question_answer

Why was national dress needed to define the cultural identity?

Answer:

(i) A nationalist feeling swept across India by late 19th century. Indians began devising cultural symbols that would express the unity of the nation.

(ii) Artists looked for a national style of act. Poets wrote national songs. Then a debate began over the design of the national flag.

(iii) The search for a national dress took poets of this era to define the cultural identity of the nation in symbolic ways.

(iv) The Tagore family of Bengal experimented in the 1870s with design for a national dress for both men and women in India.