Dear Rahul Gandhi, white is privilege – needs frequent washing, stain removal, maintenance

Dear Rahul Gandhi, white is privilege

In Indian politics, white is hardly synonymous with transparency and a ‘clean’ image. And for Rahul Gandhi, it doesn’t make enough of an identity badge.

The curiosity coverage around Rahul Gandhi’s white T-shirt “campaign” is fun, but it is unlikely to go down as memorable in India’s contemporary politics of dressing. Emphasis on the theatre of appearance as Delhi catapults to elections and the Congress balances emerging fissures, is perhaps a useful distraction. But to view it as a new symbol of democratic-politics-through-dress is rehashing a formerly paraded idea. It’s merely a semiotic headline of the month.

First, because of the T-shirt’s brief history of nothing-muchness. Rahul Gandhi’s T-shirts, their whiteness argued as part of his course corrections and communication with voters, sprung into notice almost three years back with his Bharat Jodo Yatra. What he accomplished or not politically with that yatra remains an ongoing debate.

Some of it is a rebranding story worth tracking. Gandhi’s garment of choice lodges him into the club of leaders or rhetoricians in India and the world who use, as they must, symbols of political identity to enshrine their image. Dress is irrefutably powerful. But to say that it played a crucial role in shaping Rahul Gandhi’s image as a man gathering some pluck in politics and trying new rules of engagement would be a stretch.

Here’s why. A white T-shirt (not a white kurta, sari, waistcoat, dhoti, lungi or veshti) is a nice aside in the dress and identity universe where connections—sometimes simplistic—are made between colours, fabrics and political persuasions. For example, saffron stands for a certain hue in politics.

Ikat, among India’s proudest weaves, exudes aesthetic sophistication, as evident in the case of the Gandhi women—Indira, Sonia to Priyanka. It is also a marker of Left-wing affiliation. Large groups of Left-leaning Delhi elite, after all, still wear Ikat as a symbol of their identity. Meanwhile Khadi is now fast losing its cool because of “rebranding” campaigns that promote mechanised cloth. It’s no longer India’s most influential fabric, famous for its slubby texture (khaddar or khurdura, uneven) and association with swadeshi politics.

In this landscape, white is the easiest, most done to death, and the most difficult to win with colour in India, at least. So let’s hand it to Rahul Gandhi for choosing it as the non-colour of what he promises is a “change”. He portrays white as something that is for the “youth” and is “accessible” because anyone can wear and identify with it. A democratic colour, thus.

Put to the ground, white is none of this.

Male politicians’ go-to colour

White wears a complex muddiness in Indian politics. As political records of dozens of politicians over the years remind us, the colour is hardly synonymous with transparency and a “clean” image. It would be rather easy in fact, to list the corruptions or sheer failures of politicians who stuck to white garb.

Then, to label white ‘youthful’, ‘new’, or ‘modern’ is just good rhetoric. Yes, it is new for a member of the Nehru-Gandhi family to choose something that is factory made and ready to wear. But white the colour isn’t enough of an identity badge.

From Morarji Desai to MK Stalin, Mamata Banerjee to Rajnath Singh, the late Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to “younger” politicians—such as Sachin Pilot, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Raghav Chaddha or Chirag Paswan—who hasn’t tried white and while riding on it, pushed their own agendas and accessories? M Karunanidhi wore it with yellow stoles, and Jayant Chaudhury of Rashtriya Lok Dal wears it with green farmer-style pagdis (turbans) or black ikat jackets.

White has, for long, been the male Indian politician’s repetitive statement. Fewer female leaders – with the exception of Mamata Banerjee – have asserted themselves through this colour. Nirmala Sitharaman, Draupadi Murmu, Smriti Irani to Annapurna Devi have seldom appeared in “white saris”. And it was never the favoured colour of Sushma Swaraj, Sheila Dixit or J Jayalalithaa. Not even of the head-covered former President Pratibha Patil, whose white saris featured coloured borders.

The young Bansuri Swaraj, or the now-transitioning-to-saris Delhi CM Atishi, don’t wear white clothes either. Pure white in India is a male politician’s go-to colour, some of whom do it very well. Take PM Narendra Modi, whose white kurtas and churidars are particularly well-tailored and precision-fitted. Or defence minister Rajnath Singh, whose white kurta pyjamas end above the knee, and whose kurtas are cut with skill and starched to soft crispness. Paired with a folded shawl on his shoulders, more like a cap than a folded drape, you notice the statement his attire tries to make.

For Rahul Gandhi’s T-shirt to become the hero in his charm offensive, it needs a design whimsy—like a black knitted edge, contrasting buttons, or a beige or black collar. If these T-shirts are to catapult themselves into reckoning, they must mimic the caricaturising value of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) convenor Arvind Kejriwal’s common man mufflers. Or on the other extreme, the simple power of Mamata Banerjee’s frugal whites.

Privilege of privileged

Just saying that white is the new Left doesn’t cut it. White fabrics are certainly not democratic or accessible in India. Some years ago, designer Anuj Sharma, who teaches at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad, told me: “Consumers insist on pristine white and beautiful garments handmade by artisans. They forget that karigars do not have cupboards to store these pieces in progress, no place either to hang their own clothes, their children’s school uniforms, or access to hygiene products to ensure that what they make ‘with their hands’ is pristine.”

White, dear Mr Gandhi, beyond karigar corridors, is the privilege of the privileged. It needs frequent washing, stain removal and maintenance to keep it in campaigning mode.

That said, the well-argued 2024 book Charm: How Magnetic Personalities Shape Global Politics by Julia Sonnevend packs some tips for politicians as they “present their identities to people on different platforms”— media and social media included. Sonnevend dissects the concepts of authenticity, demasking, and restaging, and how leaders across the world utilise their charm and appearance – sometimes as a weapon.