<p>There’s some heartening news that Brits are fast doing away with tie as the most restrictive item of apparel, or “a perfect means of self-strangulation,” to quote English poet laureate Sir Ted Hughes. This is laudable.<br /><br />Somerset Maugham used to say that Great Britain gave three things to the world: English language, ghost of colonialism, and tie to tie a person down like a pet. It’s a sign of colonial hangover rather than being a mark of sartorial smartness and suavity.<br /><br />One wonders... wherever Brits ruled and whichever country they colonised, their subjects slavishly lapped up English and a tie. Be it Barbados, Trinidad, Jamaica, erstwhile Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), India, to name but a few, the English sartorial idiosyncrasies were never questioned by the subjects of these terribly hot and tropical countries.<br /><br />In India, tie is de rigueur for corporate mandarins and students of public and ‘English medium’ schools. How a tie enhances a man’s personality and makes him different from a non-tie man is a question that has always been on the minds of rebels.<br /><br />George De Clauss wrote in his magnum opus English Dressing Legacies that “the history of tie is the history of dressing despotism because Brits didn’t allow a man of a colonised country to wear a tie until he reached a certain level of social and governmental hierarchy.”<br /><br />Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, who penned ‘Vande Mataram’, was a magistrate during the British Raj and even hobnobbed with high-ranking British officers, but he was not allowed to wear a tie for 14 years. Only when he became a district magistrate (he was a town magistrate before that) did he get a chance to wear it.<br /><br />Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose was strictly instructed by the English vice chancellor of Calcutta University never to wear a tie.<br /><br />That he defied the order and wore it is an altogether different story. He disliked ties but wore them to assert that he was on a par with the white Englishmen teaching at the famed varsity.<br /><br />Fabric historian Allan Molieux wrote in his book The Politics of a Tie that Brits wore tie with a view to make people aware that this can be fastened around their necks! There’s an interesting piece of history to it. The Vikings and English pirates wore a flattened rope around their necks with which they’d openly strangle those who dared to rebel or question their authority. The present-day Englishmen are their descendants.<br /><br />The phrase ‘hanging by neck’ has its root in this gory piece of history. M K Gandhi called it kanth langot and never wore it once he completely dispensed with the English attire. In a letter to young Jawaharlal Nehru, Gandhi ji wrote, “You studied at Trinity, Cambridge and wore suit, boot and tie like me. I realised how oppressive that was and did away with it. I expect the same realisation will soon dawn on you.”<br /><br />In 1967, a group of 50 young men in Barbados, once a British colony, refused to wear ties during the convocation ceremony. They attended the ceremony in black trousers and white half-sleeve shirts, earlier known as bush-shirts. Their point was, why should they continue with a British dressing legacy in a hot country like theirs? <br /><br />Alas, the anglophile Indians have never dared to question this, and our mandarins and bada sahibs wear ties and flaunt them. When I see young boys and girls of English medium schools lousily wearing ties, I feel sad for them. We talk about nationalism and patriotism but don’t ever think that there are still many slavish colonial hangovers we carry, and will continue to carry, like a cross on our backs.<br /><br /></p>
<p>There’s some heartening news that Brits are fast doing away with tie as the most restrictive item of apparel, or “a perfect means of self-strangulation,” to quote English poet laureate Sir Ted Hughes. This is laudable.<br /><br />Somerset Maugham used to say that Great Britain gave three things to the world: English language, ghost of colonialism, and tie to tie a person down like a pet. It’s a sign of colonial hangover rather than being a mark of sartorial smartness and suavity.<br /><br />One wonders... wherever Brits ruled and whichever country they colonised, their subjects slavishly lapped up English and a tie. Be it Barbados, Trinidad, Jamaica, erstwhile Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), India, to name but a few, the English sartorial idiosyncrasies were never questioned by the subjects of these terribly hot and tropical countries.<br /><br />In India, tie is de rigueur for corporate mandarins and students of public and ‘English medium’ schools. How a tie enhances a man’s personality and makes him different from a non-tie man is a question that has always been on the minds of rebels.<br /><br />George De Clauss wrote in his magnum opus English Dressing Legacies that “the history of tie is the history of dressing despotism because Brits didn’t allow a man of a colonised country to wear a tie until he reached a certain level of social and governmental hierarchy.”<br /><br />Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, who penned ‘Vande Mataram’, was a magistrate during the British Raj and even hobnobbed with high-ranking British officers, but he was not allowed to wear a tie for 14 years. Only when he became a district magistrate (he was a town magistrate before that) did he get a chance to wear it.<br /><br />Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose was strictly instructed by the English vice chancellor of Calcutta University never to wear a tie.<br /><br />That he defied the order and wore it is an altogether different story. He disliked ties but wore them to assert that he was on a par with the white Englishmen teaching at the famed varsity.<br /><br />Fabric historian Allan Molieux wrote in his book The Politics of a Tie that Brits wore tie with a view to make people aware that this can be fastened around their necks! There’s an interesting piece of history to it. The Vikings and English pirates wore a flattened rope around their necks with which they’d openly strangle those who dared to rebel or question their authority. The present-day Englishmen are their descendants.<br /><br />The phrase ‘hanging by neck’ has its root in this gory piece of history. M K Gandhi called it kanth langot and never wore it once he completely dispensed with the English attire. In a letter to young Jawaharlal Nehru, Gandhi ji wrote, “You studied at Trinity, Cambridge and wore suit, boot and tie like me. I realised how oppressive that was and did away with it. I expect the same realisation will soon dawn on you.”<br /><br />In 1967, a group of 50 young men in Barbados, once a British colony, refused to wear ties during the convocation ceremony. They attended the ceremony in black trousers and white half-sleeve shirts, earlier known as bush-shirts. Their point was, why should they continue with a British dressing legacy in a hot country like theirs? <br /><br />Alas, the anglophile Indians have never dared to question this, and our mandarins and bada sahibs wear ties and flaunt them. When I see young boys and girls of English medium schools lousily wearing ties, I feel sad for them. We talk about nationalism and patriotism but don’t ever think that there are still many slavish colonial hangovers we carry, and will continue to carry, like a cross on our backs.<br /><br /></p>
