Ethnic Chic: The Transformation of Hauz Khas Village

Author(s): EMMA TARLO

Source: India International Centre Quarterly , SUMMER 1996, Vol. 23, No. 2, SIGNS OF
OUR TIMES (SUMMER 1996), pp. 30-59
Published by: India International Centre

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23004648

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 EMMA TARLO

Model Entombed

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 EMMA TARLO

Ethnic Chic:
The Transformation of Hauz Khas Village

up of various aspects of culture in the village idiom, has a relatively

InwellWestern countries
documented history; it has long beenthe concept
associated of village dressing, or the dressing
with the notion
of consumption. In India, however, it is only since the early 1980's that
a substantial sector of wealthy urban Indians have begun to consider
village-style clothing, interiors, architecture and food to be fashionable.
Anything—whether a hotel, house, city or village—can be given a
coating of "village dressing", and just as salad dressing makes a salad
more tasty, so "village dressing" makes a village more appealing. Or,
does it?

The particular example discussed here is that of Hauz Khas Village, an

urban village situated in South Delhi. Since 1986, when this village was
"discovered" by a member of the Indian international jet set, attempts
have been made to convert it into an "ethnic shopping centre", the first
of its kind to be situated within a "genuine Indian village". The elite
Delhiites involved in this process of "village dressing" came to the village
with a highly idealised notion of what villages and villagers were meant
to be like. Their attempts, to impose their concept of the ideal village on
an urban village, is countered by the inhabitants ready to challenge this
concept.

How to perceive the Indian village has long occupied an important place
in the discourse of colonial administrators, anthropologists, nationalist
leaders and contemporary politicians in India. These different groups
have constructed their own models of the ideal village and, in some

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Ethnic Chic

cases have generated critiques of their own constructions. As each

construction of "village India" rises and falls, it leaves behind it a
foundation on which future ideologies may be built. The contemporary
phenomenon of "village dressing" ,is no exception. It incorporates,
amongst other materials, the stones of these previous constructions.

The anthropological construction of village India provides a clear ex

ample of how a model is built and later destroyed by its own creators.
Like other models of the village, anthropological models were influenced
by earlier writings, particularly those of European scholars, missionaries
and colonial administrators. The latter tended to perceive the village as
the essence of India: timeless, self-sufficient, and to a large extent
harmonious.2 As Ronald Inden has pointed out, they saw in village India
a reconstruction of their own past, some sort of living version of medieval
Europe.

It was this identification of the village with the essence of India that
guided post-war anthropologists to select the village as their primary
unit of study. Yet far from simply confirming the notion of the self-suffi
cient Indian village with a stable unchanging social and economic
structure, they began to question the very basis of the idea. Bit by bit,
they set about unpicking the presuppositions that had led them to the
village in the first place. As early as the 1950's, Mckim Marriott was
disputing the idea that the village represented a self-sufficient world unto
itself.3 Others, like A.M. Shah, demonstrated the same point with
reference to the trade links which had always connected villages to other
villages and towns.4 Meanwhile the idea of the timeless and stable social
and economic structure was challenged by works demonstrating the
dynamic aspect of caste,5 and by a Marxist school which portrayed the
caste system as a form of exploitation.6

More recently Inden, in his influential book Imagining India has sum
marised the creation and demise of the idealised Indian village in
academic debate, thereby dragging this already damaged edifice well
to the ground. Yet Inden's book, while neatly deconstructing the
academic debate of which it is a part, has simultaneously fallen prey to
its limitations. For he targets his entire demolition act at the already
self-critical world of academia, dismissing in one sentence, the impor

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 EMMA TARLO

tance of the "village ideal" in the thought of Indian nationalist politicians.

Yet it was the way that certain nationalist leaders took up this village
ideal that is of far greater significance than the question of whether or
not academics pursued or rejected it.

The particular version of the village ideal developed under the banner
of nationalism, as part of the struggle for Indian independence, com
bined elements of the colonial perception of the village with a new form
of Indian socialism. It both perpetuated and challenged European values
simultaneously. This it did by transforming the village from being stuck
in some unthreatening past into the model for a new Indian future. So
whilst the British had kept the village largely outside of politics, certain
nationalist leaders, of whom Gandhi was the figure head, suggested
making the village the reality of Indian social and political life. Gandhi
eventually advocated a policy of total decentralisation, and the recrea
tion of a craft-based society composed of self-sufficient village
republics. This involved a rejection of the values of European civilization
whilst establishing a new basis for the regeneration of a much-damaged
Indian identity. He chose the spinning wheel and hand-woven cloth as
symbols of India's liberation and new future. People were to burn their
European clothes, and instead to dress in the garb of Indian peasants,
in cloth made from yarn that they had spun themselves. In short all
Indians, however educated and however influenced by the west, were
to re-lndianise themselves through becoming like villagers.

which used the village and its products as symbols of a new

Gandhi'sIndianmodel wasGandhibutfocusedoneon theofmorality
future. While a number
and of nationalist critiques
simplicity of village life, others emphasised the aesthetic aspect. They
praised the variety of handicrafts and skills which, they argued, had
persisted in India for thousands of years before being threatened by the
industrialisation which Europe had so encouraged. Ananda Coomara
swamy was perhaps the most important figure to advocate the restora
tion and preservation of village craft, on primarily aesthetic grounds.7
His plea in turn echoed the writings of such British officers as George
Birdwood and E.B. Havell, who were particularly concerned with the
preservation and revival of Indian crafts.8

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Ethnic Chic

The Indian politicians who had pursued or at least tolerated the

Gandhian ideal, developed a comprehensive critique of the Gandhian
perspective on village-life. Once the British finally left India in 1947, the
idea of defining India's future in terms of the village lost much of its
attraction. It was perceived by many politicians and planners as a
retrograde step, useful in the freedom struggle, but unrealistic and
unrealisable in new India. The new policy, pursued by the first Prime
Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, was one of development. But certain
aspects of the "village ideal" were preserved and institutionalised. The
idea of the local democracy was fulfilled through the emphasis on
panchayats.

