The Evolution of the Choli
From being a gender-neutral attire to being sensualised in contemporary Indian popular culture—the many lives of the humble choli.
“IF YOU HAVE to change your mode of dress, please do not hesitate,” wrote a young Satyendranath Tagore, India’s first civil servant, to his wife. Jnanadanandini Devi was barely fifteen years old at the time. She lived in the inner chambers of the sprawling Tagore zenana, isolated from the world outside, like all young brides of her time.
Satyendranath was first posted to Bombay in 1863, and he wanted his wife to come along. But the women who lived in the zenanas then wore drapes that were light and translucent, with nothing to cover their upper bodies. Perhaps the young man felt that this would not suit the sensibilities of their social circles in Bombay. The city had European and Parsi influences then. Women in Western India, too, were wearing cholis as their standard attire.
The choli and its many past lives
But for the longest time, the choli, a simple garment covering the upper half of a woman’s body, was a garment once unknown to the Indian subcontinent. The choli came into the picture in the first century CE in the form of the uttariya, which was an unstitched cloth that was used to cover the upper body. This was a gender-neutral attire, worn by both men and women. This then evolved into the stanapatta, also known as kanchuki, which was a bodice the women wore to cover their breasts. From here, the garment journeys into different routes, taking different forms.
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It evolved into the kanchali in Rajasthan and the kanjari in Gujarat and parts of Sindh. These garments did not have cups for the breasts and were fastened by cords.
THE CHOLI, ON the other hand, is rounded to fit the shoulder, has cups to hold the breasts and is fastened with hooks and cords. In the meantime, the drapes that covered the lower body, too, had evolved. And the choli began to be paired with more complex silhouettes like the ghagra or a saree. The style in which it was worn was never uniform. There were variations in length of the sleeve and blouse, necklines, back fastening or front fastening and bare-back or back-covered designs, and these were markers of the caste, class and community of the woman.
Later, with the advent of colonial rule in India, a new set of socio-cultural ethos emerged. Earlier, garments of the Indian subcontinent were meant to wrap around the silhouette of the body. But the Britishers brought with them the idea of fitted clothing, where the body often had to fit into the rigid and inflexible silhouette of the garment.
Sense and sensibility, of the masters
In the nineteenth century, Indian cities were abuzz with conversations around polygamy, campaigns for widow remarriage and women’s education. These movements were closely linked with the country’s struggle for independence, which more and more women began taking part in.
Indian women, in their airy drapes and light cotton garments, irked the sensibilities of the colonial elites whose minds were still steeped in the Victorian morales. This created stirrings within the Indian public sphere at the time. From there came the idea that the women had to be dressed appropriately for them to be taken seriously. The new Indian woman had to dress differently.
IT WAS JNANADANANDINI Devi who led this change. On one of her travels with her husband, she was denied entry into a club because she was not appropriately dressed. So, she recreated the Parsi gara and draped her saree with pleats tucked in the middle and the longer loose end drawn across to cover the breasts and flowing down the left shoulder. The blouse was intricate with high collars attached with ribbon, frills, jabots and brooches. With Jnanadanandini Devi, other women from the Tagore household followed suit. This later became the standard attire among women, with blouses and petticoats gaining popularity.
This shift in style, in a way, gave women the necessary social sanction to be in public spaces. But along with it, the country may also have inherited certain Western attitudes of decency and obscenity. Remnants of these sensibilities exist even today, with the choli being associated with ideas of sensuousness in popular culture. Think Madhuri Dixit moving to the beats of the iconic Choli Ke Peeche Kya Hai. The humble choli longs to be looked at just for what it really is—a mere piece of cloth.
Medha V.
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