Fashion, Politics, and Identity in Mughal South Asia — The Public Domain Review

Appearances had an enormous role to play within the theatre of court. The emphasis on dress, which was an inescapable reality of public life, posed a quandary for the Mughals, who found themselves in contact with two distinct sartorial cultures, which were characterised by what cultural historian Phillip Wagoner calls their “sharply opposing attitudes to the body”. In the Indic system of dress, the body was seen as a defining feature of the person, something that reflected “the inner states and qualities of the individual”. The classical Sanskrit poet Kālidāsa, for instance, describes a heroic prince by saying “his intellect matched (sadṛśa) his appearance”. Clothing functioned to frame, accentuate, and reveal the body’s contours. This is precisely why traditional depictions of Indian kings show the ruler bare-chested or dressed in sheer, untailored cloth hanging loosely over his shoulders. In sharp contrast, the Islamicate attitude to dress considered the unclothed body to be shameful and held that God provided clothing to cover the nakedness of man — a purpose well fulfilled by the varied robes and tunics that characterised royal dress codes. The taboo against displaying the body was so great that these garments were worn loosely, to avoid revealing the shape of the figure underneath. Amid such contrasting cultural worlds, cotton — as scholar Sylvia Houghteling puts it — “provided a fabric of compromise”. The thin, loose cotton jāma allowed the body of the king to be covered, while its translucence revealed his “inner state” — a quality that served the Mughal rulers in many ways.