The idea that timeless India could be reproduced through the revival of
Indian handicrafts not only remained, it also gained considerable institu
tional support with local and national handicrafts boards.9 By emphasis
ing the village ideal in the realm of the arts and crafts, the government
could simultaneously de-emphasise it in the fields of politics, economics
and social change. According to Chris Bayly, many craft emporiums
supported by government run at a considerable financial loss— for
which it seems they compensate in ideological terms.10 In post- inde
pendence India, the Indian elite were no longer expected to fulfil the
Gandhian ideal of becoming like villagers and spinning their own
clothes. Rather they could visit their local craft emporium, and fulfil their
moral and national duty by buying the hand-made products of the village.
That this is to some extent a moral obligation is illustrated by the fact
that so many Indian politicians still dress in white khadi at election time.

There is moreover, an international tendency amongst elite groups who

live in urban, industrialised environments, to idealise nature and the
village. One manifestation of this trend which has received less attention
is the tendency to rediscover villages within cities. The particular appeal
of the ideal of the village within the city is that it enables people to enjoy
some sort of village life and urban life, simultaneously, in one place—
instead of having to visit their country houses at the weekend. London,
for example, is full of refound villages often containing small cot
tages,sometimes converted from old stables, studded with geraniums
to give the village effect.

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 EMMA TARLO 35

This process of villigisation within the city generally begins with an act
of discovery, as someone apparently "finds" the dormant village. This is
followed shortly by the restoration, and in many cases the insertion, of
oldy worldy features, a rapid increase in property prices and a simul
taneous increase in the exclusivity of the area. This is part of the process
described by Michael Thompson in his discussion of the conversion of
Islington from a "rat infested slum" to "part of our glorious heritage"11
Where these processes are couched in village terms, they are part of
"village dressing" and the particular manifestation of this phenomenon
that is developing in urban India is analysed here.

The Indian version of "village dressing" is, then, very much part of the
international trend of villigising the city. But at the sametime, it builds on
previous constructions of a more specifically Indian village ideal. It
combines the colonial image of the village as timeless and unchanging,
with the nationalist idea of the village as a means of re-asserting Indian
identity. These ideas are in turn added to the concept of the natural
beauty of the village and its hand-made products. All of these elements
together, and combined with the tendency of a global elite to idealise
the village-within-the-city, have contributed to what Indian journalists call
"the ethnic revival": in food, fashion and decor. When food, clothes,
furniture and architecture are combined, as in the case of the Hauz Khas
Village, the result is the creation of a total "ethnic environment". But
before turning to Hauz Khas, simpler examples of the process of "village
dressing" at work are given.

One example is that of Vishala, the highly successful "ethnic restaurant"

near Ahmedabad city in Gujarat. Here an entire village complex has
been constructed in mud and cow dung, creating the atmosphere of an
Indian village. Clients arrive generally in cars and taxis, to pay a steep
entrance fee. This conveniently weeds out most of the population and
gives them the right to enter this exclusive mud complex. Here they have
a chance to look around a museum of old brass and copper utensils, or
to watch a puppet show or folk theatre troupe, whilst they await their
food. The food itself is served on leaves by waiters dressed in tradition
al-looking Rajasthani clothes with large colourful turbans. The clients,
who are the sort of people who normally sit at tables and often eat with

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Ethnic Chic

knives and forks, now sit on the ground and eat the so-called typica
village food with their hands.

The idea of course, is to experience the atmosphere of Gujarati villag

life. It has a vaguely Gandhian ring in its suggestion that the elite should
go to the village and behave like the villager. Yet it also has a decidedly
colonial aspect with the vast numbers of uniformed waiters and the
luxurious feast-like food. Although the individual items resemble village
recipes, they are combined so extravagantly that probably no village
would ever have eaten such a meal all off one plate. Eating in the ethnic
restaurant reconfirms the myth of the ideal village, for here the village
is beautiful and timeless, and the people are friendly and co-operative—
once you have paid your entrance fee.

At the Crafts Museum in Delhi, one can again visit mud huts, this time
built in different styles from all over India. One can also watch Indian
craftsmen and women demonstrating their age-old skills in a specially
designed courtyard. The aim is not so much to reconstruct an Indian
village as to evoke something of the flavour of village India through the
architecture and crafts. That such a flavour is highly marketable is
evident from the success of the festivals of India abroad (in
England,Japan, France, Sweden, the United States and the Soviet
Union) and of Apna Utsav,12 In the Festival of India in Britain, for
example, both crafts people and crafts were presented under the
all-consuming banner of "traditional India", conveniently located, as
Brian Durrans has pointed out, in the mythical structure of the timeless
Indian village.13

What happens if we transplant the ideal, not merely to a purposefully

built village complex, but to an urban village where villagers actually
live? This precisely has happened in Hauz Khas village, newly dis
covered in the mid 1980's by a member of the jet-setting Indian elite.

There are five principal stages in the complex history of Hauz Khas
village that are worth mentioning in brief: its origin which dates back to
the pre-Sultanate era; its conquering by the Turkish in the late 13th
century; its displacement by the British in 1913; its incorporation into the
modern city of Delhi in the 1960's; and finally its "discovery" and
transformation by the Delhi elite in the 1980's.

