Gandhi cap

• 1. Introduction

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  At the 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech of Martin Luther King Jr., many of the people standing on stage behind him wore Gandhi caps. The cap takes its name from Mahatma Gandhi, who created it during India's independence movement. It is white, made of cotton cloth, and pointed at the front and back. How does a hat designed for the Indian summer cross an ocean and arrive at one of history's defining speeches? And how did an article of clothing acquire enough power for a colonial government to ban it outright? Gandhi described the design in a conversation with a man named Kaka Kalelkar, and the story begins there.

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• 2. Design and Origin

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  Among all the caps Gandhi examined from across India, the Kashmiri one came closest to his vision. But it was made of wool, unsuitable for the Indian climate. Gandhi chose instead to work in cotton, selecting white because it demands more regular washing and is easier to clean. The cap he produced was made from khadi, India's hand-spun, hand-woven cloth.

  Black prisoners in South African prisons were required to wear a small headcover during the early twentieth century. That practice has been cited as a source of the Gandhi cap's genesis. The cap that emerged from khadi and cotton would soon become the uniform of a nationwide resistance.

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• 3. Cloth as Defiance

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  The Non-cooperation movement of 1920 to 1922 made the Gandhi cap the standard dress of the Indian National Congress. By 1920, a substantial number of Indian men were wearing it. Colonial officials in the Central Provinces banned Indian Civil Service employees from wearing the cap. The ban gave the cap something no formal endorsement could: a government's acknowledgment that a hat was threatening enough to prohibit.

  Khadi carried a specific political argument. Wearing it meant choosing Swadeshi goods, made in India, over those manufactured in Europe. It meant declaring solidarity with rural communities whose livelihoods depended on hand spinning. It expressed self-reliance and cultural pride. Anyone seen wearing a Gandhi cap in those years made all of those declarations at once.

  The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the Hindu nationalist organization known as the RSS, also adopted the Gandhi cap. Jawaharlal Nehru, who would become India's first Prime Minister, wore it throughout his public life and carried it into the years after independence.

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• 4. After Independence

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  In 1964, a coin showing Jawaharlal Nehru in profile drew widespread criticism for one omission: the Gandhi cap. A second coin, released in 1989 on his birth centenary, showed him wearing it. Those two coins trace how thoroughly the cap had become part of the image India held of its founding generation.

  Lal Bahadur Shastri and Morarji Desai, who followed Nehru as Prime Minister, continued the tradition. Most members of the Indian Parliament, particularly those in the Congress party, wore khadi clothing and the Gandhi cap as a matter of course. Large numbers of Indians wore the cap each year on the 15th of August, Independence Day. The 26th of January, the anniversary of the republic's founding, brought another wave of wearers.

  Western-style clothing spread among politicians over the following decades, and rival parties increasingly avoided a symbol so closely identified with the Congress. The cap retreated from Parliament and political stages. Today it remains the most common everyday headgear for men in rural Maharashtra. In 2011, a Gandhian activist from that same region would bring it back to national attention.

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• 5. The 2011 Return

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  Anna Hazare, a Gandhian activist from Maharashtra, launched an anti-corruption movement in India in 2011, with Delhi as its center. In August 2011, thousands of people wearing Gandhi caps gathered at Ramlila Maidan in Delhi to support his fast-unto-death. The crowd included people of every age, religion, and social background; the middle class formed its core.

  Stadiums, community centers, and open grounds across India hosted similar gatherings as the protest spread. Participants shouted slogans and wore Gandhi caps, pulling the symbol back into visibility after years of decline.

  In the 2014 general election, workers of the Aam Aadmi Party wore Gandhi caps with text printed on them. The cap had become a form of campaign branding. Supporters of the Bharatiya Janata Party also wear the Gandhi cap, though in saffron rather than white. A cap Gandhi designed to be washed frequently now appears in a color whose associations belong to a very different tradition.

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