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 FASHION, DRESS AND
IDENTITY IN SOUTH ASIAN
DIASPORA NARRATIVES
FROM THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY TO MONICA ALI

Noemí Pereira-Ares
Fashion, Dress and Identity in South Asian
Diaspora Narratives
 Noemí Pereira-Ares

Fashion, Dress and

Identity in South
Asian Diaspora
Narratives
From the Eighteenth Century to Monica Ali
Noemí Pereira-Ares
University of Santiago de Compostela
Santiago, Spain

ISBN 978-3-319-61396-3 ISBN 978-3-319-61397-0 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61397-0

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017947752

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

This book was advertised with a copyright holder in the name of the publisher in error,
whereas the author(s)/editor(s) are holding the copyright.
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
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 The Sari
Inside my mother
I peered through a glass porthole.
The world beyond was hot and brown.

They were all looking in on me –

Father, Grandmother,
the cook’s boy, the sweeper-girl,
the bullock with the sharp
shoulderblades,
the local politicians.

My English grandmother
took a telescope
and gazed across continents.

All the people unravelled a sari.

It stretched from Lahore to Hyderabad,
wavered across the Arabian Sea,
shot through with stars,
fluttering with sparrows and quails.
They threaded it with roads,
undulations of land.

Eventually
they wrapped and wrapped me in it
whispering Your body is your country.
(Alvi 2008: 39)
 Acknowledgements

This book, albeit extensively revised, began as a doctoral disserta-

tion at the University of Santiago de Compostela, and I will always be
deeply indebted to my Ph.D. supervisors, Margarita Estévez-Saá and
José Manuel Estévez-Saá, for their insightful academic guidance, per-
ceptive criticism and constant encouragement throughout. I am also
profoundly grateful and indebted to Claire Chambers for devoting her
precious time to reading and commenting on various draft chapters. I
greatly appreciate her generous enthusiasm, judicious feedback and inval-
uable comments. I would also like to thank Laura Lojo-Rodríguez and
Jorge Sacido-Romero for their reading suggestions and advice on par-
ticular sections. Thanks also go to the anonymous reviewers for their
constructive comments on the initial manuscript. I am also grateful to
the Spanish Ministry of Education for funding this study (FPU, AP2010-
4490), as well as to the Department of English and German Studies at
the University of Santiago de Compostela for providing support along
the way. I must particularly acknowledge the funding provided by the
‘Discourse and Identity’ Research Group (GRC2015/002 GI-1924),
and must thank its coordinator, Laura Lojo-Rodríguez, for being sup-
portive and generous throughout. Some of the research for this book
also comes from a research project funded by the Spanish Ministry of

vii
viii    Acknowledgements

Economy and Competitiveness (FFI2012-38790), to which I am grate-

ful. I would also like to express my gratitude to the members of the
Centre for Postcolonial Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London,
and especially to Sanjay Seth, for the warm welcome and assistance dur-
ing my stay as a Visiting Researcher in 2013. I extend my acknowledge-
ments to my colleagues from the University of A Coruña. Special thanks
to Antonio Raúl de Toro Santos for his unfailing support and advice,
as well as to María Jesús Lorenzo Modia for her guidance and mentor-
ing during my years at the University of A Coruña. I also owe a debt
of gratitude to Joanne F. Forrester for our stimulating discussions and
for her editing advice. I am similarly grateful to the team at Palgrave
Macmillan and, in particular, to the editors Tom René, April James
and Camille Davies for urging on the project, and for their patience
and support. I also wish to acknowledge the generosity of The Journal
of Commonwealth Literature and Miscelánea: A Journal of English and
American Studies in granting permission to reprint sections of Chaps. 2
and 5, and must also thank Bloodaxe Books for giving copyright permis-
sion to reproduce Moniza Alvi’s poem ‘The Sari’. Additional thanks go
to all those colleagues, friends and relatives who have offered me support
and words of encouragement over the past years.
 Contents

Introduction
xi

1 ‘Our Eastern Costume Created a Sensation’: Sartorial

Encounters in Eighteenth-, Nineteenth- and Early-
Twentieth-Century Travelogues by South Asian Writers 1

2 The ‘Sartorially Undesirable “Other”’ in Post-War South

Asian Diaspora Narratives: Kamala Markandaya’s
The Nowhere Man 23

3 ‘It Was Stylish and “in” to Be Eastern’? Subversive Dress

in Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia 59

4 ‘Chanel Designing Catwalk Indian Suits’: Sartorial

Negotiations in Meera Syal’s Life Isn’t All Ha Ha Hee Hee 105

5 ‘She Had Her Hijab Pulled Off’: Dressed Bodies Do

Matter in Monica Ali’s Brick Lane 149

A Sartorial Afterword 195

Bibliography 203

Index 233
ix
 Introduction

Writing in the eighteenth century, Mirza Itesa Modeen described the

fascination that his ‘costume’ aroused in Britain, adding that he, ‘who
went to see a spectacle, became [him]self a sight to others’ (1927:
8). Similarly, but in 1950s Britain, the narrator of Amit Chaudhuri’s
Afternoon Raag recalls how his mother’s dress and the ‘red dot on […]
[her] forehead’ prompted an Englishman to take a picture of her, a pic-
ture that ‘for many months […] hung among other photos at a studio
on Regent Street’ (1994: 57). In contrast, in Kamala Markandaya’s The
Nowhere Man , which is set in 1960s London, the wearer of South Asian
clothes is regarded with derision and, as Mrs Pickering tells Srinivas on
seeing him arrayed in a dhoti, going out ‘in those clothes […] is ask-
ing for trouble’ (1973: 244). For outside there might be teddy boys in
‘mock-Edwardian clothes’ (Naipaul 2001: 109) or skinheads dressed
in ‘jeans […] Union Jack braces […] [and] Doctor Marten’s boots’
(Kureishi 2002a: 26), waiting for the right moment to go ‘Paki bash-
ing’ (Syal 1997: 277). Srinivas’s dhoti in The Nowhere Man is probably
similar to that sported by Mahatma Gandhi when Winston Churchill
referred to him as a ‘half-naked fakir’, a statement recalled by Dev in
Anita Desai’s Bye-Bye Blackbird (1999: 164) and by Mr. Kumar in Meera
Syal’s Anita and Me (1997: 180). A British Asian pre-teenager, the pro-
tagonist of Anita and Me refuses to put on ‘Indian suits’ (1997: 146),
as does Mishal Sufyan in Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, opting
instead for a ‘shortie tank-top and 501s’ (1988: 271). Contrarily, in
Atima Srivastava’s Looking for Maya, Mira alternates between Eastern

xi
xii    Introduction

and Western clothes, and she even imagines her white boyfriend mak-
ing an ethnic contribution by dressing in ‘full khaadi, the hand-spun,
hand-woven cloth popularized by Gandhi’ (1999: 36). Srivastava’s novel
is set in the 1990s when, as Tania says in Syal’s Life Isn’t All Ha Ha Hee
Hee, ‘brown was indeed the new black, in couture, in music, in design’
(2000a: 109). Alluding to the sporting of Asian dress by such personali-
ties as Princess Diana or Cherie Blair, the main character in Nirpal Singh
Dhaliwal’s Tourism astringently comments: ‘Cherie wore a blue and sil-
ver sari that hung awkwardly on her, and a matching bindhi […] The
Blairs, keen on rich Indians, were only too happy to dress up for them.
Money is the most cosmopolitan thing in the world’ (2006: 149–150).
The ‘Asian cool’ phenomenon depicted in the above-mentioned nov-
els also surfaces in a number of post-9/11 narratives, where it coexists
with the stigmas surrounding (South Asian) Muslim clothes. As a result,
post-9/11 British Asian fictions show characters that, out of fear, leave
‘their headscarves at home’ (Ali 2007: 376) and others that, in stark
contrast, defiantly ‘upgrade’ their hijabs ‘to burkhas’ (Ali 2007: 279).
Notwithstanding, in the twenty-first century the ‘desification’ of British
culture continues to increase, and we see how Jas, the white protagonist
of Gautam Malkani’s Londonstani, adopts desi aesthetics, roaming the
streets in his ‘designer desi garms’ (2007: 5).
Deftly woven into the fabric of the texts, dress in the above quota-
tions emerges as a conspicuous site of identity inscription, negotiation
and reinvention. Along this broad continuum of narratives, dress also
voices shared preoccupations that reveal both the currency that dress
has acquired in the Asian-British encounter and an underlying his-
tory of shifting attitudes towards the South Asian presence in Britain.
Fashion, Dress and Identity in South Asian Diaspora Narratives: From the
Eighteenth Century to Monica Ali stemmed from the need to address the
recurrence and specific character of dress in the literature of the South
Asian diaspora. While much of the discussion in this book could be per-
tinent to sartorial readings of differently located South Asian diasporic
texts, this study centres on South Asian literary productions in Britain.
Because, as Avtar Brah has noted in her seminal work Cartographies of
Diaspora, the South Asian diaspora is made up of ‘multiple journeys’
that intersect at various points, but each of these journeys has ‘its own
history, its own particularities’ (1996: 183) and, consequently, each of
them requires taking into account certain contextual specificities that
could be de-emphasised if the corpus of analysis were geographically too
 Introduction    xiii

comprehensive. Likewise, albeit applicable and easily transposed to other

genres—see Moniza Alvi’s ‘The Sari’ ([1993] 2008), a poem reproduced
at the beginning of this work1—the analyses carried out here focus on
narratives, from eighteenth-century travelogues to twenty-first-century
fiction. These narratives have been selected in accordance with two main
parameters. First, they deal with the diasporic experience in Britain; and,
second, they are written by authors of South Asian origin who migrated
to Britain (temporarily or permanently), or who were born in Britain.2
This has been done with the awareness that not all the writers discussed
here might consider themselves as being part of a diaspora in a strictly
literal sense. It is highly probable that none of them would be comfort-
able with the term ‘South Asian’ either. Some would define themselves
as Indians, Pakistanis or Bangladeshis, whether Muslims, Hindus or
Sikhs. Others would embrace the duality projected by the hyphenated
identity ‘British-Asian’, and a third group would probably refer to them-
selves simply as British. All these different identity positionalities are here
subsumed, for the simple strategic purpose of drawing correspondences,
under the vexed category ‘South Asian’.3 I am myself guilty of falling
into similar ambivalences when it comes to deploying the taxonomy
‘South Asian diaspora narratives in Britain’—despite the fact that this
critical label has a number of precedents in various publications, to which
this book is greatly indebted.4 For, while vindicating the place that South
Asian diaspora writing should be allotted within mainstream British writ-
ing, this book simultaneously categorises the works under scrutiny as
belonging to a particular literary niche for the sake of highlighting their
singularity and the sui generis voice of their sartorial subtexts.
The discourse of diaspora, nowadays diverted from its original nexus
with the Jewish experience,5 is thus deployed to establish genealogical,
thematic and sartorial connections among various writers and works.
However, ethnic, cultural, socio-economic and religious differences are
to be highlighted whenever and wherever they are considered relevant to
this analysis. Because, ultimately, diasporas are not homogenous forma-
tions, even if they are constructed, imagined or represented as such (Hall
2003a). Diaspora studies are also used here to build a bridge between
the domain of postcolonialism and the epistemology of transculturalism,
two theoretical frameworks which illuminate much of the analysis in this
book, but which are often said to sit uncomfortably together for rea-
sons I shall not rehearse here.6 Of course, the transnational and transcul-
tural side of contemporary societies, which has fuelled theorisations on
xiv    Introduction