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 EMMA TARLO

EMMA TARLO

The ancient site of Hauz Khas

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38 Ethnic Chic

Hauz Khas village takes its name from the great stone water reservoir,
built by Ala-Ud-din Khalji to supply water to the ancient city of Delhi, then
at Siri, at the end of the 13th century. In the 14th century, the Emperor
Firoz Shah Tughlaq repaired the damaged tank and built alongside it a
series of buildings commonly identified as a madrassa. These construc
tions led to the incorporation of a small ancient village of local farmers.
Many years after the fall of the sultanate, these farmers abandoned their
mud houses and set up home within the madrassa and surrounding
tombs. By the early 1900's there were approximately one hundred
families (one-third Hindu and two-thirds Muslim) living in these patched
up monuments, earning their livelihood by farming the now-dry reservoir
and surrounding land.14

Such was the situation when in 1913 the Archaeological Survey of India,
under British authority, declared the monuments worthy of protection
and removed the inhabitants who were considered damaging to the
stone. With gold guineas as compensation, the locals built themselves
a new village just beyond the ancient stone wall which marked the edge
of the protected zone. This means that, although the village seemed
pregnant with "timeless tradition", it is in fact a relatively modern con
struction which developed as a consequence of the British interest in
preserving ruins. The village's somewhat brutal history continued with
partition, when many of the wealthy Muslim families fled to Pakistan,
leaving most of the land and property in the hands of Jat farmers. By
the late 1950's and 1960's the Delhi administration was buying up vast
tracts of land in and around Delhi, in order to cater to the massive influx
of refugees.

Having already seen their homes transformed into an archaeological

site, the villagers of Hauz Khas now witnessed their farmland trans
formed into a public park and picnic area, a so-called "green lung" for
the expanding capital. Ironically, it was this 400 acre green lung which
protected Hauz Khas from the property developers who soon pounced
on other urban villages,15 incorporating them into the densely populated
urban mass. Whilst the outer and inner ring roads plied on either side
of the green zone, the absence of a through road prevented the village
from attracting traffic. It therefore remained both architecturally and
economically aloof from the city around it. In 1986 it contained less than

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 EMMA TARLO 39

160 houses, of which well over half were kucha orsemi-kucha. In the
wealthier section of the village, the Jat inhabitants kept cows for milk
and found various employment in the city; whilst in the poorer section,
mainly Harijan and Muslim, the residents held various menial jobs such
as cleaning, sweeping, factory work and so forth.

A few educated outsiders had also settled in or near the village, including
the eminent writer and activist, Mulk Raj Anand, who tried to establish
pottery workshops there as early as the 1950's. His attempts failed not
long after they were initiated, and were soon forgotten. In 1986 the only
non-residential commercial activities were restricted to a printing press,
a small manufacturing unit for washing machines, two export garment
units and a marble godown.16 As far as local commerce was concerned,
it was limited to tea stalls, two small grocery shops, pan sellers, a flour
mill and a washerman's stand. Whilst a few interested foreigners and
erudite Delhiites did from time to time venture down the lane which led

to Hauz Khas, it was usually to look at the ruins. The village itself
attracted very little attention.

Bina Ramani17 in 1986. Having lived in London and New York

But things were
for 25 years, she had soon to change
recently returned to India andwith
experiencedthe arrival of fashion designer
a sort of ethnic conversion. As she put it:

Coming back to India I realised the richness of India's traditional heritage.

I travelled around a bit and saw the whole place with foreign eyes... I saw
for the first time those rural women in their fabulous colourful garments.

This sight inspired Bina to enter the world of "ethnic" as opposed to

Western fashion. She began to incorporate elements of old embroidery,
brocade and saris within her designs which were now selling in a
successful and expensive Delhi boutique situated in an old haveli in
Mehrauli. She had been nicknamed by some journalists, "the high
priestess of ethnic chic". When she first walked into Hauz Khas she was
looking for a space to locate her workshop, and was instantly struck by
her find.

Hauz Khas seemed to be the embodiment of much that was beautiful

and authentic in the Indian village. Not only that, it was situated both

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Ethnic Chic

close to a picturesque monument and within the metropolitan city

Delhi—thereby combining the virtue of numerous ideals. In an intervi
she recalled:

I instantly fell in love with the place. There was the beautiful old monument,
the countryside and of course the wonderful people. I adore peasants,
villages, ethnic and rustic things. Peasants and tribals are really the best
people. In fact they are the only real authentic people of India.

The fact that Hauz Khas was a comparatively modern village was largely
overlooked by Bina, and in any case did nothing to destroy the village
ideal. The deserted ruins, meanwhile, actually lent age and romance to
the village even though their preservation was, in reality, the cause of
the village's abrupt and recent origins. Following the old 19th century
tradition, Bina was charmed by the idea that this village represented
some sort of authentic India. She was also charmed by the low rents
She immediately proposed to rent two rooms in the house of one of the
wealthier villagers. He was both delighted and surprised, turfing out hi
tenants and renting Bina the space at what for him was a profitable rate,
and for her a laughably low rent.

This was the beginning of what was to develop into a full-scale encounter
between the inhabitants of Hauz Khas village and members of the Delhi
elite. It began in fairytale style not only for Bina, but also for many of the
inhabitants of the village. They were, on the whole, intrigued by this
exotic "foreigner" in their midst, impressed by her wealth, fascinated by
her appearance, interested in her car. She in turn was seduced by what
she saw as their rustic innocence. It was a marriage of ideologies. In an
interview with Society magazine, (Bombay) she recalled:

When I first walked in here (the village) in 1986,1 knew instantly that there
was going to be a wonderful romance between the villagers and me. The
people came running out to see me, touching and pulling my clothes as
if I was some creature from outer space. (Society, October 1989:90).

