Club or no club, Indian men should wear what is more suited to our climate

Suits and ties are hardly suitable for Indian climate and acceptance based on clothes is not genuine acceptance anyway

Recently, a well-known editor, TV personality and man-about-town, Shekhar Gupta, tweeted “Just got thrown out of Bangalore Club for being dressed in kurta-pajama”. He added that he had been better dressed then some of the men in polyster bush-shirts.

In response a friend of mine who is a member of the Club tweeted that it is, after all, a club, implying that it can ask its members to dress in the ways it prescribes. Another friend asked how the liberals of Bangalore, not to mention the eminent author Amitava Ghosh who had supported such dress codes in clubs, would respond.

I have no idea how, and nor do I care. But I do have two things to say. One, that a club is a club and can have whatever rules its members deem fit; and two, that it is stupid to have dress codes.

A cautionary tale

And thereby hangs a tale. In 1964 I had had to spend a few months in a ‘Christian’ school in Jabalpur. It was very old, very colonial and the school uniform included a tie.

One day while having breakfast I spilt something down the front of my school uniform shirt. It was while putting it on that I had my great Newtonian or Archmediean moment.

Ties, I concluded, were meant to hide stains. But when I said this to our old, Anglo-Indian master, he said who presided over our well-being. “It's to keep you warm, you idiot.” 

The sharp admonition came repeatedly to mind for many years whenever I had to attend a National Day function in Delhi. Most of the invitations the 1980s used to say you had to come in a suit. The only concession made to informality was that it could be a lounge suit. But a suit it had to be -- which also meant you had to wear shoes. It was only much later that they started saying ‘National Dress’.

So there we used to be, all the men, resplendent in our lounge suits, sweating like horses because air conditioning was not as ubiquitous as it is now and the function would often be held outdoors. It was all so awful that after a dozen or so experiences I stopped going.

Gender discrimination

But you know what? No dress code seemed to apply to the ladies who came flowing clothes, Indians in saris and salwars, East Asians in sarongs and the Europeans in loose flowery skirts. Not just that. The women wore chappals and sandals while the men squirmed in their shoes and socks.

It was then that that I had my Second Newtonian Moment – if layers of clothing suits, neckties and boots were meant to keep you warm, why were we wearing them in the tropics, that too in summer which lasts eleven out the twelve months?

Since that day, on the grounds of convenience as principle – why should girls have all the fun -- I have not worn a suit in India, except in Delhi's nippy winter. I wear only khadi bush-shirts, mostly white — which led one young colleague to ask me if I had only one shirt — and chappals or sandals, except during the Delhi winter.

Strange reason

But the story will not be complete until I tell another one. Some years ago I was invited to give a talk to some East Asians in Baroda, which is not a cold place by any reckoning. 

They were all in dark business suits and at some point during the talk, I said we Asians were great imitators, including in the matter of what we regarded as ‘formal' attire. One of them was sufficiently provoked to say that although he found western formal wear a real imposition, they all wore it because it made for greater acceptability.

I found that appalling. But then what does one do with such attitudes? I wanted to tell them that dignity was a state of mind – Gandhiji, for example -- and acceptance based on clothes was not really genuine acceptance. But I didn't.

I do, however, think that Indian men should switch to clothes more suited to our climate. Most have already but incidents such as the one at the various colonial era clubs are stupid and annoying.