transculturalism, is not the sole result of diasporic movements. Yet dias-

poras, including those brought about by the synergies of colonialism and
postcolonialism, have largely contributed to shaping a world of ‘multi-
ple modernities’ (Eisenstadt 2000).7 The South Asian diaspora in Britain
constitutes a (post)colonial diaspora, and therefore engaging with its
literary tradition requires, almost unavoidably, taking into account the
vocabulary of postcolonialism. Yet it also demands the incorporation of
new approaches such as transculturalism, approaches able to articulate
the representation of diasporic subjectivities that show ‘plural affiliations
and multiple, multi-layered identities’ (Dagnino 2012b: 13). The study
of the South Asian diaspora in Britain emerges therefore as a terrain that
allows for the convergence of multiple theoretical paradigms, including
postcolonialism and transculturalism. However tangentially or indirectly,
this book thus adds to the voices of those critics who, like Diana Brydon
(2004), Lily Cho (2007) and John McLeod (2011), have suggested that
establishing a dialogue between the old and the new is more productive
than ‘pronouncing premature obituaries’ (Brydon 2004: 691). Despite
its multiple ‘discontents’ (Huggan 1993), postcolonialism continues
to be useful to critically interpret past and present forms of subordina-
tion, and it would be disingenuous to fail to recognise the important
role played by postcolonial studies in ‘dismantling the Centre/Margin
binarism of imperial discourse’ (Ashcroft et al. 1995: 117). It is now up
to novel approaches such as transculturalism to prove themselves useful
beyond the theoretical level and the world of academe. Transculturalism
is a priori all the more inviting, with its emphasis on differences and
commonalities, the local and the global, without this entailing a Western-
centric uniformisation or the denial of particularisms (Epstein 1995,
2009; Welsch 1999, 2009). In a post-9/11 Europe where multicultur-
alism is being questioned more than ever before, we may well wonder
whether transcultural thinking and transcultural representations offer
new insights that can help to circumvent the impasses of the multicul-
tural model.8
Diaspora and cultural studies—two fields that have often cross-ferti-
lised—have productively animated and contributed to further theorisa-
tions on the issue of identity, in particular cultural identity. Stuart Hall,
whose work is emblematic of such cross-fertilisation, contended that the
condition of diaspora provides a magnifying lens through which to look
at the unstable and ever-changing character of cultural identity (2003b),
mainly because diasporas create a ‘third space’ (Bhabha [1994] 2004:
 Introduction    xv

56) which favours the emergence of new and transgressive subjectivities.

Hall defined cultural identity as ‘the points of identification, the unstable
points of identification or suture, which are made within the discourse
of history and culture. Not an essence but a positioning’ (2003b: 237).
Such postmodern conceptualisations seek to challenge integral, holis-
tic and unified notions of identity, advocating instead an idea of iden-
tity as de-centred, fragmentary, never complete, socially and culturally
constructed, and therefore linked to notions of ‘performativity’ (Butler
1990, 1993).9 This shift involves a ‘crisis of identity’ (Erikson 1968),
a move away from the idea of the self-sustained subject that has tradi-
tionally ruled post-Cartesian Western thought (Hall 1996b). This is the
conceptualisation of identity upheld in this book, one that many of the
narratives analysed here dramatise through the presentation of dressed
bodies that defy, subvert and even play with fixed boundaries of ethnic,
class and gender identity. They show, in this way, that identity is consti-
tuted by the ‘very “expressions” that are said to be its results’ (Butler
1990: 45). Yet, in the course of this sartorial journey we also come across
the representation of ideological dogmatisms, ethnic absolutisms and
exclusionist discourses which, regardless of their origin, all tend to rely
on essentialist visualisation of cultural and national identity. Diasporas,
as scholars such as Floya Anthias (1998) and Vijay Mishra (2008) have
argued, can become bastions of ideological dogmatism. Their ‘attach-
ment to the idea of ethnic and therefore particularist bonds’ might result
in ‘a new reconstructed form of ethnic absolutism’ (Anthias 1998: 567).
For their part, host societies have often constructed anti-immigration
discourses that hinge on essentialist visions of national identity, invoking
anxieties over the erosion of the nation’s cultural values and masquerad-
ing exclusion and racism under the guise of cultural incompatibility, con-
cerns about the welfare state or even national security issues. In line with
this, Paul Gilroy has cogently demonstrated how, in post-war Britain, the
so-called ‘new racism’10 relied on the conflation of ‘race’ and ‘nation’ to
deny diasporic settlers the possibility of ‘aligning themselves within the
“British race” on the grounds that their national allegiance inevitably
l[ay] elsewhere’ (2002: 46). In our current post-9/11 scenario, discrimi-
natory discourse has substantially moved the emphasis from race/ethnic-
ity to religious difference (Meer and Modood 2009), sharing none the
less a similar modus operandi, being equally exclusionist, essentialist and
recurrently underpinned by a fantasy of the ‘Nation qua Thing’ (Žižek
1993: 201).
xvi    Introduction

Highly critical of exclusionist notions of identity, Hanif Kureishi has

illustrated some of the above-mentioned preoccupations in two well-
known essays entitled ‘The Rainbow Sign’ and ‘Bradford’, respectively.
First published in 1986,11 these two essays also exemplify how dress con-
tributes to ‘the making and unmaking of strangers’ (Bauman 2000: 46).
In Part II of ‘The Rainbow Sign’, Kureishi describes his visit to Pakistan
as a young man, recounting how his jeans led a man to call him ‘Paki’,
thus denying Kureishi the possibility of being considered and regarded
as a ‘genuine’ Pakistani: ‘As someone said to me at a party, provoked by
the fact I was wearing jeans: we are Pakistanis, but you, you will always
be a Paki—emphasizing the slang derogatory name the English used
against Pakistanis, and therefore the fact that I couldn’t rightfully lay
claim to either place’ (2002a: 34). In ‘Bradford’, Kureishi records how,
in the eponymous town of the essay’s title, he was once denied access
to an Asian bar on the basis of his jeans: ‘At the entrance the bouncer
laid his hands on my shoulder and told me I could not go in. “Why
not?” I asked. “You’re not wearing any trousers.” […] Jeans, it seems,
were not acceptable’ (2002a: 61).12 Underlying these two extracts is,
inter alia, a critique of restrictive approaches to identity, approaches that
fail to accommodate hybrid forms of identification. In the first essay,
Kureishi criticises the reassertion of Islamic laws in 1970s Pakistan as well
as the separatism propounded by Black Muslims in 1960s America; in
‘Bradford’ he aims his critique at the state of multiculturalism in Britain.
The Bradford he visited back in the 1980s was a ‘microcosm’ within
Britain, where ‘extremely conservative and traditional views’ were repro-
duced by some factions of the Asian community (2002a: 58, 69). Yet,
as Kureishi notes perceptively, some of those views, when ‘isolated from
the specifics of their subcontinental context’ (2002a: 69), could be com-
pared to the ‘values championed by Ray Honeyford, amongst others’
(2002a: 69).13 Even more important for my objective here is Kureishi’s
attention to matters of dress in these essays. Despite being located in dif-
ferent geographies, the sartorial incidents described by Kureishi point
to the intimate connection between dress, body and identity. Especially
in the context of the ‘contact zone’ (Pratt 1992), which all diaspo-
ras occupy, identity is often negotiated via the dressed body. A power-
ful signifier, dress might be capable of determining pronouncements of
belonging and not belonging, inclusion and exclusion. It might become
a ‘means of policing a minority identity’ (Donnell 1999: 495), a device
used to reinforce the imagined boundaries of a diasporic community,
 Introduction    xvii

or the site where the emergence of rhizomatic, hybrid and transcultural

identities might first become visible. Dress is ‘an extension of the body’
(Wilson 2010: 3), and as such it adds new layers of meaning to the body,
sometimes ‘marking’ the body in powerful ways. For, ultimately, whether
in Bradford or Pakistan, Kureishi’s jeans marked him out, neutralising his
‘Asianness’ and relegating him to the position of ‘outsider’.14
The close relationship between dress, body and identity is probably
nowhere better explored than within the interdisciplinary field of fashion
theory.15 As different fashion theory practitioners have said, dress ‘is an
intimate aspect of the experience and presentation of the self’ (Entwistle
2005: 10), a ‘kind of visual metaphor for identity and […] for register-
ing the culturally anchored ambivalences that resonate within and among
identities (Davis 1992: 25). Through dress, we project our identity,
whether real or contrived, transmitting information pertaining to the
realm of gender, ethnicity, class, social position, religion, culture or col-
lective affiliation. It is largely through dress that we position ourselves
in society, that our identity positionalities are revealed to or concealed
from the eyes of others. The study of dress therefore also has important
implications for the study of identity. As one theorist noted when dis-
cussing the arbitrariness of gender, ‘if femininity can be put on at will by
men, and masculinity worn in the style of “butch”, or by “drag kings”,
then gender is stripped of its naturalness and shown to be a set of cul-
turally regulated styles’ (Entwistle 2005: 178). In other words, even
when dress might initially reinforce dualisms such as the gender binary,
it simultaneously highlights the socially constructed, rather than onto-
logically determined, character of identity. Dressing choices often under-
score, therefore, a tension between individual agency and normative
social discourses. Dress is a discourse and, as Michel Foucault taught us,
discourses ‘discipline’ the body (1977: 137). Yet dress also affords indi-
viduals a space for agency, a means through which to resist or subvert
‘discipline’. In her work The Fashioned Body (2005), sociologist Joanne
Entwistle has devised an approach that gives an account of this duality,
and her ‘sociology of the dressed body’ resonates, directly or indirectly,
throughout this book, mainly because, in most of the narratives under
scrutiny, dress offers the characters a space for identity creativity, but it
also constructs them discursively. Entwistle’s approach interprets sarto-
rial choices as being the result of complex negotiations between the indi-
vidual and the social, between individual agency and social conventions
and constraints. Conceiving of the body as a social entity that is none
xviii    Introduction