The early phase of Bina's stay in the village was then characterised by
novelty and excitement for many concerned. It was a fascination based
on mutual exoticism. Bina fulfilled for many of the villagers thei
stereotype of the glamorous city woman from abroad, with the on
difference that she was actually prepared to talk to uneducated villagers.
Bina, who was designing clothes in the "haute couture" category began

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 EMMA TARLO

EMMA TARLO

"A village scene"—this resident of Hauz Khas got out her hookah especially
for the photograph

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42 Ethnic Chic

to invite her customers to come to her village workshop for their

alterations. Villagers soon found that foreign diplomats and Hindi film
stars were no longer distant figures, but were walking through thei
village and even drinking their tea. For Bina too, things were lookin
rosy. Most of her wealthy clients had never visited an Indian villag
before and it was a tremendous hit. As Bina put it:

They went berserk about the place. They loved everything: the people,
the buffaloes, the winding streets, the countryside, the monument. They
found it all so picturesque.

It was the enthusiasm of this select clientele of diplomats, foreigners,

film stars and businessman's wives that gave Bina the idea of not only
keeping her workshop in the village but also opening a boutique ther
and encouraging others to do likewise. Many of her Delhi friends
discouraged the idea. For them the village was associated with dirt, flies
and backwardness. But Bina, with her international background
realised that Hauz Khas had potential as a village within the city. She
succeeded in convincing some of her influential friends to join her in the
village, which was to become a small, exclusive shopping centre,
specialising in so-called "ethnic clothes". Hauz Khas was no longer jus
a small village buried in the city. In elite circles, it had become known as
"THE village".

The reconstruction of Hauz Khas therefore involved a complex weaving

together of previous constructions of the village ideal. It retained the
colonial and Gandhian idea that Indian identity could be found within the
village and its products. This it did by selling exclusively "ethnic" things,
within a genuine village. At the same time, it conformed to the interna
tional ideal of the village within the city. It had been discovered by the
elite who, on the one hand, perceived it as authentic and close to nature,
but who on the other hand were beginning to convert it into an exclusive
enclave for the wealthy and famous. If we examine the words of the
daughter of one of India's leading industrialists who opened a boutique
there in December 1989, we see these two strands combined: both the
romance and the exclusiveness of the village within the city. She told
me:

I had never visited a village before, but I knew most of the people he
and they are all from very good families. I didn't want to set up

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 EMMA TARLO

commercial shopping centre because, you know, well, I don't actually

have to work. I just wanted to fill my time and the village seemed a good
place.... It has a very special atmosphere, the people are so friendly,
though also very slow to understand.... But they are kind and they always
bring me tea. Actually, they are the closest people to nature, the closest
you can get and that is really quite something. It says a lot for them.

Many, though not all, of the boutique owners I interviewed in 1989 were
seeing the village through an ideological haze. They were not only
selling the village ideal in their shops, but they were also very much
consuming the village ideal. And in order to consume it, they had
simultaneously to create it. In other words they had to dress up the
village in such a way that it fulfilled their own expectations of what a real
village was like. This they did not only by selling peasant and tribal
artefacts and clothes, but also inserting old- worldy features into their
boutiques which were situated inside village houses. Antique carved
wooden doors from Gujarat began to replace simple wooden doors.
Rush matting became the popular floor covering. Walls of boutiques
were usually either whitewashed or plastered with mud, or decorated
with Bihari style folk paintings. This conformed precisely to the idea of
village India perpetuated by the Festival of India, where "art-and-crafts
from all-over-India" were combined together to represent some
cohesive image of "traditional India". In Hauz Khas each shop had, I
was told, "its own unique atmosphere of village life".

There was one small problem in all this euphoria that was overlooked.
And that was that the inhabitants of Hauz Khas did not share the

boutique owner's aesthetic. Neither did they share the same concept of
what constituted village life or village atmosphere. This was obvious
from the way that they dressed, the way that they decorated their
houses, and from the fact that many of them were employed in the city
rather than the village, and even from the way in which they had been
excited by the foreignness of Bina and the Hindi film stars. Their
aesthetic gave a positive value to concrete rather than mud, to syn
thetics rather than cotton, and to coloured TV rather than Bihari folk
paintings. If they were still living in rather quaint brick houses with mud
floors, that was more because they could not afford to change them,
than because they had some intrinsic fondness for an oldy worldy village
look.

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Ethnic Chic

sciously by the boutique owners. Consciously by the fact that

Now this fact inwas
they brought rendered
"village features" frominvisible, either consciously or uncon
outside to make the
village look really authentic. But unconsciously, by the fact that many
were totally blind to those aspects of the village that did not conform to
their vision. This was particularly noticeable in discussions about the
size of the village. Bina, for example, estimated that there were about
25 houses in the village and that the total population was about 200
people. Others thought there were thirty or forty houses at most. But
according to a survey in 1988, there were 160 houses and the population
was 1500.18 This was not a simple case of innumeracy. It was a case
of filtering out those aspects of the village which were not relevant. The
boutique owners counted the wealthy quarter containing the boutiques
as THE village. And since they had filled this quarter with "villagey
things", it did indeed begin to conform to their village-ideal. Most of them
had never crossed the road and seen the poor half of the village,
populated by Harijans and Muslims.

