Laila Tyabji Trashes NYT’s Sari Piece, Says Her Take Was Removed

Laila Tyabji

(Photo Courtesy: Facebook/Laila Tyabjee)

Indian social worker, designer, a founder of Dastkar - a Delhi-based non governmental organization, working for the revival of traditional crafts in India, Laila Tyabji, in a Facebook post, has shared how her opinions did not make it to New York Times’ contentious article on how the sari has become a nationalist symbol, even though she had been asked for them in the first place.

Asgar Qadri came to interview me for this piece and when he found I was saying exactly the opposite of what he wanted to hear, has wiped my views out of his article!

Her opinions, naturally, were quite contrary to the sentiment the NYT article seemed to espouse. In the same Facebook post, she has gone on to express them.

Tyabji Rubbishes NYT’s Claims

His (author Asgar Qadri’s) take is totally inaccurate. The irony is that the current BJP Government, while supporting yoga, Ayurvedic medicine, and other traditional Indian knowledge systems, and even a non-meat diet, has not pushed wearing of Indian costume at all! One cannot include the Prime Minister’s own outfits as ALL Indian Prime Ministers, of all political affiliations and parties, have always worn Indian clothes. In fact, Mr Modi is unusual in occasionally sporting western wear suits on his sorties abroad.

Laila Tyabji

The New York Times article says that fashion too had slipped into the expansive domain of nationalism in India. The author Asgar Qadri has opined that PM Modi’s efforts to restore Indian-ness in the fashion scene in India had begun with his Make in India campaign months after he took office.

The author, in his critical piece, has stated that the Indian fashion industry has been pressed to aggressively promote traditional attire and bypass western styles and that this effort aligns with a political attempt to allegedly project multi-faith India as a Hindu nation. Rubbishing these claims, Tyabji has said:

The traditional Indian clothes that Indians wear — the sari, salwar kameez, dhotis, lehenga ordni, the lungi and the mekala chador, sherwanis, achkans and Nehru jackets, have nothing to do with Hinduism! They, their many regional variations, and Indian stitched garments themselves, (including Mr Modi’s own ubiquitous bandgala waistcoat and churidar-kurta), have evolved over the centuries as responses to climate, lifestyle, and influences from many other cultures and wearing styles across the globe.

Laila Tyabji

Banarasi Sari Not Political

Placing the promotion of the famous Banarasi sari with a wider political agenda, the NYT article says:

The Banarasi sari is woven in the northern Indian city of Varanasi, formerly called Benares or Banaras, which happens to be Mr Modi’s political constituency. It is also one of the holiest cities for Hindus, who consider it the eternal home of Lord Shiva, the Supreme God.

Expressing her disagreement with this contention, Tyabji pointed out that instead of actively promoting traditional Indian costume, the Modi government’s main efforts had been directed towards pushing Indian handlooms internationally by sending designers to various handloom centres to design western garments for the international market and which are slated to be launched at fashion shows and trade fairs in fashion capitals across the world.

This, coupled with the handloom mark and handloom day, are part of an attempt to support India’s declining handloom industry as opposed to “some dark reactionary agenda.”

Tyabji says this is a point she made to Qadri, as well.

Handloom weaving has been supported by all Indian governments since independence solely because it is one of the largest sectors of employment, now under threat because of mill and power loom production, Tyabji clarified.

Incidentally, handloom has nothing to do with Hinduism. A vast percentage of handloom weavers, including those in Mr Modi’s constituency Varanasi, are Muslims! To conflate promotion of weaving or wearing handloom with a Hindu Fundamentalist agenda is as absurd as saying that the fact that I, as a Muslim, have worn Handloom saris on a daily basis all my adult life, reveals some hidden Hindutva connection!

Along similar lines, an article published in The Quint criticising the reasoning in Qadri’s piece highlights a very basic paradox:

Touting sari as a cog in the fast-spinning wheel of the Hindutva agenda, the author has managed to discredit a substantial number of sari-wearing Muslim women not only in India but in the larger subcontinent, whose sartorial choices were not suddenly altered post 2014.

The Quint

The NYT piece descriptively asserts that: “The government’s aim certainly has been to produce a popular fashion aesthetic that matches the broader political program of Hindu nationalism.”

An assertion Laila Tyabji has vehemently refuted.

Perhaps it IS curious that a government which has reached back into India’s cultural and spiritual past for much of its political rhetoric, has NOT really pushed national costume. Possibly because it doesn’t need to. Indians, while increasingly wearing Western wear, will always go back to our own wonderful garments as well.

Laila Tyabji

Public is er...Confused

A large number of people have expressed their confusion with the intent of the article. Many are of the opinion that it is “an argument for an argument’s sake.”

Here are some of the reactions on the internet:

The Quint has curated a list here.