the less individually acted upon, dress is seen as a ‘situated bodily prac-
tice’ (2005: 34) through which individuals present their body/self to the
social world, but also through which received discourses might be repro-
duced or challenged.
Underlying Entwistle’s formulation is the idea that body and dress
are inextricable from one another. Human bodies, as she says, are gener-
ally ‘dressed bodies’ (2005: 32), nakedness being often repressed within
social interaction. Therefore, dress should not be discussed without ref-
erence to the body. Dress is so intimately connected to the body that,
as Anne Hollander suggests (1993), artistic representations of the naked
body have often been modelled following sartorial conventions. If the
body is evidently dressed even in the absence of any garment, dress is
produced and consumed in relation to the body. The ‘empty garment,
without head and limbs […] is death, not the neutral absence of the
body, but the body mutilated, decapitated’ (Barthes 1972: 26). Clothes
in costume museums, Elizabeth Wilson argues, ‘hint at something only
half understood, sinister, threatening, the atrophy of the body, and the
evanescence of life’ (2010: 1). Joanne Entwistle has been one of the
most salient advocates of the need to study body and dress conjointly—
and my recurrent use of the term ‘dressed body’ shows the indebtedness
of this book to her work (2001, 2007). As she claims, the dressed body
is so closely linked to ‘identity that these three—dress, the body and the
self—are not perceived separately but simultaneously as a totality’ (2005:
10). This triple linkage becomes extremely pertinent when analysing
the narratives under scrutiny in this book. In them, dress is not simply
a static cultural object, but also a ‘bodily practice’ lived and experienced
by the characters. It is ingrained in multiple discourses that affect the
characters’ sartorial choices, which they often voice and explain to the
reader. Dress adds new layers of meaning to the body, as does the body
in relation to dress. As we shall see, in many texts the body of the wearer
attaches a stigma to the garment, as does the garment to the body that
wears it. For, as Denise Noble has noted, not only is racialisation consti-
tuted through skin, but also ‘embodied a second time over through hair
styles, clothing […] hijabs and salwaar-kameez’ (2005: 133). Whether in
a symbiotic or paradoxical way, body and dress often converge in the nar-
ratives under scrutiny, to such an extent that, in many respects, this study
is as much concerned with the body as it is with dress—and this duality
only finds resolution through the notion of the ‘dressed body’.
 Introduction    xix

‘Dress’ and ‘fashion’ are terms that recur throughout the pages of
this book, and consequently they necessitate some brief discussion
at this point. Transposing the terminology of fashion theory, the term
‘dress’—and, by extension, ‘dressed body’—is used here to refer to all
forms of clothing, adornments and bodily modifications, from garments
to shoes, from headgear to jewellery, from scents to hairstyles, make-up,
piercings and tattoos (Eicher and Roach-Higgins 1997). In this sense,
the conceptual implications of ‘dress’ are much broader than those of the
term ‘clothes’, which is generally assumed to allude simply to garments.
Usually defined in relation to ‘dress’, ‘fashion’ has been conceived of as
the ‘different forms’ that dress has adopted over the course of history
(Hollander 1993: 11), or as a ‘specific system of dress’ (Entwistle 2005:
48). Fashion, as the process whereby different forms of dress come into
vogue at different points in time, has frequently been considered and
addressed as a Western phenomenon,16 leading to the wrong assump-
tion that fashion, in the sense outlined above, does not exist outside the
Western world. In recent years, a number of scholars have denounced
the Western-centrism present in much theorisation about fashion. Sandra
Niessen states that ‘[f]ashion’s definition has long been in need of review
and revision’, observing that fashion has been constructed as a Western
phenomenon and as the purview of Western ‘civilization’ (2007: 105);
and Jennifer Craik suggests that ‘[b]y displacing the European-dictator
(ethnocentric or cultural superiority) model of fashion’, it is possible to
see how ‘other fashion systems co-exist, compete and interact with it’
(1994: x–xi). Adding to these voices, this book endorses a definition
of ‘fashion’ as any of the multiple systems of dress that exist across the
globe; systems that are ruled by social, cultural, religious and sometimes
even political and ideological conventions; and systems that are all sub-
ject to constant change.
If the human body is mainly a dressed body, as fashion theory tells us,
those ‘fictional’ bodies that stand for human subjects are also likely to
become, through the process of mimesis, dressed bodies. Indeed, more
than in the real world, in the literary text the characters are almost always
imagined as being dressed. For even when they are verbally naked—in
other words, when there is a complete absence of sartorial ­description—
the reader is likely to perceive or imagine them as being dressed. In
other artistic manifestations—painting, sculpture, theatre or cinema,
among others—artists, creators or designers have to decide whether their
xx    Introduction

characters, figures or actors/actresses are to appear dressed or undressed.

Writers, however, are not under the same pressure. The reader of fiction
is supposed to imagine the literary character as being dressed unless it
is explicitly described as being naked—and this makes sartorial allusions
inherently significant. In literature, the nexus between body, dress and
self is sometimes extended to the point where, by means of a metonymic
process, the literary garment acts as pars pro toto; that is, it comes to
stand for the character. A clear example can be found in James Joyce’s
Ulysses (1922), where the identity of the man in the M’Intosh, despite
the critics’ efforts at fixing it, will always remain reduced to the afore-
mentioned garment (Estévez-Saá and Pereira-Ares 2011/2012). Dress
in literature shows a certain likeness to dress in the real world, and its
study can therefore benefit from the epistemology engendered within
fashion theory. Yet dress in literature shows multiple particularities that
need to be addressed separately. What we might term ‘literary clothing’
is close to the notion of ‘written clothing’ devised by Roland Barthes,
since both use verbal language as their ‘substance’ (2007: 88). However,
whereas descriptions of clothes in fashion magazines—what Barthes calls
‘written clothing’—give expression to a real object, sartorial descriptions
in literature are ‘brought to bear upon a hidden object (whether real or
imaginary)’ (Barthes 1985: 12). In literature, the referent of sartorial
allusions is more elusive, always already ‘fictional’. This referent, more
than being evoked through the reading, is actually constructed while
the reading is taking place, and consequently it is likely to be variously
imagined by different readers. Despite its elusiveness and even unreliabil-
ity, dress in literature offers much more than the examples of ‘written
clothing’ analysed by Barthes, or the sartorial exhibitions we come across
in costume museums. Because literature shows ‘dress in action’ (Buck
1983: 89); it captures the way in which dress is worn and adds meaning
to the bodies of the characters.
Fashion and dress have been frequently thematised in literature, and
plots have been constructed around them.17 If not the ‘engine of the
plot’, as Clair Hughes wrote (2006: 11), dress is a quintessential descrip-
tive device in literature. It contributes to the so-called ‘reality effect’,
lending ‘tangibility and visibility to character and context’ (Hughes
2006: 2). Sartorial descriptions in literature help to situate the action in
a particular place and time, and simultaneously reveal multiple character
traits. While ‘sartorial performativity is at issue’ in the literary text, ‘so
is the employment of apparel or accessory as symbol, image, motif, or
 Introduction    xxi

metaphor’ (Kuhn and Carlson 2007: 1). Literary dress might rely on the
meanings that particular clothes have in the real world and/or ‘operate
as the author’s personal sign-system’ (Hughes 2006: 3), thus acquiring
a significance that only makes sense within the diegesis. Dress might be
endowed with symbolism in literature, and it might also acquire a sort
of narrative function. Sartorial allusions might represent particular exer-
cises in description, but they might also build a narrative strand when
viewed in relation to one another. Dress in literature offers ‘one of the
different pleasures of reading a text—different, that is, from simply fol-
lowing the plot’ (Hughes 2006: 3). Dress contains multiple layers of
meaning that might pass unnoticed to a sartorially unobservant eye. But
dress is also ‘a visible aspect of history’ or, as Hughes adds, quoting John
Harvey (1996: 17), ‘values made visible’ (2006: 2). This book is about
what an analysis of dress can add to the interpretation of the literary text
and its context, where historical, sociological, anthropological, cultural
and fashion studies are used to support the reading. However, it is also
about what literature might add, or has been adding, to discussions on
the South Asian dressed body in Britain. For, as Yasmin Hussain has
said, South Asian diaspora texts offer a ‘compelling body of sociologi-
cal evidence about the South Asian diaspora’ (2005: 4) and, as this work
attempts to demonstrate, they also provide an important source of sarto-
rial evidence. They dramatise the different ways in which South Asians
in Britain have imagined themselves sartorially and have been imagined
by the dominant gaze, yielding insights into many of the controversies
surrounding the South Asian dressed body in Britain, most notably now-
adays debates on the practice of hijab within the South Asian Muslim
community.
Particularly in recent decades, the South Asian dressed body in gen-
eral, and the Muslim dressed body in particular, has come under the
critical gaze of many scholars, including those whose studies are geo-
graphically circumscribed to Britain.18 Framed within anthropologi-
cal, sociological and cultural approaches, these studies have contributed
towards bringing the South Asian dressed body into the centre of schol-
arly discussions. However, to the best of my knowledge, none of them
has engaged with, or drawn insights from, literature. Likewise, in recent
decades, the study of dress in literature has experienced an exponen-
tial growth. Yet this critical oeuvre has tended to focus on some of the
most, let us say, ‘canonical’ authors and texts.19 It is the aim of this book
to build a bridge between these two bodies of scholarship, or rather to
xxii    Introduction

