Illustration by Abro
During a reception just before the start of this year’s cricket World Cup in England, the Pakistan cricket captain Sarfaraz Ahmed was seen wearing a traditional Pakistani dress, the kurta pajama, while meeting the Queen of England.
Earlier, the Pakistan touring squad was also photographed wearing white shalwar kameez with the green Pakistan team blazer. These photos received a mixed reception by Pakistanis on social media. Some thought it was a proud moment, whereas others dismissed it as being unnecessarily exhibitionistic.
There were also those who claimed that this was the first time the Pakistan cricket team had worn the ‘national dress’ abroad. Not quite. When the Pakistan team embarked on its first-ever Test tour in 1952 to India, most players were photographed wearing the sherwani during a reception in New Delhi. However, a few, including skipper A.H. Kardar, preferred wearing a tuxedo.
When dress becomes an expression of your nationality and piety
But what really is the Pakistani national dress? Is it the sherwani or the shalwar kameez? The nationalist Pakistani historian I.H. Qureshi, in his 1957 book The Pakistan Way of Life, writes that it was the sherwani for men and for women it was the kameez with chooridar pajama.
This indeed was the case till the late 1960s. The sherwani was worn often with a shalwar or a pajama, and a ‘Jinnah cap’. But it is also true that the majority of urban working-class folk and those from the rural areas largely wore shalwar-kameez. It was considered to be the common man’s dress.
However, the shalwar kameez became widely popular when the chairman of the populist PPP, Z.A. Bhutto, began to wear it during his public rallies. He started to pair it with a ‘Mao cap’ after he became President of Pakistan in 1971, and then prime minister in 1973.
In 1973, the shalwar kameez was declared the ‘awami libas’ (people’s dress). From the late 1970s onwards, the shalwar kameez began to be drummed up as a national dress in textbooks and on state media.
So from being the dress of the working classes and the rural people, Bhutto had turned it into a populist political statement. But from the early 1980s, it also began to be associated with Islam.