Interestingly, Michael Thompson encountered an identical blind spot

amongst what he called the "frontier middle class in Islington".19 He
recalls them making comments like "We were the first people to come
and live here", ignoring the fact that many of their neighbours had lived
there for generations. Almost identical comments were made by people
in Hauz Khas. I particularly remember talking to a boutique owner who
explained to me that not a single village woman in Hauz Khas wore a
sari. As she was saying this, her sweeper, dressed in a sari, walked in
the door and set to work cleaning the floor. Knowing that most Harijans
in the village wore saris and seeing this sari-clad woman in front of my
eyes, I felt slightly embarrassed for the boutique owner. But there was
no need. The sweeper in the sari, like all the other Harijans of the village,
was simply invisible to her. While the boutique owners did recognise that
villagers did not share their taste, they did not worry too much about it.
On the contrary they found ways of turning this to their advantage. For
"village dressing" was not only an aesthetic ideal but also a commercial
one. This was clear in the case of clothes. Most villagers were wearing
either jeans or trousers if they were men, and synthetic saris or salwar
kamizes if they were women. Attracted to city styles, many village
women had slashed away their old peasant skirts in their dowry chests.

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 EMMA TARLO

When boutique owners realised this, they offered to buy them. This
puzzled and amused the villagers who had taken care to follow city
fashions, and now looked down on simple cotton. One old woman,
whose courtyard now contained boutiques rather than buffaloes, had
sold her old skirts and explained:

I had never before thought of trying to sell them. Who would want such
things? But now I cannot help but laugh and laugh that what we have cast
away, these smart people begin to wear. To us, these skirts are nothing
but waste. You know, before these fashion shops came, I was using such
cloth to wipe the floor or to put under a baby's bottom or for stuffing a quilt.
But I was happy enough to sell them and get some money.

The boutique owner who bought the skirts then went on to sell them to
her wealthy international clients.

Thus by ignoring and covering over aspects of the village that did not
seem authentic, while simultaneously buying up and selling those
aspects which did seem authentic, the boutique owners were fulfilling
their own aesthetic, while suppressing that of the villager. So if one were
to do some sort of subaltern analysis of the situation, one might conclude
that this is a simple case of the elite silencing the villagers and denying
them their agency in the development of the village. As the dominant
group, boutique owners were in the position to render the other invisible.
But such assessment does not correspond to what has happened in
Hauz Khas for this is not a simple case of the oppressors and the
oppressed.

This leads me to a crucial point, and one that gives Hauz Khas its
particular uniqueness. Those villagers who owned their own property
were not actually selling space to the Delhi elite. They were simply
renting it out. In other words, the elite, who in the usual order of things,
are in control of the situation were, in this case, only the tenants of village
landlords. Now this fact makes Hauz Khas very different from the other
cases of "village dressing" that I have discussed so far. In all of these
other cases members of the elite are in the control both economically
and aesthetically while the villagers are compliant with the elite's per
ception of village life. The waiters in the ethnic restaurant for example;
are prepared to dress up in traditional looking Rajasthani clothes, even
though they are in Gujarat; it is part of the job. Similarly the craftspeople

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Ethnic Chic

EMMA TARLO

Ethnic chic with a touch of Bihar

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 EMMA TARLO

at the Crafts Museum in Delhi were willing to sit in the craft complex and
produce traditional crafts as they were expected to, and as they were
paid for doing. In all of these examples, including of course the Festival
of India, the villagers were objects in the elite's creation and consump
tion of the village-ideal.

Hauz Khas, at first sight, appeared to be just another of these all too
common structures. One journalist in The Times of India described the
development under the heading, "Selling the Romance of Poverty". But
the villagers of Hauz Khas, owing to their positions as landlords, were
by no means simply the objects of the development. Many of them were
just as capable of asserting their subjecthood as members of the Delhi
elite.

One of the attractions of having a boutique in Hauz Khas, was not

Let usmerelyexamine for butexample,
the village atmosphere, the economic
also the low village-style rents. structure of the village.
But what the boutique owners had not realised was that they could not
have the benefits of finding a village within the city without the villagers
simultaneously realising that they were not really part of the city and
could charge city-rents. Because of their assumption that villagers were
stuck in some timeless zone, many of the boutique owners were highly
shocked by this apparently sudden commercial attitude amongst vil
lagers. Rents more than tripled within six months, so that a small two
room space which was fetching Rs 1500 a month in February 1989, was
fetching Rs 6000 by July of the same year. The sight of outfits selling at
Rs 5000 (then 200) each in some of the boutiques had soon made the
villagers wise to the possibilities of what they could charge. As more and
more villagers decided to rent out spaces, each charged more than the
other, causing considerable resentment amongst those villagers who
had offered low rents from the beginning. They too began to increase
their rents, thereby breaking their original contracts.

These developments led to a sudden influx of money as many villagers

were receiving rents which way over-shadowed their salaries. Many
gave up their jobs and now sat about on charpais during the day,
drinking, watching television and playing cards—much to the disgust of
the boutique owners who felt this was not what village peasants ought

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Ethnic Chic

to be doing. Though these village landlords may have lost their motiva
tion to work, they were not without their ambitions. Some decided that
they could enlarge revenue by increasing the size of their property and
dividing it up in such a way that they could squeeze as many as six
designer boutiques into a single house. Since they owned their own land
they were legally entitled to build. Some therefore began to build
upwards, raising the height of their buildings from one and a half floors
to four floors,20 thereby renting out the first three floors and settling
themselves on the fourth. Pleased with the opportunity to build themse
ves new luxury apartments, they chose to construct in concrete rather
than brick or mud. This upset the boutique owners who felt that it ruined
the "village atmosphere". An interesting case was that of Gita's boutique

Gita was an ex air-hostess who had become interested in ethnic fashion

when she realised how much the foreigners she encountered on her
travels loved Indian things. Unlike the first influx of boutique owners,
Gita was not from the very top notch of the international jet set, but was
from a moderately wealthy upper middle-class family. She opened a
boutique selling mainly cotton ethnic clothes from Rajasthan at com
paratively affordable prices, hoping to attract those clients who could
not afford designer labels. When I first met her in 1989, Gita's boutique
had been open for only two weeks, but she was in a state of considerable
tension. Firstly, there was the problem of the building. Gita described its
appearance when she had first visited the village some six months
earlier and agreed to rent a space:

I loved it immediately. It had real village atmosphere. It was small and

intimate with little windows looking out towards the lake (empty reservoir).
It had lots of sun light and was full of nooks and crannies. I was going to
do the whole thing up in bamboo and make it really ethnic.

