Abstract
Due to migration and international gift exchange, readymade Indian Wear has become available to a higher number of Guyanese. These imported clothes are considered ‘foreign,’ as opposed to self-made ‘local’ garments. Discussing the notion of brand as a means to create ‘foreign status,’ Chap. 3 demonstrates that readymade Indian Wear connects Guyanese to the ‘outside,’ displays cultural and social capital, and enables them to partake in Indian modernity. This is relevant as Guyanese Indian culture has been inferiorized in the past. Drawing on theories of mimicry, transculturality, and creolization, this chapter discusses the (colonial) Hindu adaptation of British-Christian clothing styles as strategic imitation and highlights varying standards of ‘respectability.’ It demonstrates that the notions of refinement and clothedness, as well as orientalist discourse have particularly affected male sartorial practices.
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Notes
- 1.
No, hear what happened! I told you that the things started to come from abroad, right? And the overseas clothes started to come then. So, when they went out, they saw it in the movies and so, the shalwar dress, and all kinds of different things, so they saw that in India now, … some people dress in sari, some people dress differently and that is how they implemented different dress. And the different wear was spread all around!
- 2.
Well, after the country opened up, democracy was brought to the country, the country was developing economically and financially. There was a high level of stability everywhere, and so the overseas relatives assisted greatly too, in posting barrels as we would normally say. Giving pittances and what have you, remittances, and so we in Guyana were able to buy or purchase, because we had been having a lot of help from the overseas relatives, too. And then the prices, rather the … it was affordable, to purchase and buy these dresses and the like.
- 3.
[Indian Wear] has been here for a while, even during the hard time in the 70s, they were here, but people couldn’t afford it. Because our living standard was very low. So we would use things that are cheaper, in the sense of hand reach. But most of these things that are flourishing now, it’s under this government, like they bring most, a lot more stuff comes in. More plentiful now. Like since 1992, we had a lot more things coming from India. Then they will have an Indian trade fair, where they will bring things from India and people would go and shop around, look around, see what you like, and you buy, because the prices will be reasonable.
- 4.
- 5.
Forbes Burnham was Prime Minister from 1964 to 1980 and Executive President from 1980 to 1985.
- 6.
… or the prohibition of certain items, like aloo [potatoes] or potatoes, flour, dhal [lentils] and what have you, they were items very necessary in Hindu functions. So much so that if they were absent, it was… I’d say, you would be prevented from performing puja adequately. Satisfactorily. So, the dictatorship during that time affected Hindu culture and religion significantly. People were scared too, because if they were caught with these items, they were jailed, imprisoned and they were heavily fined, … harassed, beaten, and in many cases it is reported that they lost their lives.
- 7.
Here, I refer to Daniel Miller’s The Comfort of Things (2008).
- 8.
Annie: Yes, a long time ago people were doing these embroidery works themselves and so. Now you get the machines to do those things.
Deomati: And a long time ago, then, only very rich people could have bought a sari. You took the same five yard cloth, and you duck it in dye water. And you wore it when you got married. A poorer class of people!
- 9.
The privately owned Berbice Bridge was opened on December 24, 2008, providing the option to cross the river by car, minibus, or other vehicle.
- 10.
First, as a young girl, when we couldn’t afford the readymade ones, you say, we used to buy cloth from the store and took it to the seamstress and she would make it. I’m sorry I don’t have one to show you. And she would make it, like the shalwar or the gharara. And you would buy these embroidery threads, and stitch it around the sleeves, and the neck, and like at the bottom of the skirt. And the pants, at the bottom, the embroidery threads.
- 11.
[P]eople never used to wear them [Indian clothes] that much. Because from what I’ve heard, you know, like what other people say now, that only when you were getting married you wore a sari. And it’s for a couple of years now that people wear all these Indian Wears to weddings and so forth, it wasn’t that very much popular, at the age of 16 that I know of.
- 12.
Some informants describe restrictions as to how the ‘five yard’ can be used. For example, Seeram explains confidentially that a ‘five yard’ can be reused only as bedsheets for boys. It would be inappropriate to use it as sheets for (potentially menstruating) girls and women as well as for adults, for they could be having sexual intercourse on it—both polluting contexts.
- 13.
‘Dress Code.’ Stabroek News, May 17, 2009, np.
- 14.
For example, Hindu marriages conducted by pandits were not legally recognized until 1945 in Trinidad (Jha 1976b; Vertovec 1992). Basdeo Mangru states for the context of Hindu marriages in Guyana, that it ‘took over 100 years for the Guyanese Government to introduce legislation’ (1999, 34), hence indicating that legislation was granted similar to Trinidad during the 1940s.
- 15.
Later I discuss that his brother in Berbice stitches his dhoti to wear it as a readymade garment.
- 16.
Well people, when people got more civilized, they earned more money …. Now nobody wears that cotton thing! Now they are dressing up!
- 17.
This tradition may have been invented in Guyana, yet is still perceived as traditional. The concept of ‘inventing traditions’ is discussed in the following chapter.
- 18.
- 19.
I did not wear saris, I wore frocks to go. Well, you know, sometimes when I went to a place, like when I went to help and stuff like that, saris were handling [restricting] you. You understand? When I went and wore that. But that, when I went there, when I went to this place in town, to Maha Sabha with this girl [her daughter], I went there, well I would sit down sarouta there. When they did this puja—you have to call them puja as well, because that is also a puja that they do there.
