Why Indian politicians prefer not to talk fashion

Ever since she stopped dyeing her hair more than a year back, waiting for the messy grey to grow into subdued salt, Nirmala Sitharaman has been particularly attentive to her sari selection. For years, she wore handlooms from her home state of Andhra Pradesh besides Tamil Nadu’s pattus, but there has been a stylistic shift recently. The colours she now chooses in Mangalagiris and Kanjeevarams, the gossamer of Venkatagiris, some allowance for zari, handloom blouses made from kalamkari and ikat fabrics match the confidence she now exudes as Finance Minister.

Nothing screams for attention but everything is curated, the blouses ever so subtly mismatched and tailored to good fits. A few weeks back, for Business Today’s Budget Round Table 2024, Sitharaman wore an aubergine silk sari, with a blue and silver border, an ikat blouse slightly off-matched and, well, a blue glass bangle that you would seldom spot in the past.

Political dressing in India — not trendy but sharply symbolic of the revealing-concealing grammar of identity and ambition — is the core of culture and fashion writer Kapda Kalam’s conversation with a small group of friends one sweltering afternoon at Delhi’s IWPC. The Indian Women’s Press Corps, where fashion writers never want to be seen, is her favourite hangout. The kind of club where eavesdroppers and news journalists know exactly what she means when she talks about BJP spokesperson Sanju Verma carefully dropping three inches of her sari pallu on one side to reveal a sleeveless arm for television appearances. That’s her branding. Or, how green stoles sometimes twisted into pagdis by Rashtriya Lok Dal leader Chaudhary Jayant Singh are his way to show solidarity with farmers.

Besides outdoorsy jackets, the political scion of Jat land, now the minister of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, Singh favours ikat kurtas and jackets — often in black and white. It may be incidental, but he chooses well because his wife Charu Singh is a fashion designer. As Kapda Kalam tells her friends, many politicians make strong dressing statements; why are we not looking their way?

More importantly, why are they not looking our way to discuss the semiotics of dress and politics. How long will the Nehru vs Modi jacket battle, Gandhi’s khadi and Indira Gandhi’s handloom sorority be the reference points?

A new draft of political dressing

Earlier this year, Rahul Gandhi’s basic T-shirts and cargo pants found some mention, but not a paragraph surfaced on Priyanka Gandhi Vadra’s salwar kameez sets (handloom saris strategically on stand-by) or how she is growing her short hair into a frizzy shoulder length style during the Congress campaign for the 2024 elections.

Conformed to the familiar narrative of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s style, his jackets and turbans, his rumoured grooming rituals, those who occasionally comment on the political aesthetic in India borrow from that go-to script. Or, find soapy stories in what film stars turned politicians wear.

That’s why the dressed down cabinet, plain at first sight, at the third swearing in of the BJP-led NDA government this June, went without much ado in reportage. Most stared at freshly minted MP Kangana Ranaut for obvious cues of glamour in her cream and gold sari, her hair and make-up done to suit an evening at Rashtrapati Bhavan.

The stately, off-white and magenta Kanjeevaram of President Draupadi Murmu — whose elevated taste in saris since she took office is a matter of serious documentation for Kapda Kalam — did not catch the reporter’s eye. Nor did the peach-coloured Nepali cap worn by Jyotiraditya Scindia, Union Minister of Communications and Development of the North Eastern region. It was a marked departure from the colourful pagdis he would wear to Parliament in the past. Insiders told Kapda Kalam that Scindia was mourning his mother, Madhavi Raje, and the cap honoured her Nepali roots.

Little has been written about “political daughters”, millennials both — Bansuri Swaraj, lawyer-politician, and daughter of the hardcore traditionalist dresser and leader, the late Sushma Swaraj. Or, Iltija Mufti, media advisor to the People’s Democratic Party, and daughter of Mehbooba Mufti.

In her audaciously argued book The Journalist and The Murderer, Janet Malcolm writes about the promise a journalist holds out to an interviewee, as a collaborator, sympathetic listener, “genuinely attuned to their vision” while in fact, being a practitioner of deceit. Readers of a work of journalism can only imagine, writes Malcolm, “how a writer gets the subject to make a spectacle of themselves.”

It’s a serious charge. But perhaps the fear of that kind of experience has landed hard on the relationship between politicians and those who write on apparel, identity, regional representation and semiotics of political appearances. No interviews are granted on clothes if the request is sent without the “handloom consciousness” tag. The clever politician senses the murderer in a journalist and thwarts the crime.

Fear of the flippant

Politicians try to control the narrative. Journalists are denied all on-record accounts of mythologies of dressing, private collections of shawls, heritage fabrics, or fascination for trends, experimental textiles and haute couture. Unless they write what is mandated and publish only after official “approval”. Else it is too “flippant” to be risked. Politicians loathe being reduced to dandy dressers. The result is a fracture, a near-total absence of documentation of personal style statements in political life, peculiarly those not linked with patronage for handlooms.

The politician either ducks behind spotless white, a loaded satire of our times, or wears handlooms. Women politicians continue to avoid sleeveless sari blouses. It is hard to say if they dress to define who they are as persons, or the party ideology that catapults them to power. Looking Indian within the narrow confines of political life is easy.

Readers have little idea which politician is well-informed about experimental textiles, the country’s escalating might in recycled fabrics. Wearing and promoting them could well be a part of the new politician’s resume, but it is not. Rebels such as Trinamool Congress MP Mohua Moitra, who assert individuality, including by refusing to deglamourize, are mocked.

But this is a new season in global politics. The mixed racial identity of U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, Democratic nominee for president, is being discussed threadbare. Not just her understated pantsuits, pearls and friendly laughter but why talking more, during her campaigns, about her Indian mother Shymala’s roots and her Jamaican father’s convictions could change the cadence around her “image”.

Kapda Kalam must thus stop ruing the murder of dress journalism. She needs to write about West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s smart watch and Mother Teresa sari complexity. Interview Jual Oram, Minister of Tribal Affairs on cultural appropriation in dress. Look away from Ranaut’s back slapping camaraderie with dapper dresser Chirag Paswan, to notice the democratic wardrobe (not focussed only on Maharashtrian handlooms, thankfully) of Maharashtra MP Raksha Khadse who won from Raver this year.

The murder of the story might just be thwarted, if Kapda Kalam uses her pen as a weapon. Shoot at sight is equally critical. It was a timely shot after all that showed TDP MP A.N. Kalisetti arrive on a yellow bicycle wearing a yellow kurta for his first day in Parliament this July.

The writer is editor-in-chief of ‘The Voice of Fashion’.