explore the South Asian dressed body within and from within literary
criticism. ‘Costume historians,’ as Hughes notes, ‘have frequently drawn
on literature for evidence and information’, and yet ‘[l]iterary critics have
been puzzlingly slow to return the compliment’ (2006: 2). Literary crit-
ics engaging with South Asian diaspora writing in Britain have occasion-
ally made passing references to fashion and dress, but without turning
sartorial concerns into a main issue of analysis. Arguably, the contribu-
tions that come closest to the analytical purposes of this book are those
included in the 36th issue of the journal New Literatures Review, entitled
(Un)fabricating the Empire (2000) and, in particular, Susanne Reichl’s
‘Of Lappas and Levis: (Dress-)code-switching and the Construction of
Cultural Identities in the British Novel of Immigration’. In it, Reichl
approaches dress as yet another code of communication in three nov-
els—Diran Adebayo’s Some Kind of Black (1996), Hanif Kureishi’s The
Buddha of Suburbia (1990) and Ravinder Randhawa’s Hari-jan (1992)—
drawing correspondences between the language and sartorial choices of
the characters in these texts. Reichl argues that linguistic and sartorial
strategies overlap in these novels, becoming crucial factors ‘in the posi-
tioning and constructing of the individual character’s identity’ (2000:
74). Her article outlines the dress–identity nexus with which this book
is concerned. However, her contribution is narrower in scope—being
reduced to three texts—and its emphasis on the parallelisms between lin-
guistic and sartorial choices, despite being extremely compelling, runs
athwart the specific focus on the dressed body that I propose here.
The present monograph constitutes, therefore, the first attempt at
providing a systematic and comprehensive analysis of sartorial identities
in the narratives of the South Asian diaspora in Britain, without losing
sight of how complex, problematic and even intrusive such an exercise
might be deemed considering my position as a white Western woman.
The book is divided into five main chapters, plus this introduction and
an afterward. All five chapters begin with an introductory section map-
ping the historical, sartorial and literary presence of South Asians in
Britain, simultaneously uncovering the points of intersection among
these dimensions. Each chapter then segues into the analysis of particu-
lar narratives. Chapter 1 engages with a series of travelogues written
by a number of South Asian authors who travelled—and in some cases
settled—in Britain during the eighteenth, nineteenth and early twen-
tieth centuries. Having been subjected to much scrutiny as a result of
 Introduction    xxiii

their seemingly ‘exotic’ dressed bodies, these writers made dress into an
important issue in their narratives, timidly adumbrating and prefigur-
ing sartorial tropes and concerns that were to reappear in later fictions.
Chapter 2 focuses on texts produced in the post-Second World War
period, roughly from the 1950s to the 1970s, and depicting the experi-
ences of first-generation migrants. The chapter charts the points of sar-
torial continuity and discontinuity that exist between fiction written by
pioneering Indo-Caribbean writers and narratives dealing with the South
Asian diaspora from the Indian subcontinent. It then offers an in-depth
sartorial reading of Kamala Markandaya’s The Nowhere Man (1972), a
narrative in which dress connects past and present, colonialism and
diaspora, India and Britain. Moving from migrant narratives to fictions
revolving around second-generation characters, Chapter 3 examines sar-
torial representations in a series of works that, albeit published in the
1980s and early 1990s, look back to previous decades as they explore the
process of growing up in Britain during the 1960s and 1970s. The fet-
ishisation of Eastern paraphernalia in the period is portrayed in a number
of these narratives, including Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia
(1990), on which Chapter 3 concentrates. Drawing strength from the
irreverent world of British pop and youth subcultures, Kureishi’s novel
recreates a sartorial ‘carnival’ where dress affords the characters a site of
identity construction and reconstruction in subversive ways. Far removed
from carnivalesque endeavours, the narratives examined in Chapter 4,
all of them set and produced in the 1990s, introduce us to the ‘Asian
cool’ phenomenon, a phenomenon ambivalently treated in Meera Syal’s
Life Isn’t All Ha Ha Hee Hee (1999), whose sartorial analysis centres
the remainder of this chapter. Besides tracing shifts in the protagonists’
development, dress in Syal’s novel is also endowed with a plethora of fig-
urative resonances which often coalesce around the novel’s exploration
of patriarchal structures, encumbering gender roles and the entwinement
between gender and ethnicity in the diaspora. Chapter 5 finally walks the
reader to the new millennium, initiating a sartorial journey across vari-
ous post-9/11 narratives. Focusing on Monica Ali’s Brick Lane (2003),
the chapter examines, inter alia, how this novel openly problematises the
question of hijab, linking it to a broad spectrum of identity positionali-
ties and dissociating it from much Western rhetoric that merely sees it as
an oppressive element.
xxiv    Introduction

Notes
1. Moniza Alvi’s ‘The Sari’ first appeared in the collection The Country at
My Shoulder (1993), published by Oxford University Press. The version
reproduced here is from Moniza Alvi’s Split World: Poems 1990–2005
(2008), published by Bloodaxe Books Ltd, p. 39.
2. The implementation of these two parameters has excluded a number of
texts that, albeit fulfilling one criterion, do not comply with the other.
Thus, writers such as Mulk Raj Anand, R. K. Narayan, Raja Rao, G. V.
Desani or Attia Hosain, who have not centred their work on the diasporic
condition, are not considered in the present work. Likewise, the study
also excludes literary texts that touch on the South Asian experience in
Britain, but are not written by authors of South Asian origin—Zadie
Smith’s White Teeth (2000), Colin MacInnes’ City of Spades (1957),
Marina Warner’s Indigo (1992), William Boyd’s Brazzaville Beach
(1990), Maggie Gee’s The White Family (2002) or Neil Gaiman’s Anansi
Boys (2005), among others.
3. Since the 1970s, within the British context, the term ‘South Asian’—
sometimes abbreviated to ‘Asian’—has been used to refer to people origi-
nally from South Asia. The potential artificiality underlying this category
is perfectly articulated by Robert C. Young: ‘This word Asian—which
means something else in the US […] [bands together] different groups
[that] share a geographical and cultural link only by contrast with the
English among whom they reside […] they are only “Asians” because
they are British Asians’ (1999: 22).
4. See Susheila Nasta (2002), Yasmin Hussain (2005) and Ruvani Ranasinha
(2007).
5. For more information, see Khachig Tölölyan (1991), William Safran
(1991), James Clifford (1994), Robin Cohen (1997), Steven Vertovec
(1999), Jana Evans Braziel and Anita Mannur (2003) or Virinder S.
Kalra, Raminder Kaur and John Hutnyk (2005), among others.
6. Especially within recent scholarship, transculturalism is said to oppose the
emphasis of postcolonialism on ‘nation and narration’ (Bhabha 1990),
insisting instead on addressing border-crossing and boundary-less cul-
tural identifications in a current era dominated by ‘global diaspora and
interconnection’ (Mirzoeff 1999, 154). Often traced back to the work
of Fernando Ortiz ([1940] 1995), transculturalism—and its multi-
ple cognates ‘transculturation’, ‘transculturality’, ‘transculture’—has
been developed subsequently in the work of Mary Louise Pratt (1992),
Wolfgang Welsch (1999, 2009), Mikhail Epstein (1995, 2009), and more
recently by Donald Cuccioletta (2001/2002), Sissy Helff (2009), Frank
 Introduction    xxv

Schulze-Engler and Sissy Helff (2009), Anne Holden Rønning (2011),

or Arianna Dagnino (2012a, 2012b).
7. Scholars such as Rey Chow (1993) and Stuart Hall (1996a) have con-
nected current forms of globalisation with the globalising effect ushered
in by colonisation and imperialism.
8. In recent years, multiculturalism has been criticised, inter alia, for rein-
forcing the exclusion of ethnic minorities, and for relying on the con-
ceptualisation of minority cultures as separate islands or spheres that
coexist—but do not intermingle—within the nation-state. See Heinz
Antor (2010a), Mikhail Epstein (2009) or Wolfgang Welsch (2009),
among others.
9. Judith Butler’s theories on performativity (Butler 1990, 1993) resonate
throughout the present work, often being transposed into discussions on
cultural and ethnic identity. However, it is worth clarifying that I intend
neither to provide a Butlerian reading of the narratives examined, nor
to develop an interpretative framework that systematically transposes
Butler’s theorisations on gender performativity to the exploration of eth-
nic identities.
10. The term ‘new racism’ was coined by Martin Barker (1981) to refer to a
particular form of racism that deploys cultural—rather than biological—
differences as the basis for exclusion. See also, Etienne Balibar’s notion of
‘differentialist racism’ (1991) and Tariq Modood’s concept of ‘cultural
racism’ (Modood 2000).
11. In 1986, ‘Bradford’ appeared in Granta, whereas ‘The Rainbow Sign’
was published as an appendix to the screenplay My Beautiful Laundrette.
All references to these essays in the present work are taken from the ver-
sions included in Kureishi’s Dreaming and Scheming: Reflections on
Writing and Politics (2002a).
12. The term ‘trousers’ in this quotation refers to the loose-fitting trousers
worn by Asian men and usually paired with a kurta—long shirt or tunic.
13. Kureishi is here alluding to the racially prejudiced views expressed by
Ray Honeyford in a 1984 article published in the conservative journal
Salisbury Review, and which led to what has been called the ‘Honeyford
affair’ (1984–1985).
14. It is worth noting that, though the two incidents narrated by Kureishi
and discussed here involve a form of dress-related exclusion in spaces
potentially scripted as ‘Asian’, the reverse process features prominently in
many of the texts analysed in this book.
15. For most scholars, the scope and concerns of fashion theory as an epis-
temological domain can be identified with those of the journal Fashion
Theory, a forum for the analysis of fashion ‘as the cultural construction
xxvi    Introduction

of the embodied identity’ and for the study of ‘the intersections of dress,
body, and culture’ (Steele 1997: 1–2).
16. Conceptualisations of fashion as an entirely Western occurrence can be
found in many fashion histories (Breward 2002; Laver 1995), texts read-
ing fashion under the lens of economy and class theory (Simmel 1971;
Veblen 1953), semiotic works (Barnard 2002; Barthes 1985) and even in
some of the most seminal works within the field (Hollander 1993; Wilson
2010).
17. Qaisra Shahraz’s ‘A Pair of Jeans’ ([1988] 2005), Pauline Melville’s ‘The
Truth Is in the Clothes’ (1990), Moniza Alvi’s ‘The Sari’ ([1993] 2008),
Carol Shields’ ‘Dressing up for the Carnival’ (2000), Lauren Weisberger’s
The Devil Wears Prada (2003) and Steven Millhauser’s ‘A Change of
Fashion’ (2006) are all texts that, albeit in different ways and to various
degrees, use dress as a central motif.
18. See Dulali Nag (1991), Naseem Khan (1992), Jennifer Craik (1994),
Emma Tarlo (1996, Nirmal Puwar (2002), Parminder Bhachu (2004,
2005a, 2005b), Parvati Raghuram (2003), and Sandra Niessen, Ann
Marie Leshkowich and Carla Jones (2005), among other scholars.
19. See, for example, Rosie Aindow (2010), Jennie Batchelor (2005), Clair
Hughes (2001, 2006), Cynthia Kuhn (2005), Cynthia Kuhn and Cindy
Carlson (2007), Peter McNeil, Vicki Karaminas and Catherine Cole
(2009), Aileen Ribeiro (2005), Catherine Spooner (2004), and Joseph
H. Hancock II, Toni Johnson-Woods and Vicki Karaminas (2013).
 CHAPTER 1