What she was describing were two rooms, situated in a narrow but deep
two storey house which was owned by five brothers. The two rooms
were on the ground floor and she agreed to pay Rs.4,000 per month,
thereby having the only boutique in that particular alley. Her landlord
agreed and threw out his previous tenants from whom he received only
100 rupees per room per month. But he then decided that he could get
even more rent if he demolished the building altogether and built himself
a new four-storey structure. His brothers, who had previously been

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 EMMA TARLO

opposed to the idea of letting out space to shops, agreed; and before
long the whole structure was razed to the ground and rebuilt in the form
of a uniform concrete block, four storeys high and without any windows
facing the reservoir. Gita suddenly found herself shelved in a concrete
precinct, surrounded by new shops selling similar things to her own, and
without any of the "village atmosphere" that had attracted her to the
situation in the first place.

Not only this, but her landlord decided to double her rent arguing that
she was now occupying high-quality accommodation. Faced with the
option of agreeing or leaving, Gita agreed to pay, for she knew that rents
were soaring thoughout the village and it would be impossible to find
another space. But she was disillusioned and disappointed. She told me
in 1989:

It was the appeal of the village that was the original attraction but it is no
longer like a village and the whole place is under construction and looks
terrible. The villagers won't even allow us windows and sign boards
because the people behind only agreed to the instruction if there were no
windows overlooking their properties and no advertisements....

To be honest, I am really disappointed. I thought villagers were innocent

but we are at their mercy. They are very shrewd, real business people. In
fact they have completely lost their innocence and become very commer
cial....

The commercial attitude of villagers was shocking to women like Gita

because it did not conform to the stereotype of the timeless village
peasant. Yet if we actually compare the attitudes and behaviour of
certain boutique owners with that of certain villagers, there are, in fact,
many parallels.

In the same way that members of the Delhi elite were often surprised to
find villagers dressed in synthetics, and thereby contradicting their
stereotype, so too were villagers surprised to find urbanites wearing and
selling their old cast-offs. As the village Chaudhuri put it:

Previously people were looking down on us because we were wearing

dhotis and looking like farmers. But now they actually come to the village
and dress in our old clothes.

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Ethnic Chic

A simple village tune

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 EMMA TARLO

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Ethnic Chic

Just as many of the boutique owners were trying to build their village
haven in Hauz Khas, so those villagers who could afford it, were trying
to realise their urban dream; an environment of concrete, chrome and
electronic goods. Far from behaving unpredictably, both were in fact
living out the exotic aspect of the other that had attracted them in the
first place. On their first encounter, villagers had not been attracted to
Bina for her ethnic ideals but for her car, her money and glamour.
Similarly the boutique owners had not been attracted to the villagers
aspirations but rather to those aspects of the village environment that
most villagers seemed to want to eliminate. And just as boutique owners
were denying villagers their role in the future of the village by trying to
keep it in the eternal past, so too villagers were denying boutique owners
access to their past, by modernising the village. Neither group was
deliberately opposed to the other; yet each had aspirations which largely
cancelled out the other's expectations and desires. And finally, just as
the boutique owners were treating the village as a commercial
enterprise, so too many of the villagers were treating it in the same way.

The behaviour of the villagers was shocking to the elite, mainly because
villagers were usually in the subservient position and were not expected
to emerge as actors in their own right. As one, self-aware, boutique
owner explained:

Basically, we are all used to having servants and being able to boss them
about. But here we are the tenants. We cannot treat our landlords as
servants. Such an attitude creates hostility.

This woman was secretary of the Creative Arts Village Association

(CAVA) which the boutique owners had just formed in 1989 in an attempt
to keep some sort of control over developments in the village. The
Association was to meet from time to time with the village elders in order
to come to some agreement over commercial developments. When I
was in the village in 1989, the association was still formulating its
objectives which went as follows: to preserve the village atmosphere;
to choose harmonious architecture and keep interiors ethnic with each
as unique as possible; to keep rents low; to prevent new shops from
opening up and turning the place into a commercial arcade; to build a
parking lot; to cobble the streets (to save customers from getting their
high heels stuck in the mud;) and to prevent the villagers from leading

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 EMMA TARLO

their buffaloes down the main shopping street whilst customers were
still in the village ( a request initiated after an irate and almost tearful
customer complained that a dirty buffalo had flicked its tail, smearing
dung over her best coat.)

