How women in India reclaimed the protest power of ripped jeans
The meaning of clothing
India has a history of using clothing to convey political meaning and even as a strategy to incite change.
As anthropologist, Emma Tarlo explains, in Clothing Matters: Dress and Identity in India, what one chooses to wear has long been understood as a maker of meaning – a way of both expressing and shaping personal identity.
For example, in 1903 (as I’ve written about elsewhere), the wealthiest man in India at the time, the Nizam of Hyderabad, chose to wear a simple Western suit to the 1903 Delhi Durbar, a ceremony marking the coronation of the British monarch. In so doing, he