‘Our Eastern Costume Created a Sensation’:

Sartorial Encounters in Eighteenth-,
Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth-Century
Travelogues by South Asian Writers

The historical dynamics that have brought British and South Asian
­people into contact span more than 400 years and, contrary to what is
commonly assumed, Britain became a ‘contact zone’ (Pratt 1992) almost
at the same time as the Indian subcontinent itself.1 The history of this
cultural encounter is a history of multiple dimensions, or rather a his-
tory composed of multiple interrelated histories, whether they are social,
political, cultural, religious, linguistic or sartorial. While initially the sar-
torial history might seem to be the most trivial, the fact remains that, in
many ways and to different extents, it reflects all the others. For dress-
ing choices and attitudes to distinct forms of dress have been affected
by—and therefore can be said to bear testimony to—the social, politi-
cal and power synergies that historically have determined the interaction
between Britons and South Asians, either in the Indian subcontinent
or in Britain. As Nirad C. Chaudhuri wrote with regard to the sartorial
reality of the Indian subcontinent—and it can certainly be extrapolated
to the South Asian sartorial reality in Britain—‘clothing and adorn-
ment were and continue to be as much an expression of the nature of
things Indian, rerum Indicarum natura as any other human activity,
say, politics, social and economic life, culture as embodied in literature
or art could be’ (2009: ix). Consequently, as Chaudhuri added, ‘an
excursion into the world of clothing’ allows the traveller to see ethnic,
social, political and even economic concerns ‘at work in a specific field of
culture’ (ibid.).

© The Author(s) 2018 1

N. Pereira-Ares, Fashion, Dress and Identity in South Asian Diaspora
Narratives, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61397-0_1
2 N. Pereira-Ares

The arrival of the British in seventeenth-century South Asia had a pro-

found impact on the pre-existing sartorial scenario, a scenario which was
already rather complex given the multiple cultures, religions, and there-
fore dressing practices, that coexisted across the Indian subcontinent.
This impact resulted not only in the introduction of European clothes,
but also in a reassignment of the meanings ascribed to long-existing
forms of dress. As Emma Tarlo has demonstrated (1996), in colonial
India, dress, as well as its mystical and spiritual properties and long his-
tory as a marker of social, cultural and religious differences, became a vis-
ible medium through which the British acted out imperial ideology and
through which nationalist leaders later contested it. During the colonial
period, the British enforced certain sartorial codes aimed at regulating
the use of Indian dress. They attempted, for example, to ‘civilise’—obvi-
ously meaning Westernise—the dress of some sections of the Indian
population, at the same time as trying to ‘Orientalise’ the attire of oth-
ers, most notably the army uniform. By ‘Orientalising’ their uniform,
Bernard S. Cohn (1989) points out, the British sought to exploit the
Orientalist stereotype of wildness and ferocity with which Eastern war-
riors had long been associated. Cohn even argues that ‘British rulers in
nineteenth-century India played a major part in making the turban into a
salient feature of Sikh identity’ (ibid.: 304), Sikhs having been the most
numerous group within the East India Company’s army. While other
scholars have situated the origins of the Sikh turban in a pre-colonial
period (Puar 2007), they are congruent in noting that the significance of
the turban as a symbol of Sikh identity was reinforced conspicuously dur-
ing the colonial period, largely as a result of British efforts to police the
dress of the East India Company’s army. Moving on in time, during the
struggle for Indian independence, Mahatma Gandhi encouraged Indian
people to cast aside British garments and to don khadi2 (see Chap. 2).
The dressed body became, in this way, a bone of contention in colonial
India, acquiring a set of specific social, political and ideological dimen-
sions that have endured far beyond the colonial period.
In their diasporic journeys to different parts of the globe, South
Asians have taken with them their clothes and a myriad of sartorial mem-
ories from the Indian subcontinent. In their writings, we find nostalgic
memories of the ‘clothes people […] wor[e] on certain days’ (Rushdie
1992: 11) and of ‘women washing clothes, their heads covered by saris’
(Chaudhuri 1994: 89),3 but also bitter memories, memories of ‘the
robes of authority which were colored khaki’ (Markandaya 1973: 138),4
 1 ‘OUR EASTERN COSTUME CREATED A SENSATION’ … 3

and memories of the reluctance of the British to adopt Indian-style

clothes—their determination to differentiate themselves from the native
population leading Anglo-Indian women to keep ‘firmly to their corsets
well into the twentieth century, even after they had passed out of fashion
back in Britain’ (Aslam [2004] 2014: 48).5 There are diasporic charac-
ters that also allude to, and even miss, the organic relationship between
body and dress that existed in the Indian subcontinent they left behind.
Because, as Christopher Bayly has demonstrated, in pre-colonial India,
cloth was regarded ‘as a thing that c[ould] transmit spirit and substance’
(1999: 287); and Bernard Cohn has provided evidence of the mysti-
cal properties that dress was assumed to have, considered to be able to
retain the spirit of the wearer (1989). This intimate connection between
body and dress has been captured evocatively by Amit Chaudhuri in his
novel Afternoon Raag (1994). On seeing the way in which the stallhold-
ers of a London market ‘busily touch and test the cloth’, the main char-
acter in Chaudhuri’s novel recalls ‘the stalls of New Market in Calcutta,
where people still speak of cloth in terms of the human body’ (1994: 102;
emphasis added). For the protagonist of Chaudhuri’s Afternoon Raag,
cloth and clothes are multi-sensory phenomena, able to bring back mul-
tiple memories and feelings from the past. More importantly perhaps,
what these and other quotations show is that the politics and poetics of
dress in colonial India recur and haunt the sartorial present of diasporic
subjects, something that forces this and other studies to establish, almost
unavoidably, a dialectic between past and present, between ‘clothing
matters’ (Tarlo 1996) in India and dressing concerns in Britain.
If the British arrival in South Asia modified the repertoire of dress-
ing practices in the region, the South Asian presence in Britain has
also altered the clothing map of the country, leading to what could be
understood as a sartorial ‘colonization in reverse’.6 Of course, speaking
of a reverse sartorial colonisation only makes sense from a metaphorical
point of view. Because in Britain the use of South Asian dress has often
been questioned by the alleged colonised and the structures of power
and hegemony are not on the side of the supposed coloniser. As in the
Indian subcontinent, in Britain the sartorial relations between Britons
and South Asians have also evolved depending on the social, cultural,
political and ideological forces at work, forces that more often than not
have come from the white majority. Thus, whereas the ‘exotic’ apparel
of early-eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Asian travellers in Britain
fascinated the white British population, the saris, turbans and veils worn
4 N. Pereira-Ares

by later generations of South Asians in post-war Britain aroused feelings

of suspicion among the white majority, often being perceived as visible
signs of the ‘threat’ that the new waves of immigrants were allegedly pos-
ing to the national myth of a homogeneous British culture (Cohn 1989).
The vicissitudes of history repeated, albeit in a reworked fashion, these
fluctuations in sartorial attitudes during the last decades of the twentieth
century and the early years of the twenty-first. While Eastern dress was
fetishised by the hippie counterculture in the 1960s and became fashion-
able commodities in the 1990s, since the events of 11 September 2001
in New York, South Asian clothes—and more particularly (South Asian)
Muslim clothes—have provoked feelings of mistrust among those who
see their wearers as suspicious-looking, threatening strangers (Ameli and
Merali 2006; Tarlo 2010). For many South Asians living in present-day
Britain, negotiating the question of what to wear transcends the cultural–
religious sphere, and the process of choosing a particular style often
underscores aesthetic, as well as significant identitary, political and/or
ideological messages. This is even more so in an age when, as Paul Gilroy
has argued, identity and ethnicity are often expressed through ‘the con-
tentious cultural terms of life-style and consumer performance’ (2002:
xiv).
The foregoing lines have sketched a brief, and therefore highly reduc-
tionist, sartorial biography of the encounter between Britons and South
Asians, a biography that has prioritised some sartorial dilemmas over
others. All these caveats notwithstanding, and at the risk of gross sim-
plification, it serves to illustrate the crucial role that the dressed body
has always played in the interaction between Britons and South Asians,
either as an element that has cast individuals into the categories of
‘superior’/‘inferior’, ‘outsider’/‘insider’, or as a palimpsest on which
different discourses have been written over the course of history. South
Asian dress has indeed been (re-)written not simply in colonial India, but
also in Britain, and not just by its ‘original’ wearers, but also by others
in paradoxical and often self-serving ways. It is a central contention of
this study that if dress has played such a crucial role in the interaction
between Britons and South Asians, those texts portraying this cultural
encounter are likely to pay attention to dress in a way other literary texts
do not, above all, if we take into account that many of them have a doc-
umentary or even autobiographical character. This hypothesis can already
find validation in the earliest samples of South Asian writing from and
about Britain, texts that map the presence of the colonial subject ‘at the
 1 ‘OUR EASTERN COSTUME CREATED A SENSATION’ … 5

heart of the empire’ (Burton 1998). By this, I am referring to the various

travelogues, diaries, memories and even fiction written by a number of
Asian travellers and authors who spent time in Britain in the eighteenth,
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Historians such as Antoinette
Burton (1998) and Rozina Visram (2002) have already drawn attention
to the plethora of sartorial comments surfacing in these early accounts,
and my subsequent analysis thereof is indeed indebted to the work of
these two authors. Deploying a culturally- and sociologically-based liter-
ary approach, the remainder of this chapter is devoted to further explor-
ing the sartorial problematisations these early writers mapped out in their
texts, focusing in the main on a series of travelogues produced in the
Victorian period. As we shall see, in their accounts, these travel writers
recorded the scrutiny to which their seemingly ‘exotic’ dressed bodies
were subjected in Britain, as well as the sartorial strategies they adopted
to negotiate identity in the metropolis. Yet, in their writings, they also
returned the gaze to the coloniser, rendering British sartorial mores from
the perspective of the ‘Other’ and thus offering a defamiliarised and
defamiliarising portrayal of Britain.