In others words, what the boutique owners desired was some kind of
sterilised village which they could fill with the most aesthetically appeal
ing features of "tradition" without experiencing too many of its hardship
or discomforts. Just as the British preoccupation with "preserving" the
ruins of Hauz Khas had left little room for the inhabitants in 1913, so the
Indian elite's desire to "preserve" the village left little space for villagers
in the 1980's. But if the boutique owners' vision encompassed the
villagers, so too did the villagers' vision encompass the boutique
owners—as the villagers went ahead with concrete developments, and
refused to restrict new boutique owners from setting up shop. When
Bina tried to convince the village council that they must keep commercial
developments small, in keeping with the village, one man accused her
somewhat directly of "only wanting to fill her own stomach and not
thinking of anyone else".

n December 1989, it was difficult to judge which group was triumph

ing in the battle of taste, for as soon as one group instigated changes,
the other seemed to bounce back and re-impose its ideal on the
village. Gita, for example, despite her disillusionment, had not aban
doned her belief in the village ideal. Rather than simply accepting her
concrete fate, she decided to restore the lost "village atmosphere" by
asking her village landlady to re-plaster the concrete interior of her
boutique with mud and cow dung paste. Her landlady was amazed, and
told her, with good humour.

Well, I thought that with all these changes in the village, at least I would
never have to plaster a wall or a floor again. I thought that was the end
of the custom. And then you turn to me and ask me to plaster your walls.

But if, in 1989, there were not winners or losers in the cycle of destruction
and recreation, this was no longer the case in 1994. Yet at first sight, it
was difficult to establish exactly who had won and who had lost. Village
landlords had certainly succeeded in either dwarfing or eliminating most
of the remaining quaint brick buildings, for almost the entire village,

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54 Ethnic Chic

including the previously undeveloped Harijan area, had burst into three
or four storey concrete. Yet the villagers, who in the past, had lounged
around on charpais and whose children used to play in the streets, were
now either stuck up on the fourth floor of their dwellings, or had left th
village. Some had purchased property elsewhere, coming only o
casionally to collect their rents. Others had sold up and left the neigh
bourhood altogether. Though content with the money they had gained,
the remaining villagers complained of traffic congestion, loud disco
music and the loss of peace, space and even morality in the village
Apart from criticising the indecent behaviour and dress of customers,
many women bemoaned the alcohol problems of their own husbands
and sons, and their total apathy concerning education and employment.
The death of the village Chaudhury, whose corpse had been found down
a well two years before, seemed to reflect the more sinister side of the
new developments. There was clearly a sense of loss amongst villager
despite the obvious financial gain.

The sense of loss of the boutique owners was equally apparent. Two
-thirds of the original 38 shops had closed down, and had been replaced
by over one hundred new shops which sold and exported anything from
fashion shoes to tourist nick-nacks as well as exclusive Indian and

Western designer clothes. Those boutique owners who had once tr

to make Hauz Khas conform to their village ideal had clearly giv
up—in the face of what they called the pure" commercial ideal" of the
newcomers. At the back of the village, a wealthy NRI industrialist wa
busy constructing a "state-of-the-art shopping complex" to contain ov
100 commercial units. To the fury of the original traders, he was also
planning to create a new road at the back of the village, thereby exposi
Hauz Khas to the delights of normal Delhi traffic. In the face of su
massive commercial ventures, CAVA had found itself unable to instiga
its villigization programme, and had eventually disintegrated owing to
both internal disputes and disputes with villagers. An architec
reasoned plan for aesthetic and practical improvements lay abandon
and used. Hauz Khas looked more of a building sight than ever before,
and it seemed that shops were closing almost as fast as they wer
opening. Bina Ramani's daughter, who had established a night club two
years earlier, had been forced to close owing to police harassment a
violent objections from the villagers. Gita, who in 1989 had bold

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 EMMA TARLO

replastered her concrete walls with mud, had packed up and left. Even
Bina Ramani, whose capacity for enthusiasm was greater than most,
was "appalled" by what the village had become, saying that it wasn't
even a village any more. In short, the city had reclaimed the village and
its inhabitants. Like the rest of the metropolis, Hauz Khas was now faced
with insufficient housing, mass corruption, poor power services, inade
quate drainage, traffic congestion and noise pollution.

But if neither the villagers nor the original boutique owners had won the
battle of ideologies, who had? The answer can be found in the sky line
with a large neon sign flashing across the monuments—which have
been newly paved and flood- lit. This is no ordinary restaurant for it is
run by a prominent politician. Allegedly illegal on at least five different
counts,21 you have, containing a large selection of luxury restaurants,
the latest great success. And even if the Delhiites don't come rushing
all the year round, the apparent "personal agreement" with Delhi
Tourism guarantees regular coach loads of up-market tourists who first
see a "cultural show" in the monuments and then eat in one of the
restaurants.

But what has become of the village ideal? The brochure offers you a
clue. It advertises "Theme Parties", boasting:

Our trained staff give even the most exotic themes a realistic touch. Some
of the themes you can choose from are: Village Theme—Rajasthani
Landscape Theme—Arabian Nights Theme—Ala-ud-Din-Khilji's Tent
Theme... and many more to choose and explore.

This is the new successful formula. For "village dressing" to be success

ful, it is advisable to remove it from the village altogether and to place it
within a self-contained environment such as the restaurant walls. Here,
safe from the intrusions of Hauz Khas inhabitants, have been imported,
paid villagers in the form of Rajasthani musicians to dress up in tradi
tional attire and perform. For most urban Indians and foreigners alike,
the village is a subject of only part-time fascination and one that appeals
in juxtaposition to other exotic alternatives. And just as the Rajasthani
performers remove their fanciful costumes each night before returning
to the slum at the back of the village, so the whole "village theme" can
be switched on and off without any reference to the actual village
outside. As for the boutique owners who had confused their ideal with

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Ethnic Chic

reality, they no longer even speak of their lost ideal. Like disillusioned
anthropologists, it seems that they would rather forget about the village
for a while.