- 20.
[T]he prices for these particular Indian clothes were a little exorbitant. Not everyone could have afforded them. So, they resorted to easy-made dresses, as it were, long wide-flowing dresses, were worn by the females, and only the rich people could have afforded it. So that is why not many people wore saris or lahenges or shalwars, given the exorbitant prices of importing and all of that.
- 21.
Here, Fanon addresses that black, colonized people had to wear a white mask to acquire a certain status in colonial society. He implies that they had to adopt the cultural standards of the ‘mother country,’ a process which he perceives as a ‘cultural imposition’ (1986 [1952], 194).
- 22.
Sinah: So then have they had church clothing? Was the white dress the church clothing? Or did they wear that all the time?
Shanti: The white dress. Any time you wore the dress and you came out, well everybody knew, said, ‘This person is going to church.’ With the orhnis. You get the white dress and the orhni.
- 23.
During a Sanatan ritual in New York City I observed a performative reinstatement and negotiation of Indian authenticity with regard to modes of wearing the shawl. On one occasion, some young girls, dressed as female deities in ghararas, shalwars, and lahenges, were lined up in front of the altar, when suddenly a woman rushed to the front and turned around the shawls of two girls, who wore it in the Guyanese style (ends toward the front), to have them wear it in the ‘authentic’ Indian style (ends toward the back).
- 24.
Creolization and particularly hybridization are criticized due to their development and connotation to biological and racist origins (Stewart 1999, 45). I am aware of this criticism, but cannot engage in an extensive discussion of the term at this point. A vast literature already exists that critically addresses the (dis)advantages of the use of creolization. For critical approaches see, for example, Hall (2003).
- 25.
Deomati: And they had a church, and then these people when they were playing, they walked the fire right around the church. The fire—the drain was over there—and the fire was blazing, you know, and they just wore a small thing, they called it langoti.
Sinah: Langoti?
Deomati: Yes, no buckta [male underwear, shorts], no trunks, no short pants, no dhoti!
Annie: So, what was it like. Tell her what it was like.
Sinah: Langoti…
Deomati: It was a little piece of cloth, just to cover. Barely, and you wore it. That was a long…
Sinah: And a shirt?
Deomati: Huh? No, they did not wear shirts! Because they were walking on this fire. This I saw with my [own] eyes. I was small. And from that on I never again saw another church do it.
- 26.
During fieldwork Annie explained that one particular temple conducts the fire-walking ceremony annually. This was clearly marked as exceptional.
- 27.
But the cloth, the five yard cloth or the seven yard cloth, it will be raw cloth. Like one that has no writing, or… no drawing or no border or nothing. (…) The dhoti now, it has been bordered, it carries different colors, like the yellow, green, a lot of different colors. Among the original colors is yellow or the original color white. That is the dhoti.
- 28.
“The Dhoti Song.” http//:www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEjmQ_7pWNk. Last access: April 29, 2014.
- 29.
Sinah: When I went to the mandir, for example to the Sunday service, I saw that women wear the Indian Wear. But most of the time the men they would wear like regular pants and t-shirt.
Pt. Lakshman: Right, yes.
…
Sinah: Do you know any reason why they choose not to wear [the kurta]?
Pt. Lakshman: Why they don’t wear it is because some of the boys, they only wear the top. And they would wear the normal pants. Or they will wear their white shirts. White is good also. But then the kurta, the kurta makes you a little more of a religious person. It makes.... Clothing has a lot to do between you and your relationship to god. It means that when you wear this kind of clothing, your devotion will be stronger, and your mind focuses more. So, some of the boys, I would say, they will not wear it because I think they are ashamed to wear it.
- 30.
I don’t know, because… for that reason [for the shame of wearing it] they might not go to the mandir either. But some … not like me, if I do not wear the outfit, the kurta and the other things, I do not feel like going to a mandir. Like [I] can’t do without it. But other people, when they wear it, because they don’t wear it regularly, they feel funny. You know they feel as if people are going to laugh at them. It is not because they don’t want to go, but they feel that people will laugh at them.
- 31.
The men have to wear kurta and they wear… not even hard pants, I don’t like the boys to wear hard pants with kurta. There are nice pants! Because when my husband died, I bought a kurta for him. Ten thousand dollars for the kurta. It had the soft, soft material pants, stitched with it.
- 32.
Muscular Hinduism is linked to the resurgence of Hindu nationalism in India (Jain 2007).
- 33.
Yes, the pandit wears the dhoti, and actually now, after there is so much of technology and things have become so much nicer, you take the dhoti, the same dhoti, and you stitch it. So it is easier, instead of wrapping it [for a long time, in a long procedure]. You [just] put it on. Because, I don’t wear dhotis regularly, I stitch my dhotis. So, if you are in a hurry, you just put it on, fasten the button, and you’re gone. So it doesn’t matter if you have to wear the dhoti, but you have to use the… they are using the cloth of the color and you shape it like one dhoti.
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Kloß, S.T. (2016). Stitching Readymade Dhotis: The Social History of Indian Wear in Guyana. In: Fabrics of Indianness. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56541-9_3
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