* * *

The phenomenon of the South Asian diaspora in Britain, as well as the

literary tradition with which it is associated, is generally assumed to have
begun around the mid-twentieth century, when a large number of South
Asian immigrants arrived in Britain, encouraged by the great demand
for a workforce to reconstruct the country in the wake of the Second
World War. Nevertheless, as I have previously stressed, the presence of
South Asians in Britain is by no means just a twentieth-century occur-
rence. Nor are literary representations by South Asian writers in Britain
to be circumscribed to this period. Recent studies have demonstrated
that Asians were present in Britain almost at the same time as the British
set foot on the Indian subcontinent. As evidence of this, in her valu-
able study Asians in Britain: 400 Years of History, Rozina Visram quotes
a church record testifying to the public baptism of an Indian youth in
1616 (2002: 1), only sixteen years after the issuing of the charter which
granted the East India Company the exclusive right to trade in the East;
and in Staying Power, Peter Fryer provides copious data demonstrating
that ‘Asians were among the black pageant performers in seventeenth-
century London; that Asians were among the black servants […] in the
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 Fig. 30.—Didymium difforme. A, two sporangia (spg 1 and 2) on a fragment of
leaf (l); B, section of sporangium, with ruptured outer layer (a), and threads
of capillitium (cp); C, a flagellula with contractile vacuole (c.vac) and
nucleus (nu); D, the same after loss of flagellum; b, an ingested bacillus; E,
an amoebula; F, conjugation of amoebulae to form a small plasmodium; G,
a larger plasmodium accompanied by numerous amoebulae; sp, ingested
spores. (After Lister.)

Again, in some cases the plasmodia themselves aggregate in the

same way as the amoeboids do in the Acrasieae, and combine to
form a compound fruit termed an "aethalium,"[98] with the regions of
the separate plasmodia more or less clearly marked off. The species
formerly termed Aethalium septicum is now known as Fuligo varians.
It is a large and conspicuous species, common on tan, and is a pest
in the tanpits. Its aethalia may reach a diameter of a foot and more,
and a thickness of two inches. Chondrioderma diffusum, often
utilised as a convenient "laboratory type," is common on the
decaying haulms of beans in the late autumn. The interest of this
group is entirely biological, save for the "flowers of tan."[99]

CHAPTER IV
 PROTOZOA (CONTINUED): SPOROZOA[100]

II. Sporozoa.
Protozoa parasitic in Metazoa, usually intracellular for at least part of their
cycle, rarely possessing pseudopodia, or flagella (save in the sperms), never
cilia; reproduction by brood-formation, often of alternating types; syngamy
leading up to resting spores in which minute sickle-germs are formed, or
unknown (Myxosporidiaceae).

This group, of which seven years ago no single species was known
in its complete cycle, has recently become the subject of
concentrated and successful study, owing to the fact that it has been
recognised to contain the organisms which induce such scourges to
animals as malarial fevers, and various destructive murrains. Our
earliest accurate, if partial knowledge, was due to von Siebold,
Kölliker, and van Beneden. Thirty years ago Ray Lankester in
England commenced the study of species that dwell in the blood,
destined to be of such moment for the well-being of man and the
animals in his service; and since then our knowledge has increased
by the labours of Manson, Ross and Minchin at home, Laveran,
Blanchard, Thélohan, Léger, Cuénot, Mesnil, Aimé Schneider in
France, Grassi in Italy, Schaudinn, Siedlecki, L. and R. Pfeiffer,
Doflein in Central Europe, and many others.
 Fig. 31.—Lankesteria ascidiae, showing life-cycle. a, b, c, Sporozoites in
digestive epithelium cells of host; d, e, growth stages; f, free gregarine; g,
association; h, encystment; i, j, brood-divisions in associated mates; k,
pairing-cells; l, syngamy; m, zygote; n, o, p, nuclear divisions in spores; q,
cyst with adult spores, each containing 8 sickle-germs. (After Luhe,
modified from Siedlecki.)

As a type we will take a simple form of the highest group, the

Gregarinidaceae, Monocystis, which inhabits the seminal vesicles of
the earthworm. In its youngest state, the "sporozoite," it is a naked,
sickle-shaped cell, which probably makes its way from the gut into
one of the large radial cells of the seminal funnel, where it attains its
full size, and then passes out into the vesicles or reservoirs of the
semen, to lie among the sperm morulae and young spermatozoa.
The whole interior is formed of the opaque endosarc, which contains
a large central nucleus, and is full of refractive granules of
paramylum or paraglycogen,[101] a carbohydrate allied to glycogen
or animal starch, so common in the liver and muscles of Metazoa;
besides these it contains proteid granules which stain with carmine,
and oil-drops. The ectosarc is formed of three layers: (1) the outer
layer or "cuticle"[102] is, in many cases if not here, ribbed, with
minute pores in the furrows, and is always porous enough to allow
the diffusion of dissolved nutriment; (2) a clear plasmatic layer, the
"sarcocyte"; (3) the "myocyte," formed of "myonemes," muscular
fibrils disposed in a network with transverse meshes, which effect
the wriggling movements of the cell. The endosarc contains the
granules and the large central nucleus. The adult becomes free in
the seminal vesicles; here two approximate, and surround
themselves with a common cyst: a process which has received the
name of "association" (Fig. 31, g-i). Within this, however, the
protoplasms remain absolutely distinct. The nucleus undergoes
peculiar changes by which its volume is considerably reduced. When
this process of "nuclear reduction" is completed, each of the mates
undergoes brood-divisions (j), so as to give rise to a large number of
rounded naked 1-nucleate cells—the true pairing-cells. These unite
two and two, and so form the 1-nucleate spores (k-m), which
become oat-shaped, form a dense cyst-wall, and have been termed
"pseudonavicellae" from their likeness to the Diatomaceous genus
Navicella. Some of the cytoplasm of the original cells remains over
unused, as "epiplasm," and ultimately degenerates, as do a certain
number of the brood-cells which presumably have failed to pair. It is
believed that the brood-cells from the same parent will not unite
together. The contents of each spore have again undergone brood-
division to form eight sickle-shaped zoospores, or "sporozoites" (n-
q), and thus the developmental cycle is completed. Probably the
spores, swallowed by birds, pass out in their excrement, and when
eaten by an earthworm open in its gut; the freed sickle-germs can
now migrate through the tissues to the seminal funnels, in the cells
of which they grow, ultimately becoming free in the seminal vesicles.
[103]

We may now pass to the classification of the group.

A. Telosporidia.—Cells 1-nucleate until the onset of brood-

formation, which is simultaneous.
1. Gregarinidaceae.—Cells early provided with a firm
pellicle and possessing a complex ectosarc; at first
intracellular, soon becoming free in the gut or coelom of
Invertebrates. Pairing between adults, which
simultaneously produce each its brood of gametes,
isogamous or bisexual, which pair within the common
cyst; zygotospores surrounded by a firm cyst, and
producing within a brood of sickle-shaped zoospores.
(i.) Schizogregarinidae.—Multiplying by simple
fission in the free state as well as by brood-
formation; the brood-cells conjugating in a common
cyst, but producing only one pairing nucleus in
each mate (the rest aborting), and consequently
only one spore.
Ophryocystis A. Schn.
(ii.) Acephalinidae.—Cell one-chambered, usually
 without an epimerite for attachment.
Monocystis F. Stein; Lankesteria Mingazzini.
(iii.) Dicystidae.—Cell divided by a plasmic partition;
epimerite usually present.
Gregarina Dufour; Stylorhynchus A. Schn.;
Pterocephalus A. Schn.
2. Coccidiaceae.—Cells of simple structure, intracellular in
Metazoa. Pairing between isolated cells usually
sexually differentiated as oosphere and sperm, the
latter often flagellate. Brood-formation of the adult cell
giving rise to sickle-shaped zoospores (merozoites), or
progamic and producing the gametes. Oosperm motile
or motionless, finally producing a brood of spores,
which again give rise to a brood of sickle-spores.
(i.) Coccidiidae.—Cell permanently intracellular, or
very rarely coelomic, encysting or not before
division; zoospores always sickle-shaped; oosperm
encysting at once, producing spores with a dense
cell-wall producing sickle-germs.
(ii.) Haemosporidae.—Cells parasitic in the blood
corpuscles or free in the blood of cold-blooded
animals, encysting before brood-formation;
zoospores sickle-shaped; oosperm at first motile.
Lankesterella Labbé; (Drepanidium Lank.;)
Karyolysus Labbé; Haemogregarina Danilewski.
(iii.) Acystosporidae.—Cells parasitic in the blood and
haematocytes of warm-blooded Vertebrates; never
forming a cyst-wall before dividing; zoospores
formed in the corpuscles, amoeboid. Gametocytes
only forming gametes when taken into the stomach
of insects. Oosperm at first active, passing into the
coelom, producing naked spores which again
produce a large brood of sickle zoospores, which
 migrate to the salivary gland, and are injected with
the saliva into the warm-blooded host.
Haemamoeba Grassi and Feletti; Laverania Grassi
and Feletti; Haemoproteus Kruse; Halteridium Labbé.
[104]

B. Neosporidia.—Cells becoming multinucleate apocytes

before any brood-formation occurs. Brood-formation
progressive through the apocyte, not simultaneous.
1. Myxosporidiaceae.—Naked parasites in cold-blooded
animals. Spore-formation due to an aggregation of
cytoplasm around a single nucleus to form an
archespore, which then produces a complex of cells
within which two daughter-cells form the spores and
accessory nematocysts.
Myxidium Bütsch.; Myxobolus Bütsch.; Henneguya
Thélohan; Nosema Nageli (= Glugea Th.).
2. Actinomyxidiaceae.[105]—Apocyte resolved into a
sporange, containing eight secondary sporanges (so-
called spores), of ternary symmetry and provided with
three polar nematocysts.
3. Sarcosporidiaceae.—Encysted parasites in the
muscles of Vertebrates, with a double membrane;
spores simple.
Sarcocystis Lankester.

Fig. 32.—Gregarina blattarum Sieb. A, two cephalonts, embedded by their

epimerite (ep), in cells of the gut-epithelium; deu, deutomerite; nu, nucleus;
 pr, protomerite; B1, B2, two free specimens of an allied genus; the epimerite
is falling off in B2, which is on its way to become a sporont; C, cyst (cy) of A,
with sporoducts (spd) discharging the spores (sp), surrounded by an
external gelatinous investment (g). (From Parker and Haswell.)