This relates to the original analogy between "village dressing" and "salad
dressing" and their relation to consumption. The point about salad
dressing is not so much the taste of the dressing itself, as the fact that
it encourages us to consume the salad. That village dressing and salad
dressing have at least established their compatibility would seem to say
something of the perspicacity of the politician!

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 EMMA TARLO

Notes

I.1 am grateful to the British Academy and the Research Committee of the School
of Oriental and African Studies for funding this research.
2. For a summary and analysis of nineteenth century perceptions of the Indian
village, see Inden R.,Imagining India, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1990.
3. cf. MarriotM., "Little Communities in an indigenous Civilisation", in MarriotM.(ed.),
Village India, Studies in the Little Community, Chicago, Chicago University Press,
1955.

4. cf. Shah A.M., "The Rural-Urban Networks in India",South Asia, Vol 11,no.2,
pp. 1-27, 1988.
5. For one of the earlier demonstrations of a caste upgrading its social position, see
Cohn B., 1955, The Changing Status of a Depressed Caste, in Marriot M.(ed.). op
cit. For a description of the dynamics of marriage alliance in relation to caste, see
Pocock D,,Kanbiand Patidar, Oxford, Clarendon, 1972.
6. cf. Breman, 1974,Patronage and Exploitation: Changing Agrarian relations in
South Gujarat, Berkeley, University of California Press.
7. See his comment "Swadeshi must be more than a political weapon. It must be a
religious-aesthetic ideal" (Art and Swadeshi, Madras, Ganesh Publishers, 1911, p.8)
and his comment "True Swadeshi would have attempted to preserve the status of
our skilled artisans and village craftsmen..." (ibid.p.24).
8. The British interest in Indian arts was not, of course, devoid of economic
motivations but neither should it be reduced entirely to these as any perusal of the
numerous articles in theJournal of Indian Arts (founded in 1886) demonstrates.
George Birdwood and E.B. Havell showed particular concern about the loss or
decline of an Indian aesthetic in India, and Coomaraswamy often quoted from their
writings cf. Birdwood G., ~\ 880,The Industrial Arts of India, (reprinted by Rupa and
Co, Calcutta, 1988) and Havell E.B., 1912, The Basis for Artistic and Industrial
Revival in India, Madras, The Theosophist Office.
9. The All India Handicrafts Board was established in 1952.

10. cf Bayly C. The "Origins of Swadeshi". Appadurai A (ed),The Social Life of

Things,Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 1986.
II. cf. Thompson, Rubbish Theory: The Creation and Destruction of Value, Oxford,
Oxford University Press.
12.Apna Utsav(Our Festival) was performed in Delhi in 1986, following the success
of the Festivals of India in the United Kingdom and the United States of America.
According to one of the organisers, 6000 artists (including craftspersons and
performers) were invited to participate in this major Indian bonanza, and ap
proximately 8000 artists turned up.
13. Durrans B., "Handicrafts, Ideology and the Festival of India",South Asia Re
search, Vol.2 no. 1., 1982.
14. The historical details recorded here have been collected from elderly villagers,
That the villagers were previously living inside the monuments is confirmed by Carr
Steven's observations recorded in 1876, cf. Steevan Carr, 1876, The Archaeological
and Monumental Remains of Delhi, Ashish Publishing House (reprint) Delhi.

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Ethnic Chic

15. There were 111 "urban villages" recognised in the Master Plan of Delhi in 1962.
The land surrounding these villages was purchased by the Government between
the years 1958-1976 at the rate of 50 paise per square yard. Villagers were given
the opportunity to purchase land elsewhere at a special rate but many did not take
up the option since they were attached to their villages and did not want land in
another area.

16. These statistical details concerning the village are taken from Narendra R.,Hauz
Khas Village, Delhi, an approach towards redevelopment, Unpublished thesis,
School of Planning and Architecture, Delhi, 1989.1 am grateful to Rachna Narendra
not only for making her thesis available but also for returning to Hauz Khas with me
six months after her study was completed, enabling us to compare notes about the
development of the village over the past twelve months.
17. Since her "discovery" of Hauz Khas, Bina Ramani has become a well known
Delhi socialite. Rarely a week passes without some mention of her in one or other
of the Indian Sunday papers. More recently (in 1994) she has become the agony
aunt of the new international newspaper, The Asian Age.
18. Narendra op. cit.
19. Thompson M.op. cit.
20.1 am using the term "floor" to apply literally to the number of floors. In other words
I am counting the ground floor as one floor.
21. The village Bistro complex is allegedly illegal on the following grounds: it is built
outside the official boundary of the village as defined by the DDA (Delhi Development
Authority); it is too high a structure to comply with regulations concerning the height
of buildings in urban villages; it is too close to the monument walls for complying
with the Archaeological Survey's regulations concerning the proximity of buildings
to archaeological sites; it serves alcohol apparently without a license, and, like most
other buildings in Hauz Khas, it is said to have illegal electricity connections.

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 EMMA TARLO

Bibliography

Bayly C., "The Origins of Swadeshi: cloth and Indian Society, 1700-1930", in
Appadurai The Social Life of Things, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1986.
Birdwood G., 1880, The Industrial Arts of India, reprinted by Rupa and Co., Calcutta,
1988.

Breman, Patronage and Exploitation: Changing Agrarian relations in South Gujarat,

Berkeley, University of California Press, 1974.
CoomaraswamyA.K., The Message of the East, Madras, Ganesh Publishers, 1908.
Coomaraswamy A.,Art and Swadeshi, Madras, Ganesh Publishers, 1911.
Cohn B., 1955, The Changing Status of a Depressed Caste, in Marriot M. (ed.), op
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