Rokeya defended the attire perhaps partly out of a strategic desire to survive in conservative society. However, it must be pointed out that Rokeya was fighting distorted notions and practice of purdah; she always believed in female modesty.
When Najibar Rahman wrote Goriber Meye, the burqa was a hallmark of respectablity coupled with modernity in the Muslim community. That is why there was quite a stir among the girls in the village school when the heroine Nuri, newly wed, clad in a burga and decked with ornaments, came to class for the first time after her marriage: “The next day there was quite a stir around noon at the girl’s school, when a girl arrived with a maid, wearing a coloured burga.
The garment is not so prevalent in rural areas, and so none had seen one. There was a wild rush to catch a glimpse of the girl clad in a strange apparel.”100 Nuri felt considerable discom- fort at donning the new apparel. But her husband comforted her: “Don’t let that bother you,.
The ignorant and seflish always criticize innovations. You may go to school without embarrasment. Muslim bhadromohila [sic] have been using the burqa from ancient times. It is a beautiful device for the preservation of Purdah.”
Women, from Faizunnessa to Rokeya, donned the burga when stepping out of the andar. Mrs Mehrunnessa in an article described the attire of her mother Malekunessa (1885-1975) a sari, chemise, brooch and burga, 102 Razia Khatun’s burga was rather fashionably made: “It was styled after Queen Victoria’s official dress. It had a black petticoat trimmed with lace, a coat with sleeves also black, and a white lace veil.
The burqa was thought indispensable till certainly the 1930’s. When Shamsunnahar went to her classes at Calcutta’s Diocesan Collegee she wore the burqa, 104 It was only in the 1940s that Muslim bhadromohila gradu- ally started discarding it.
By that time, the burga had served its purpose in a time of transition. The changing logos in the women’s section in popular periodicals some- times furnish one of the finest indicators of changes in dress style. For instance, Saogat, the mouthpiece of the progressive section, captioned its women’s page ‘Zanana Mahfil’ in 1928 (while at the same time the competing Journal Masik Mohammadi settled on the intermediate between Bengali and Urdu.
Mohila Mahfil’) and showed in its logo a couple of women sitting in the andarmahal in Persianized or north Indian attire, with the head cove- red. In 1940, however, the section title of the same journal changed to ‘Mohila Jagot’ (the World of Women) and the new logo showed a woman in sari, head uncovered, sitting in a car!
Kazi Nazrul Islam held many beliefs similiar to Rokeya’s on the question of women’s emancipation. Culturally the Bengali poet was a syncretist – he had married a Hindu bhadromohila-though he also believed like other lib- erals of the period that Muslims needed to believe in the glory of their past. Politically and economically, he dreamed of an oppression free society based on egalitarianism. What Rokeya formulated in pedagogic prose, he expressed in fiery verse.
In one of her earlier essays “Alonkar na badge of slavery [sic]?” (Ornaments or Badges of Slavery?), Rokeya condemned the use of jewellery with her usual rhetoric. She observed that ornaments were trinkets distri buted by men to women for the latter’s favours a paltry payment that belittled their status. Rokeya enjoined women to eschew such bribes.
From the aesthetic point of view, too, ornaments according to Rokeya were signs of the uncivilized. A poem by Nazrul echoed the sentiment (though he also wrote many songs and poems celebrating the bejewelled woman’s beauty):
Which tyrant holds you captive, woman, in silver and gold? That you cannot raise your head, look straight in the eye? Bracelets and anklets weigh you down. o’ fling aside your veil, break those glittering bonds.
with jewellery, though it continued to be in great favour among women. Most pictures of Brahmo women show them wearing tasteful ear-rings, a chain or pearl string over their blouse, a brooch pinned onto the sari at the shoulder, and bangles of gold and conch shell (if married).
Photo- graphs of Rokeya, Fatema and Razia Khatun show them without jewellery. Rokeya of course was a widow and Fatema separated. Married bhadromohila when young did wear some jewellery specially on festive occasions.
That women coveted jewellery was not surprising in that they were her only economic asset, as well as beauty aid. Najibar Rahman’s heroine Nuri was “resplendent in her finery and her jewels” even at school. Various ornaments are even described by name in the book.
In an essay “Alonkar’, published in 1920 in Al Eslam, Musammat Tambia Khatun expressed a view similar to Rokeya’s. Tambia reminisced about their teacher ‘Guru-ma’ at the village school who while teaching them the use of ornamental language in their grammer class, pointed out the difference bet ween ‘ornaments of gold’ and ‘ornaments of language.
The ‘guru ma’ poin- ted out to an enthralled audience that the advanced nations of the West were not so covetous of ornaments as Indians were. Tambia never forgot her teacher’s injunction:
Dear students, when you grow up to be mothers, remember to adorn your children with those ornaments which are enduring- manners, graces, learning… 106
Thanawi, too, had made similar recommendations in his book. In fact the title itself.
Behesti Zewar, means heavenly ornament and the rhetoric of the title was such that it could mean both pieces of good advice and the price- less product of the advice, ie. the reconstructed woman. The author starts his book with the advice of a mother to her daughter:
Darling child, the glitter of gold and silver is useless.
Therefore, adorn yourself with real or heavenly ornaments.
The jhumar (head-ornament) should be of wisdom,
The earrings religion, the necklace of pious deeds.
The armlet diligence and labour of strong hands.
No precious metal should adorn your feet,
But see that they never slip from the path of truth,
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