Monocystis offers us the simplest type of Gregarinidaceae. In most

Gregarines (Figs. 31, 32) the sporozoite enters the epithelium-cell of
the gut of an Arthropod, Worm or Mollusc, and as it enlarges
protrudes the greater part of its bulk into the lumen, and may
become free therein, or pass into the coelom. The attached part is
often enlarged into a sort of grapple armed with spines, the
"epimerite"; this contains only sarcocyte, the other layers being
absent. The freely projecting body is usually divided by an ingrowth
of the myocyte into a front segment ("protomerite"), and a rear one
("deutomerite"), with the nucleus usually in the latter. In this state the
cell is termed a "cephalont." Conjugation is frequent, but apparently
is not always connected with syngamy or spore-formation;
sometimes from two to five may be aggregated into a chain or
"syzygy." The number of cases in which a syngamic process
between two cells has been observed is constantly being increased.
In Stylorhynchus (Fig. 33) the conjugation at first resembles that of
Monocystis, but the actual pairing-cells are bisexually differentiated
into sperms in the one parent, and oospheres in the other; it is
remarkable that here the pear-shaped sperms are apparently larger
than the oospheres. In Pterocephalus the chief difference is that the
sperms are minute.[106] In all cases of spore-formation the epimerite
is lost and the septum disappears; in this state the cell is termed a
sporont. Sometimes the epiplasm of the sporont forms tubes
("sporoducts"), which project through the cyst-wall and give exit to
the spores, as in Gregarina (Fig. 32, C), a parasite in the beetle
Blaps.

Gregarines infest most groups of Invertebrates except Sponges and

perhaps Coelenterates, the only exception cited being that of
Epizoanthus glacialis, a Zoantharian (p. 406). They appear to be
relatively harmless and are not known to induce epidemics.
The Coccidiaceae never attain so high a degree of cellular
differentiation as the Gregarines, which may be due to their habitat;
for in the growing state they are intracellular parasites. Their life-
history shows a double cycle, which has been most thoroughly
worked out in Coccidiidae by Schaudinn and Siedlecki in parasites
of our common Centipedes. We take that of Coccidium schubergi (in
Lithobius forficatus[107]), beginning with the sporozoite, which is
liberated from the spores taken in with the food, in the gut of the
Centipede. This active sickle-shaped cell (Fig. 34, l) enters an
epithelial cell of the mid-gut, and grows therein till it attains its full
size (a), when it is termed a "schizont"; for it segments (Gk. σχίζω, "I
split") superficially into a large number of sickle-shaped zoospores,
the "merozoites" (c), resembling the sporozoites. The segmentation
is superficial, so that there may remain a large mass of residual
epiplasm. The merozoites are set free by the destruction of the
epithelium-cell in which they were formed, and which becomes
disorganised, like the residual epiplasm. Each merozoite may repeat
the behaviour of the sporozoite, so that the disease spreads freely,
and becomes acute after several reinfections. After a time the adult
parasites, instead of becoming schizonts and simply forming
merozoites by division, differentiate into cells that undergo a binary
sexual differentiation. Some cells, the "oocytes" (d, e), escape into
the gut, and the nucleus undergoes changes by which some of its
substance (or an abortive daughter-nucleus) is expelled to the
exterior (f), such a cell is now an "oogamete" or oosphere. Others,
again, are spermatogones (h): each when full grown on escaping
into the gut commences a division (i, j), like that of the schizonts. The
products of this division or segment-cells are the flagellate sperms
(s): they are more numerous and more minute than the merozoites
produced by the schizonts, and are attracted to the oosphere by
chemiotaxy (p. 23), and one enters it and fuses with it (g). The
oosperm, zygote or fertilised egg, thus formed invests itself with a
dense cyst-wall, as a "oospore" (k), its contents form one or more (2,
4, 8, etc.) spores; and each spore forms again one, two, or four
sickle-shaped zoospores ("sporozoites"), destined to be liberated for
a fresh cycle of parasitic life when the spores are swallowed by
another host.
 Fig. 33.—Bisexual pairing of Stylorhynchus. a, Spermatozoon; b-e, fusion of
cytoplasm of spermatozoon and oosphere; f, g, fusion of nuclei; h-j,
development of wall to zygote; k, l, formation of four sporoblasts; l, side
view of spore; m, mature sporozoites in spore. (After Léger.)

Fig. 34.—Life-history of Coccidium schubergi. a, Penetration of epithelium-cell of

host by sporozoite; b-d, stages of multiple cell-formation in naked state
(schizogony); e, f, formation of oogamete; g, conjugation; h-j, formation of
sperms (s); k, development of zygote (fertilised ovum) to form four spores; l,
formation of two zoospores (or sickle germs) in each spore. (From Calkins's
Protozoa, after Schaudinn.)

In some cases the oogametes are at first oblong, like ordinary

merozoites, and round off in the gut. The microgametocyte, or
spermatogone, has the same character, but is smaller; it applies
itself like a cap to one pole of the oogamete, which has rounded off;
it then divides into four sperms, whose cytoplasm is not sharply
separated; one of these then separates from the common mass,
enters the oogamete, and so conjugation is effected, with an
oosperm as its result. This latter mode of conjugation is that of
Adelea ovata and Coccidium lacazei: the former is probably the
more primitive and the commoner. The sperms of Coccidiidae, when
free, usually possess two long flagella, either both anterior, or a very
long one in front and a short one behind, both turned backwards.

The genus Coccidium affects many animals, and one species in

particular, C. cuniculi Rivolta, attacks the liver of young rabbits,[108]
giving rise to the disease "coccidiosis." Coccidium may also produce
a sort of dysentery in cattle on the Alpine pastures of Switzerland;
and cases of human coccidiosis are by no means unknown.
Coccidium-like bodies have been demonstrated in the human
disease, "molluscum contagiosum," and the "oriental sore" of Asia;
similar bodies have also been recorded in smallpox and vaccinia,
malignant tumours and even syphilis, but their nature is not certainly
known; some of these are now referred to Flagellata (see p. 121).

Closely allied to the Coccidiidae are the Haemosporidae, dwellers

in the blood of various cold-blooded Vertebrates,[109] and entering
the corpuscles as sporozoites or merozoites to attain the full size,
when they divide by schizogony; they are freed like those of the next
family by the breaking up of the corpuscle. The merozoites were
described by Gaule (1879) as "vermicles" ("Würmchen"), and
regarded by him as peculiar segregation-products of the blood;
though Lankester had described the same species in the Frog's
blood as early as 1871, with a full recognition of its true character.
His name, Drepanidium, has had to give way, having been
appropriated to another animal, and has been aptly replaced by that
of Lankesterella. The sexual process of Karyolysus has been found
to take place in a Tick, that of Haemogregarina in a Leech, thus
presenting a close analogy to the next group, which only differs in its
less definite form in the active state, and in the lack of a cell-wall
during brood-formation.
Laveran was the first to describe a member of the Acystosporidae,
in 1880, as an organism always to be found in the blood of patients
suffering from malarial fever; this received the rather inappropriate
name of Plasmodium, which, by a pedantic adherence to the laws of
priority, has been used by systematists as a generic name. Golgi
demonstrated the coincidence of the stages of the intermittent fever
with those of the life-cycle of the parasite in the patient, the
maturation of the schizont and liberation of the sporozoites
coinciding with the fits of fever. Manson, who had already shown that
the Nematodes of the blood that give rise to Filarial haematuria (see
Vol. II. p. 149) have an alternating life in the gnats or mosquitos of
the common genus Culex,[110] in 1896 suggested to Ronald Ross
that the same might apply to this parasite, and thus inspired a most
successful work. The hypothesis had old prejudices in its favour, for
in many parts there was a current belief that sleeping under
mosquito-netting at least helped other precautions against malaria.
Ross found early in his investigations that Culex was a good host for
the allied genus Haemoproteus or Proteosoma, parasitic in birds, but
could neither inoculate man with fever nor be inoculated from man.
He found, however, that the malaria germs from man underwent
further changes in the stomach of a "dappled-wing mosquito," that is,
as we have since learned, a member of the genus Anopheles.
Thenceforward the study advanced rapidly, and a number of
inquirers, including Grassi, Koch, MacCallum (who discovered the
true method of sexual union in Halteridium[111]), and Ross himself,
completed his discovery by supplying a complete picture of the life-
cycles of the malaria-germs. Unfortunately, there has been a most
unhappy rivalry as to the priority of the share in each fragment of the
discovery, whose history is summarised by Nuttall, we believe, with
perfect fairness.[112]

The merozoite is always amoeboid, and in this state enters the blood
corpuscle; herein it attains its full size, as a schizont, becoming filled
with granules of "melanin" or black pigment, probably a
decomposition product of the red colouring matter (haemoglobin).
 Fig. 35.—Life-history of Malarial Parasites. A-G, Amoebula of quartan parasite to
sporulation; H, its gametocyte; I-M, amoebula of tertian parasite to
sporulation; N, its gametocyte; O, T, "crescents" or gametocytes of
Laverania; P-S, sperm-formation; U-W, maturation of oosphere; X,
fertilisation; Y, zygote. a, Zygote enlarging in gut of Mosquito; b-e, passing
into the coelom; f, the contents segmented into naked spores; g, the spores
forming sickle-germs or sporozoites; h, sporozoites passing into the salivary
glands. (From Calkins's Protozoa, after Ross and Fielding Ould.)

