Here’s tailor-made politics to suit-boot everyone | Economic Times

2Thomas Carlyle’s 1836 English novel Sartor Resartus (The Tailor Retailored) deals with the rambling musings of a fictive German philosopher, Diogenes Teufelsdrockh (roughly translatable as ‘god-born devil-dung’), which in the form of a manuscript titled, ‘Clothes: Their Origin and Influence,’ is being pored over by an irascible English editor. The novel is a satirical take on the German political philosophy of the 18th and early 19th centuries, particularly as represented by the impenetrable intricacies of the Hegelian school of thought. The garments referred to in the title of the manuscript represent the garb – or garble – of historical interpretation.Had Carlyle’s novel, which gained admirers as diverse as Mark Twain and Jorge Luis Borges, been penned today, the writer might well have been tempted to add a footnote to his text, culled from the recent advisory issued to members of the British House of Commons by the Speaker, Lindsay Hayle, under the rubric ‘Rules of Behaviour and Courtesies’ as MPs return to Westminster after the easing of Covid-19 lockdown restrictions.In order to ‘demonstrate respect for… constituents, for the House, and for the institution of Parliament in the life of the nation,’ members have been enjoined to adopt ‘business attire’ and eschew ‘jeans, T-shirts, and sleeveless tops,’ while in the Chamber, the appropriate dress code being defined, for men, as a jacket and a tie. However, if Cool Britannia’s claim to be a multicultural and gender-equitable polity is to be validated, saris, salwar kameezes and hijabs should be included as acceptable for women, and kurta pajamas, vestis, tartan kilts and dhotis for men.The putative rejoinder made by Mohandas Gandhi when on emerging after tea with George V from Buckingham Palace in 1931, attired in his customary dhoti and shawl he was asked by a journalist if he didn’t feel underclad for the occasion is said to have been, ‘The king had on enough clothes for the both of us.’ Another, equally apocryphal, version of the story has the Sant from Sabarmati observing that ‘People here wear plus-fours, I wear minus-fours.’Such pluses and minuses of political calculus surfaced during the French Revolution when, to distinguish themselves from the reviled aristocracy of the overthrown Ancien Régime who wore culottes (knee-breeches), those who sided with the commoners dubbed themselves sans-culottes (without knee-breeches) and sported ankle-length trousers, much before the British Regency dandy, George Bryan ‘Beau’ Brummel – who was a one-time close friend of the then prince of Wales, George IV, before he became king – made them fashionable in England.The Hispanic equivalent of the French sans-culottes were the descamisados (the shirtless) of Argentina, a pejorative employed by the landowning elite to describe the peasantry. The derogatory term, however, was turned into an election-winning accolade by the populist president Juan Peron, and his wife, Eva, who described their followers as descamisados. When he toured the country while campaigning for the presidency in 1945, Peron named the train he was travelling on El Descamisado, a nominal ruse on which he literally bet his shirt to win the popular vote.Closer to home and present times, the coinage ‘Suit-boot ki sarkar’ – attributed to white kurta-clad Rahul Gandhi in July 2014 – has been used as political ammunition to target an administration that wears its allegedly crony capitalist heart on its metaphorically pinstriped, bespoke sleeve.Inverting Clausewitz, there are those who believe that politics is a continuation of war by other means. Or, if Carlyle’s Herr Teufelsdrockh and others of his bent of mind are to be taken into account, politics can be the continuation of wardrobe by other means.