What's new

Indian PM Narendra Modi spotted in Pakistan’s national dress SOURCE: GEO TV

INDIAPOSITIVE

ELITE MEMBER
Joined
Sep 20, 2014
Messages
9,318
Reaction score
-28
Country
India
Location
India
SOURCE: GEO TV

DOa74JsVAAEyLk-.jpg


Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has become a global style icon by placing considerable attention to his wardrobe and experimenting with different types of clothes and fabrics.However, Modi, who is often spotted in a kurta pajama, took a leap from his everyday fashion and donned Pakistan’s national dress; shalwar kameez.

He can be seen wearing a shalwar kameez coupled with a sweater and shawl upon his arrival to New Delhi after attending the World Economic Forum in Davos.Previously, the Indian premier donned a shalwar kameez was upon his arrival to Manila to attend ASEAN and East Asian summits.

However, this is what the Indian prime minister looks like the majority of the times:

Shalwar Kameez is believed to have originated from the costumes of the Mughals, writes Arabinda Biswas in Indian Costumes (1985).

Interestingly, the dress which is commonplace for most men in Pakistan is not as common in its neighbouring country, according to an Indian journalist.

The dress is called ‘Pathani Suit’ in India because of its association with the Pathans.

Tracing the history of the dress, Pran Neville, who wrote Lahore: A Sentimental Journey (1992), shared that Hindu, Muslim and Sikh men used to wear shalwar kameez in pre-Partition west Punjab, but they also wore other dresses such as shirts and trousers.

The Pathans, however, wore only and only the shalwar kameez. That’s why the dress came to be identified with Pathans especially in north India, Neville adds.

However, Vanit Nalwa in her book Hari Singh Nalwa-champion of the Khalsa (2009) states that the Pathans started to wear shalwar kameez to escape persecution at the hands of Sikh army general was Hari Singh Nalwa (1791-1837).

During the time, shalwar kameez was commonly worn by members of Sikh community. The Pathan thought that the best way to escape the wrath of Nalwa was to don the Punjabi dress i.e. Shalwar kameez and escape from the clutches of the Sikhs and Nalwa. However, the dress was eventually adopted by the Pathans became to be known as the ‘Pathani suite’.


https://www.geo.tv/latest/180407-narendra-modi-spotted-in-pakistans-national-dress
 
. .
Is that a Pakistani shalwar kameez Narendra Modi is wearing?

I could not believe my eyes when I saw a recent change in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's fashion. Look at the images in this tweet, zoom in and see his kurta pyjama.

https://twitter.com/PIB_India/status/955971795651186688/photo/1


You will notice he is not wearing kurta pyjama. He's wearing shalwar kameez.

Fresh from a recent trip to Pakistan, I am 99 per cent sure it's the Pakistani/Afghan style shalwar kameez he is wearing. It's not just the rounded edges of the kameez that give it away. Also notice how the kurta/kameez doesn't look chafed or wrinkled at all.

Compare the images above to other images of the prime minister in kurta and churidar pyjama, and you will notice the wrinkles. Such as this image on the cover of Time magazine:



The biggest discovery of my Pakistan trip in November was the wrinkle-free fabric of the ubiquitous shalwar kameez. It has a name: Wash 'N' Wear. Many shops call it "washnwear" as though it was always one word. "Ek piece washnwear dijiye ga, black colour," I found myself saying.

It is a synthetic fabric as comfortable as any "pure cotton". As the name suggests, it's wrinkle free. Unlike pure cotton kurtas we wear, there is no need to iron and starch to keep them straight.

kara690_020518013133.jpg
Credit: Shivam Vij

I decided against buying readymade shalwar kameez for fear of confirming allegations that I'm a Pakistani at heart. Instead, I bought countless pieces of the fabric to get it stitched like Indian kurtas.

Little did I know that Prime Minister Modi would be ahead of me in this discovery. And now that he's wearing it in the Pakistani or Afghan style - loose pyjamas, kameez with rounded edges - I no longer fear doing it myself.

As we all know, Prime Minister Modi is a fashion trendsetter. His half-sleeved kurtas, his appropriation of the Nehru jacket as the Modi jacket, his carefully chosen headgear - he's a fashionista of a kind. Even if he is wearing shalwar kameez, it's a tribute to the dress.

The dress is called Pathani Suit in India, but shalwar kameez in Pakistan. In India it is as exotic as the Pathans of the North West Frontier Province, a place now called Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Thanks to Tagore's Kabuliwallah story many Indians have read in school, we have a distant, vague memory of the Pashtuns roaming around north India before Partition. Today the shalwar kameez is as exotic as the Pashtuns, though we see both in the form of Afghan medical tourists these days.

karachi690_020518013228.jpg
Credit: Shivam Vij

In Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad, I found the shalwar kameez to be ubiquitous. When I close my eyes and think about my Pakistan trip, the image I see is that of men wearing shalwar kameez. Why do they call it shalwar kameez whereas we call it Pathani suit? And why don't we wear it?

To know the answer, I called up a 95-year-old Partition refugee in Gurgaon. Pran Neville is one of the most famous Indians in Lahore.

In 1992, Neville published Lahore: A Sentimental Journey, a book he wrote about what pre-Partition Lahore was like, entirely from memory.

Neville said that Hindu, Muslim and Sikh men alike used to wear shalwar kameez in pre-Partition west Punjab, but they also wore other dresses such as shirts and trousers. The Pashtuns, however, wore only and only the shalwar kameez. That's why the dress came to be identified with Pathans in north India.

islamabad690_020518013247.jpg
Credit: Shivam Vij

After Partition, the refugees slowly gave up the dress as it came to be identified in modern India with Muslims, Neville said, even though it's not what Indian Muslims wear.

Dress has often been a marker of religious identity. In his book, Neville has a short chapter called "Clothes and Class". He writes how Muslims wore the tehmat and Hindus the dhoti, but after World War I, Lahore saw a fashion revolution. There was a lot of experiment. As western dresses arrived, clothes began to have a stronger association with class.

In Pakistan today, everybody wears the regulation shalwar kameez in wash 'N' wear fabric. I found the elites and commoners alike wearing it.

Now that our Prime Minister Modi has adopted it, I can do it too. He has solved my dilemma: I'll get my Wash 'N' Wear fabric stitched just like the Pakistanis do. Pathani suit is all I need to say to the tailor.

Pakistani mangoes may be inferior to Indian mangoes, but here's a toast to Wash 'N' Wear shalwar kameez. It's a fashion trend India could do with. FabIndia, take note.


https://www.dailyo.in/voices/pakist...shalwar-kameez-pathan-suit/story/1/22192.html
 
. . .
i told on this forum that modi is undercover cover to islam. Maybe he so frustrated to say it so he si slowly showing hints with kameez. Next you will see him eating cow burger from Muslim restaurant and mango lassi.
 
. . .
Well the decency and modern look of Pakistani Kameez Shalwar has no comparison with the jaded and out of fashion dhotis and kurta
 
.
What does this make every person wearing a suit or a shirt and formals?
 
.
Pakistani mangoes may be inferior to Indian mangoes
if i find you blasphemous again, i will kill you o_O

plus its getting hot.... so shalwar is better than kurta..
normally we wear simple kurta as under pent in winter or 'bentley' leggy
 
. . .
obsessed gangadeshi secretly adore everything about Pakistan except Islam..
 
. .
Back
Top Bottom