The nucleus of the schizont now divides repeatedly, and then the
schizont segments into a flat brood of germs (merozoites), relatively
few in the parasite of quartan fever (Haemamoeba malariae, Fig. 35,
E-G), many in that of tertian (H. vivax, Fig. 35, M). These brood-cells
escape and behave for the most part as before. But after the disease
has persisted for some time we find that in the genus Haemamoeba,
which induces the common malarial fevers of temperate regions,
certain of the full-grown germs, instead of behaving as schizonts,
pass, as it were, to rest as round cells; while in the allied genus
Laverania, (Haemomenas, Ross) these resting-cells are crescentic,
with blunt horns, and are usually termed half-moons (Fig. 35, O, T),
characteristic of the bilious or pernicious remittent fevers of the
tropics and of the warmer temperate regions in summer. These
round or crescent-shaped cells are the gametocytes, which only
develop further in the drawn blood, whether under the microscope,
protected against evaporation, or in the stomach of the Anopheles:
the crescents become round, and then they, like the already round
ones of Haemamoeba, differentiate in exactly the same way as the
corresponding cells of Coccidium schubergi. The female cell only
exhibits certain changes in its nucleus to convert it into an oosphere:
the male emits a small number of sperms, long flagellum-like bodies,
each with a nucleus; and these, by their wriggling, detach
themselves from the central core, no longer nucleated. The male
gametogonium with its protruded sperms was termed the "Polymitus
form," and was by some regarded as a degeneration-form, until
MacCallum discovered that a "flagellum" regularly undergoes sexual
fusion with an oosphere in Halteridium, as has since been found in
the other genera. The oosperm (Y) so formed is at first motile
("ookinete"), as it is in Haemosporidae, and passes into the
epithelium of the stomach of the gnat and then through the wall,
acquiring a cyst-wall and finally projecting into the coelom (a-e).
Here it segments into a number of spheres ("zygotomeres" of Ross)
corresponding to the Coccidian spores, but which never acquire a
proper wall (f). These by segmentation produce at their surface an
immense quantity of elongated sporozoites (the "zygotoblasts" or
"blasts" of Ross, Fig. 35, g), these are ultimately freed by the
disappearance of the cyst-wall of the oosperm, pass through the
coelom into the salivary gland (h), and are discharged with its
secretion into the wound that the gnat inflicts in biting. In the blood
the blasts follow the ordinary development of merozoites in the blood
corpuscle, and the patient shows the corresponding signs of fever.
This has been completely proved by rearing the insect from the egg,
feeding it on the blood of a patient in whose blood there were
ascertained to be the germs of a definite species of Haemamoeba,
sending it to England, where it was made to bite Dr. Manson's son,
who had never had fever and whose blood on repeated examination
had proved free from any germs. In the usual time he had a well-
defined attack of the fever corresponding to that germ, and his blood
on examination revealed the Haemamoeba of the proper type. A few
doses of quinine relieved him of the consequences of his mild
martyrdom to science. Experiments of similar character but of less
rigorous nature had been previously made in Italy with analogous
results. Again, it has been shown that by mere precautions against
the bites of Anopheles, and these only, all residents who adopted
them during the malarious season in the most unhealthy districts of
Italy escaped fever during a whole season; while those who did not
adopt the precautions were badly attacked.[113]

Anopheles flourishes in shallow puddles, or small vessels such as

tins, etc., the pools left by dried-up brooks and torrents, as well as
larger masses of stagnant water, canals, and slow-flowing streams.
Sticklebacks and minnows feed freely on the larvae and keep down
the numbers of the species; where the fish are not found, the larvae
may be destroyed by pouring paraffin oil on the surface of the water
and by drainage. A combination of protective measures in Freetown
(Sierra Leone) and other ports on the west coast of Africa, Ismailia,
and elsewhere, has met with remarkable success during the short
time for which it has been tried; and it seems not improbable, that as
the relatively benign intermittent fevers have within the last century
been banished from our own fen and marsh districts, so the Guinea
coast may within the next decade lose its sad title of "The White
Man's Grave."

So closely allied to this group in form, habit, and life-cycle are some
species of the Flagellate genus Trypanosoma, that in their less
active states they have been unhesitatingly placed here (see p. 119).
Schaudinn has seen Trypanosomic characters in the "blasts" of this
group, which apparently is the most primitive of the Sporozoa and a
direct offshoot of the Flagellates.

The Myxosporidiaceae (Fig. 36) are parasitic in various cold-

blooded animals. They are at least binucleate in the youngest free
state, and become large and multinucleate apocytes, which may bud
off outgrowths as well as reproduce by spores. The spores of the
apocyte are not produced by simultaneous breaking up, but by
successive differentiation. A single nucleus aggregates around itself
a limited portion of the cytoplasm, and this again forms a membrane,
becoming an archespore or a "pansporoblast," destined to produce
two spores; within this, nuclear division takes place so as to form
about eight nuclei, two of which are extruded as abortive, and of the
other six, three are used up in the formation of each of the two
spores. Of these three nuclei in each spore, two form nematocysts,
like those of a Coelenterate (p. 246 f.), at the expense of the
surrounding plasm; while the third nucleus divides to form the two
final nuclei of the reproductive body. The whole aggregate of the
reproductive body and the two nematocysts is enveloped in a bivalve
shell. In what we may call germination, the nematocysts eject a
thread that serves for attachment, the valves of the shell open, and
the binucleate mass crawls out and grows afresh. Nosema bombycis
Nägeli (the spore of which has a single nematocyst) is the organism
of the "Pébrine" of the silkworm, which was estimated to have
caused a total loss in France of some £40,000,000 before Pasteur
investigated the malady and prescribed the effectual cure, or rather
precaution against its spread. This consisted in crushing each
mother in water after it had laid its eggs and seeking for pébrine
germs. If the mother proved to be infected, her eggs were destroyed,
as the eggs she had laid were certain to be also tainted. Balbiani
completed the study of the organism from a morphological
standpoint. Some Myxosporidiaceae produce destructive epidemics
in fish.

Fig. 36.—A, Myxidium lieberkühnii, amoeboid phase; B, Myxobolus mülleri,

spore with discharged nematocysts (ntc); C, spores (psorosperms) of a
Myxosporidian. ntc, nematocysts. (From Parker and Haswell.)

The Dolichosporidia or Sarcosporidiaceae are, in the adult state,

elongated sacs, often found in the substance of the voluntary
muscles, and known as "Rainey's" or "Miescher's Tubes"; they are at
first uninucleate, then multinucleate, and then break up successively
into uninucleate cells, the spores, in each of which, by division, are
formed the sickle-shaped zoospores.[114]

CHAPTER V

PROTOZOA (CONTINUED): FLAGELLATA

III. Flagellata.
Protozoa moving (and feeding in holozoic forms) by long flagella:
pseudopodia when developed usually transitory: nucleus single or if multiple
not biform: reproduction occurring in the active state and usually by
longitudinal fission, sometimes alternating with brood-formation in the cyst or
more rarely in the active state: form usually definite: a firm pellicle or distinct
cell-wall often present.

The Flagellates thus defined correspond to Bütschli's group of the

Mastigophora. The lowest and simplest forms, often loosely called
"Monads," are only distinguishable from Sarcodina (especially
Proteomyxa) and Sporozoa by the above characters: their artificial
nature is obvious when we remember that many of the Sarcodina
have a flagellate stage, and that the sperms of bisexual Sporozoa
are flagellate (as are indeed those of all Metazoa except Nematodes
and most Crustacea). Even as thus limited the group is of enormous
extent, and passes into the Chytridieae and Phycomycetes
Zoosporeae on the one hand, and by its holophytic colonial
members into the Algae, on the other.[115]

Classification.
A. Fission usually longitudinal
(transverse only in a cyst), or if
multiple, radial and complete:
pellicle absent, thin, or if armour-
like, with not more than two valves.
I. Food taken in at any part of the
body by pseudopodia 1. PANTOSTOMATA
Multicilia Cienk.; Mastigamoeba F. E. Sch. (Fig. 37, 4).
II. Food taken in at a definite point
or points, or by absorption, or
nutrition holophytic.
1. No reticulate siliceous shell.
Diameter under 500 µ
(1⁄50").
* Contractile vacuole
simple (one or more).
(α) Colourless:
reserves usually
fat: holozoic,
saprophytic or
parasitic 2. Protomastigaceae
(β) Plastids yellow or
brown: reserves
fat or proteid:
nutrition variable:
body naked,
often amoeboid
in active state (C.
nudae), or with a
test, sometimes
containing
calcareous discs
("coccoliths,"
"rhabdoliths") of
peculiar form (C.
loricatae) 3. Chrysomonadaceae
Chromulina Cienk.; Chrysamoeba Klebs;
 Hydrurus Ag. Dinobryon Ehrb. (Fig. 37, 11);
Syncrypta Ehrb. (Fig. 37, 12); Zooxanthella
Brandt; Pontosphaera Lohm.;
Coccolithophora Lohm.; Rhabdosphaera
Haeck.
(γ) Green, (more
rarely yellow or
brown) or
colourless:
reserves starch:
fission
longitudinal 4. Cryptomonadaceae
Cryptomonas Ehrb. (Fig. 37, 9); Paramoeba
Greeff.
(δ) Green (rarely
colourless):
fission multiple,
radial 5. Volvocaceae
** System of contractile
vacuoles complex,
with accessory
formative vacuoles or
reservoir, or both.
(ε) Pellicle delicate or
absent:
pseudopodia
often emitted:
excretory pore
distinct from
flagellar pit:
reserves fat 6. Chloromonadaceae
Chloramoeba Lagerheim; Thaumatomastix,
Lauterborn.
(ζ) Pellicle dense, 7. Euglenaceae
 tough or hard,
often wrinkled or
striate: contractile
vacuole
discharging by
the flagellar pit.
Nutrition variable
Euglena Ehrb.; Astasia Duj. (Fig. 37, 3);
Anisonema Duj.; Eutreptia Perty (Fig. 42, p.
124); Trachelomonas Ehrb. (Fig. 37, 1);
Cryptoglena Ehrb.
2. Skeleton an open network of
hollow siliceous spicules.
Plastids yellow. Diameter
under 500 µ. 8. Silicoflagellata
Dictyocha Ehrb.
3. Diameter over 500 µ. Mouth
opening into a large
reticulate endoplasm:
flagella 1, or 2, very
unequal. 9. Cystoflagellata
Noctiluca Suriray (Fig. 48); Leptodiscus R. Hertw.
B. Fission oblique or transverse: flagella
two, dissimilar, the one coiled round
the base of the other or in a
traverse groove; pellicle often
dense, of numerous armour-like
plates 10. Dinoflagellata
Ceratium Schrank; Gymnodinium Stein; Peridinium Ehrb. (Fig.
46); Pouchetia Schütt; Pyrocystis Murray (Fig. 47); Polykrikos
Bütschli.
The Protomastigaceae and Volvocaceae are so extensive as to
require further subdivision.

Protomastigaceae
I. Oral spots 2. Flagella distant in pairs. Distomatidae
II. Oral spot 1 or 0.
A. Flagellum 1.
(a) No anterior process: often
parasitic Oikomonadidae
Oikomonas K. (Figs. 37, 2, 8); Trypanosoma Gruby
(Fig. 39, a-f); Treponema Vuill. (Fig. 39, g-i).
(b) Anterior process unilateral or
proboscidiform: cell often
thecate Bicoecidae
Bicoeca Clark; Poteriodendron St.
(c) Anterior process a funnel,
surrounding the base of the
flagellum: cells often
thecate.
(i.) Funnel free Craspedomonadidae
Codosiga Clark; Monosiga Cl.; Polyoeca Kent;
Proterospongia Kent; Salpingoeca Cl.
(ii.) Funnel not emerging
from the general
gelatinous investment Phalansteridae
B. Flagella 2, unequal or dissimilar in
function, the one sometimes
short and thick.
(a) Both flagella directed
forwards Monadidae