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The British presence in India changed with the Raj. Families has already to bugun to arrive with in gthe later stage of the East India company's rule, but with the Raj they cane in far greater numbers. And with photogrphy we can follow clothing developments in some detail. The British built modern infrastructure. They also founded he country's first real educational system, in part to train an educated elite to help run the administrative strycture of the Raj. The British did not impose their culture including fashion. Indians were left to chose what they wanted to adopt from the British, included clothing. The British-educated upper and middle class commonly chose Western fashions, mostly the boys and men. This included a young Mahatma Ghandi. After he returned to India he and the Congress Party as part of their rejection of colonial rule, rejected Western fashion and British produced cloth. The fashion was not a major issue as the great bulk of the Indian population ws never affected by Western styles. Western produced cloth was a different matter. This rejection was Britain had profound consequences. Many independence leaders rejected free market capitalism. Gandi in fact rejected modern economic development. The result after independendence was several decades of attempting Soviet-style socialist command economics. As in the Soviet Union, this meant dismal economic failure. And the econmy was a primry determinant of fashion. Happily for the Indian people, Congress did not reject British parlimentary democracy and law.
Indian children for the most part did not wear a lot of clothing as a result of the tropical/sub-tropical climate. And more than in Britin, clothing was determined by social class and in India caste. Children of the mahatmrajas might wear elaborate outfits. And the children of the the rising middle-class as a result of the devloping economy might be dressed like the British or at least some western clothing. The vast Indian rural peasantry were dressed as they had been dressed for centuries with th children wearing little clothes. Here both climate and poverty were factors. Over time especially in the 20th century, especially in the cities, we begin to see more Western clothing. This was still limited in rurl areas, especially in rural areas where most of the population was locate. A factor here was practicality as Western clothing wa more practical. And as India began to build a public school system, children tended to wear Western clothing to school.
British children, both boys and girls, were grnerally dressed as they might be in Britain with a few concessions to the trppocal weather. Such fashions in the 19th century did not yet exist in Btritain. More common were layers of clothing to keep warm Girl's clohing was pariculrly voluinous. We see these same fashion chnanges that we see over time in Britain. Many families sent the children home to britain when they reached school age, especially the boys. The education of boys was seen as more importabt than that of girls, especually in the 19th century. But some families kept the children with them in India. Clothing styles were basically summer clothing year round. It was not untll after the turn-of-the 20th century that real summer clothing began to appear.
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