Fashion in India: coercion or a flag for freedom?

The essay examines how fashion mediates our knowledge of human relationships in Indian English literature from an anthropological perspective of the value of clothing in Indian culture. The first part of the essay analyses the importance that Gandhi’s khadi had for the independence of India and the role it plays in Mulk Raj Anand’s novel Untouchable (1935). The second part illustrates how sari and salwaar kameez shape Indian femininity and women’s dignity. Dress is viewed as a situated bodily practice which makes social and cultural values visually intelligible. In the study, I do not refer to clothing as “fashion”, but rather as dignity, human rights, discrimination, and justice. The purpose is to underline how a piece of garment can be highly identitarian of a single individual and highly identitarian of a political ideal.