Years before the magic of Prabuddha Dasgupta's eye and the hype around the Lakmé Fashion Week had showcased Indian textiles, styles and fashion, a series of events between 1954 and 1961 had done just this for an exclusive New Delhi audience. In the summer of 1956, the New-Delhi-based Mary Badhwar decided to approach the ministry of education, government of India, for support for what was clearly a novel idea: a pageant of Indian costumes "showing the different styles and fashions in vogue in this country over the last 20 centuries, with some emphasis on the Ajanta period". As Mary, a gynaecologist trained at King George's Hospital, Lucknow, and the wife of a senior bureaucrat, had curated a successful 'Costumes of India' show a couple of years earlier, she felt emboldened to do a repeat performance for the 9th session of Unesco to be hosted in New Delhi later that year. She asked the powers that be whether it could be held in front of the Red Fort's Diwan-e-Aam or Lodi Gardens: the former venue had often been used for mushairas and civic receptions, she wrote. Not unexpectedly, permission was refused for the Diwan-e-Aam, but after a personal appeal to the minister of education, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Mary got permission to hold the show in the area in front of the open mosque right in the centre of the historic Lodi Gardens. Newspapers reported that mannequins in shimmering costumes - some designed by a young Shama Zaidi based on her research at the National Archives - sashayed down and around the historic site, appropriately flood lit for the event and compered by the inimitable Roshan Menon. The pageant of dance and music that combined fantasy with an evocation of the country's past glory had been choreographed by the well-known dance teacher, Kamal Kirtikar, and others. While the danseuses, Indrani Rehman and Sundari Shridharani, had important roles, most participants were ingénues trained over a short period.
In giving legitimacy to an unusual tribute to a new India, Maulana Azad acknowledged that the world beyond should know more about this country. While its Five Year Plans, stress on a mixed economy, agricultural production as well as science, technology and industrialization had quickly become buzz words, a rich history and varied cultural past needed more international focus. What could be better than presenting an elaborate pageant of Indian fabrics and dress to a captive audience of delegates at the Unesco session? A few days later, this well-received show was followed by a repeat performance during the official visit of Chou En-lai, the prime minister of the state council of the People's Republic of China.
As far as Mary Badhwar and her group of enthusiastic friends were concerned, the success of the 1956 'Costumes of India' show - of which, alas, there are no photographs - prepared the way for two more extravaganzas. In 1958, the ministry of finance commissioned another costume show and ladies' tea party for members of a visiting World Bank delegation. At a meeting convened by B.K. Nehru, a secretary in the ministry, its structure was worked out and the emphasis shifted from the tableau format to a straightforward display of women's attire over the centuries representing different social groups. There was the Kashmiri pheran, peasant girls from Saurashtra and Rajasthan with the ubiquitous backless choli and water ghadha (see photograph of Jaya Jaitly, then June Chettur), courtly ladies from Rajasthan, Awadh and Hyderabad, a Lambadi with her swinging ghagra, the Baluchar and Dhakai Jamdani from Bengal and a grand temple sari from Tamil Nadu. Three years later, on January 25, 1961, Queen Elizabeth II of Britain and the Duke of Edinburgh were guests of honour at Ashoka Hotel's banquet hall, the usual venue for sarkari functions in those days when five-star hotels could be counted on the fingers of one hand. They witnessed an even grander version of 'Costumes of India' where lighting was professionally done by All India Radio, make up by Lakmé, and costumes and jewellery were on loan from Sangeet Natak Akademi and other government bodies. Court costumes were shared for the event by Maharani Gayatri Devi of Jaipur, the Begums of Bhopal and Rampur and Princess Kusum of Bharatpur. These included a "fabulous 'Bharatpur lehenga'" that Mary "promised to guard it with my life". Luckily, the two shows were widely photographed by both professionals as well as amateurs. In fact, there were well-organized photo shoots on the roof of Ashoka Hotel. The academic, Deepa Nag Haksar, the youngest model at nine years, remembers the photo shoot where "all of us were lined up and photographed there in 'good light', in the afternoon, as in those days night photography wasn't that sophisticated".
Fifty years down the road, it is possible to turn a jaundiced eye on these rather fanciful post-colonial representations of Indian women's attire - particularly as they were pitched to a foreign audience. Yet, recently, their overall veracity as well as that of the descriptions that accompanied them has been vouched for by sartorial and textile cognoscenti. Some of those who organized the show were names memorialized in independent India's newly emergent cultural scene. As for the models, they were young college girls or some barely out of university chosen by Mary Badhwar and her friends through word of mouth; in an undeniable show of organizational nepotism restricted largely to an elite social circle, young women became models overnight, walking the ramp for famous world leaders. By a quirk of fate, a few are well-known names today - leading artist Anjolie Ela Menon, crafts diva and one-time politician Jaya Jaitly, danseuse Charu Sija Mathur, actors Jalabala Vaidya and Leela Naidu (then Oberoi) and Jamila Verghese. Deepa also remembered "Leela Oberoi during practice sessions - shy and soft spoken - then the young, newly married wife of Tikki Oberoi" (of the Oberoi Hotels). As she was a few months' pregnant at the time, a great fuss was made over her. After her brief marriage, and when she joined the films, Leela went back to her family name of Naidu. There were hardly any dress rehearsals - but "we were asked to sway a bit more"(Jaya), hold the edge of the odhani high and look imperious or show off elaborate palloos and even wear incredibly uncomfortable heavy silver jewellery for hours. Anjolie Ela Menon wore enormous silver earrings, bangles and anklets that looked as though they were out of a medieval armoury. But, as she said recently, after having worn and handled these classic pieces, she became a committed lover of silver jewellery.
Photographs record not the aloof distance of present-day ramp-dwellers - but a gentle insouciance, an almost childish abandon. That the models were unselfconscious is evident in the total lack of embarrassment in Anjolie Ela Menon and the writer, Jasjit Mansingh, in modelling a classic Odisha ikat and the Assamese mekhela-chador minus sari blouses (old-fashioned bustiers did the needful) or Jaya showing off a backless choli with élan. Museum pieces were worn with care and antique jewellery displayed to fine effect. Perhaps the most precious garment was the 150-year-old lehenga of the Bharatpur court that Mary had committed to guard. It was originally 90 yards in width but young Charu, however, had only 45 yards to deal with as the damaged parts had to be cut away and the lehenga remade. Gold and green brocade embellished the fine cotton of the skirt and the choli and odhani were also intricately worked. Heavy jewellery of pearls, enamel and gold as well as glass bangles completed the refashioning of this outfit of a Rajput noblewoman. Other costumes were elegant in their simplicity - Oonita modelled the nine-yard Maharashtrian sari with precision, following meticulously the instructions of "one drape ankle-length, one short". She highlighted the minimalist presentation with flowers in her hair.
The shows were unique as they represented the quotidian and the flamboyant, the peasant and the court lady with the same degree of detail and involvement. Few models had been on stage before, yet nobody felt left out or neglected and if some had grander costumes and jewels to show off, others were given time and space to saunter across the stage, making sure that their full skirts were swinging "as the wearers walk". Perhaps one of the first fashion-cum-costume shows to be photographed so generously - the doyenne of Indian photography, Homai Vyarawalla, had memorialized the 1954 show - these striking images are not only an invaluable record of the 'Costumes of India' shows, but they are also certainly among the earliest examples of fashion photography in India, important testimonies in its brief history. However, unlike today, echoing the trend of much early, post-Independence public photography, the talents of the photographers are shrouded in anonymity.
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