In 1931, Ma­hat­ma Gand­hi was in­vit­ed for tea with Queen Mary and King George V at Buck­ing­ham Palace. His at­tire of a dhoti and home­made san­dals dis­turbed Win­ston Churchill, who said, “It is alarm­ing and al­so nau­se­at­ing to see Mr Gand­hi, a sedi­tious mid­dle tem­ple lawyer, now pos­ing as a fakir … strid­ing half-naked … to par­ley on equal terms with the rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the king-em­per­or.”

Lat­er, a jour­nal­ist asked Gand­hi if he thought he was wear­ing enough cloth­ing. Gand­hi an­swered, “But the King was wear­ing enough for the both of us.”

Gand­hi’s cloth­ing served to iden­ti­fy him­self with the poor mass­es, and he en­cour­aged his coun­try­men to make their own cloth in­stead of buy­ing British goods.

Re­cent­ly, our Prime Min­is­ter wore an in­for­mal rai­ment at the clos­ing cer­e­mo­ny of the Cana­da-Cari­com Sum­mit.

Let­ter writer Den­nise Dem­ming com­ment­ed, “Some may in­ter­pret his choice as an at­tempt to con­nect with every­day cit­i­zens and I re­spect that per­spec­tive. But I felt ashamed.”

She gave three pos­si­ble rea­sons why this sce­nario may have ma­te­ri­alised.

In 2019, then UK Prime Min­is­ter Boris John­son faced sim­i­lar crit­i­cism for wear­ing a Hawai­ian shirt and shorts dur­ing a diplo­mat­ic trip to the BVI and in 2009, then US first la­dy Michelle Oba­ma was crit­i­cised when she wore an ‘in­for­mal’ sleeve­less dress in Con­gress.

In her book, The Pow­er and Pol­i­tics of Dress in Africa, Giselle Aris writes, “Dress func­tions as a com­pelling po­lit­i­cal lan­guage, com­pa­ra­ble in elo­quence and po­ten­cy to the words of the most skilled or­a­tor or the writ­ings of the most per­sua­sive pro­pa­gan­dist”.

The Stan­ford News (Feb­ru­ary 10, 2021) quotes re­searcher Richard Thomp­son Ford, “Dress codes have been used to main­tain spe­cif­ic so­cial roles and hi­er­ar­chies. But fash­ion and style can ex­press new ideals of in­di­vid­ual lib­er­ty, ra­tio­nal­i­ty, and equal­i­ty”.

Ford men­tions, “Civ­il rights ac­tivists in 1960s Amer­i­ca wore their “Sun­day Best” at protests to demon­strate they were wor­thy of dig­ni­ty and re­spect as they chal­lenged the in­sti­tu­tions that kept Black peo­ple at the bot­tom of the so­cial hi­er­ar­chy.

“The Black Pan­thers, how­ev­er, sent a dif­fer­ent mes­sage and wore black leather jack­ets and turtle­necks, berets, and sun­glass­es. This qua­si-mil­i­tary style sent a new vi­su­al state­ment ex­press­ing a dif­fer­ent kind of re­sis­tance to the sta­tus quo and a dif­fer­ent type of racial pride—one that didn’t bor­row from the sym­bols of the white bour­geoisie.”

The PM rep­re­sent­ed our 1.5 mil­lion cit­i­zens at this clos­ing cer­e­mo­ny

Prof of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions Andy Knight, who knocked crit­ics, said, “I think this is part of our colo­nial men­tal­i­ty that con­tin­ues to per­sist in the Caribbean, where we feel as if we have to have a suit on and a tie on for these for­mal events and that is chang­ing all around the world.”

But years ago, In­dia’s first PM Jawa­har­lal Nehru, wore his “Nehru suit”, which was adopt­ed by Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Ny­erere and oth­er African lead­ers.

Dr Er­ic Williams re­tained the colo­nial­ist dress codes, un­like Fi­del Cas­tro, Ched­di Ja­gan and Michael Man­ley, who made an­ti-colo­nial state­ments wear­ing the “guayabera”.

In our 1971 Sen­ate, Tapia mem­bers wore Nehru suits, and the ULF team of 1976 favoured the shirt jack.

To­day, Wade Mark still wears a Nehru suit.

Par­lia­ment pub­lic gal­leries’ dress codes do not al­low arm­hole T-shirts, slip­pers, shorts, and track pants, sim­i­lar to gov­ern­ment build­ings. Re­cent­ly, the THA end­ed this prac­tice.

In 2005, Judge Pe­ter Ja­madar ruled the Nehru, “was be­fit­ting for the dig­ni­ty of the court”, af­ter Chief Mag­is­trate Sher­man Mc Nicholls re­fused Is­rael Khan SC wear­ing one.

In Hans Chris­t­ian An­der­sen’s sto­ry, The Em­per­or Has No Clothes, adapt­ed from the In­di­an fa­ble Nirvāṇalīlā­vatī by Jineś­vara (1052), two weavers of­fered to sup­ply the em­per­or with mag­nif­i­cent clothes that were in­vis­i­ble to those who are in­com­pe­tent.

The em­per­or and his of­fi­cials vis­it­ed them and saw that the looms were emp­ty but the em­per­or pre­tend­ed oth­er­wise to avoid be­ing thought a fool.

They mime-dressed him and he set off in a pro­ces­sion. The towns­folk went along with the pre­tense un­til a child blurt­ed out that the em­per­or was wear­ing noth­ing at all.

This sto­ry de­scribes a sit­u­a­tion in which peo­ple are afraid to crit­i­cise some­thing or some­one be­cause the per­ceived wis­dom of the mass­es is that the thing or per­son is good or im­por­tant.

Dem­ming called out the sar­to­r­i­al style of the PM.

I won­der what are the opin­ions of oth­ers?

In the 2001 Par­lia­ment, MP Colm Im­bert ob­ject­ed to MP Ger­ard Yet­ming’s busi­ness shirts de­signed by Meil­ing, say­ing this caused a de­cline in “stan­dards”. In the Sen­ate, Dan­ny Mon­tano al­so raised ob­jec­tions.

It mat­ters not to me if our PM wore a dhoti or a Sav­ile Row suit to cov­er his tor­so, it mat­ters more that we re­ceive tan­gi­ble as­sis­tance that can re­duce this blan­ket of crime that cov­ers our na­tion.