The age-old status of mayalposh-suruwal as Nepal’s official outfit has fallen victim to the political tug-of war between Maoists and other major political parties. Pushpa Kamal Dahal was the first Nepali Prime Minister to take the oath of office wearing a suit. Baburam Bhattarai insisted on following Dahal (whom he has described as “leader of leaders”) and was never seen in a mayalposh-suruwal as Prime Minister. The President of the country continues to wear mayalposh-suruwal, as did all non-Maoist Prime Ministers, including the well known Nepali revolutionary and intellectual BP Koirala.
A recent photo of the suit-clad then Prime Minister Bhattarai watching senior Nepali bureaucrats in gleaming white mayalposh-suruwals during Nepal’s Democracy Day celebrations looked like a scene from shadow boxing between the suited-up Prime Minister and the defiant bureaucrats. Since Khil Raj Regmi’s ascent to power the shadow boxing has ceased, as his cabinet has brought mayalposh-suruwal back into official vogue. What is behind the Maoists’ rejection of the mayalposh-suruwal that has symbolized Nepali identity at home and abroad for over 150 years?
NARESH KOIRALA
Louis Edward, author of Politics of Dress in Asia and the Americas and Professor at School of Modern Languages and Cultures in Hong Kong University, says politicians in Asia and Latin America invoke “dress as a symbol of their vision for their ‘nation’ and a way of identifying themselves with their people. Gandhi experimented with many Indian dresses in search of one that would most represent the ‘Indian’ by obscuring caste and regional differences”. In Indonesia, Sukarno came up with Safari Suit and the black peci cap; Marcos of the Philippines modified the traditional Barong Tagalog, and Mao Zedong designed and made Mao suit famous in China. Unlike our Maoist leaders, they all had the creativity to modify their national outfit and don a new piece of fashion that to them was equalizing, and was affordable by their countrymen.
Most Nepalis cannot afford to wear a western jacket and do not know how to tie a tie. No dress could be more distant from rural Nepali people than a suit and a tie. There is no ethnic group in Nepal which has ever identified itself with Western Suit–not the peasants, not the factory workers—none. True, young Nepali men increasingly wear a shirt and western trousers as an informal working dress on a daily basis; but the outfit that unequivocally and at a glance tells the world and other Nepalis of their identity is the mayalposh-suruwal. That is why, during family festivities and in formal functions, Nepalis assert their identity by wearing mayalposh–suruwal.
A few years ago, in a public demonstration in Hong Kong demanding parity of employment status between the Nepalis and the locals, regardless of their ethnicity, Nepalis wore mayalposh-suruwal. The Gorkhaland protesters wore mayalposh-suruwal to assert their Nepaliness and distinguish themselves from Indians.
Non-Resident Nepalis wear mayalposh-suruwal when guests are asked to wear their national dress. Dhiraj Kumar Sah, a madeshi, posted in the website of the Worldwide Nepalese Student’s Organization (WNSO): “I am proud of the fact that among all the populations of the world, my country’s national dress identifies me as a Nepali.”
By rejecting mayalposh-suruwal, instead of getting closer to people, the Maoists have distanced themselves from Nepali identity and culture. This is particularly ironic for a party that has built itself on a claim of unity with the poor and the deprived.So what could be other reasons for the Maoist push for the Western style suit?
The Maoists gutted the library in the Sanskrit University, destroyed Prithvi Narayan Shah’s statue, tried to change Nepal’s National flag and stymie the centuries old Indra Jatra festival by withdrawing government support. The rejection of mayalposh-suruwal may be a continuation of their agenda to do away with everything with feudal vestiges. If one follows this logic, Nepal itself should be destroyed. It was stitched together by an allegedly brutal feudal lord called Prithvi Narayan Shah.
The suit isn’t devoid of symbolism, it has a symbolism all its own, which is one of Western sense of beauty, formality and class—“modernity”. The government of Bangladesh, prior to the ascent of Sheik Hasina, tried to present an aura of modernity by requiring their civil servants to wear suits to work. Sheik Hasina revoked the fiat and a Bangladeshi columnist Maswood Alam Khan said: “Wearing suits and stuffing our necks with a tie, in spite of ourselves, is a sartorial fashion we have borrowed from the British who were our colonial rulers. Our ancestors enjoyed punishing themselves by mimicking the British style and fashion, which was seen as synonymous with being chic and modern. They wanted in vain to be ‘brown sahibs’!”
Are Nepal’s Maoists the new brown sahibs?
For a political party that gets its lifeblood by condemning “imperialists” and “colonialists”, and shouting about Nepali nationalism until every one is deaf, mimicking an imperialist dress seems contrary, and devoid of any cultural or historical attachment. If the mayalposh-suruwal does not represent Nepal’s ethnic diversity, alternating it with bhoto-suruwal and kurta-dhoti would work. But a Western suit? What meaning could it possibly have in Nepal except to connect it vaguely with elitism and Western hegemony?
The author is a geotechnical engineer and member of NRN Canada
naresh1@shaw.ca
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