PAHARI TOPI : ‘WHERE DID YOU GET THAT HAT ?’

WILLIAM MCKAY AITKEN*

ONE OF THE MOST fascinating mementoes of Himalayan voyages is the hillman’s hat (Pahari topi). In its shape, angle, colour and texture is a lore as variable and rich as the region to which the topi attaches. Hats obviously follow climatic demand and the uniquitous fur hat of Moscow will only be found in Chennai on the head of the late ‘MGR’ the popular Tamil film star turned chief minister. In Europe the cap (from Andy Cap to scholar’s mortar board) probably descended from the monk’s cowl which he pulled over his ears after vespers to keep out evil influences. Today babies in Zanskar are all given Lamaist pointed hats with curled up ear flaps perhaps to continue this tradition of warding off mischievous spirits.

Hats come in all shapes and sizes but their functions seem limited to three areas. They are practical (protective), ornamental (ceremonial) and tribal (regional specific). Some hats like the British bowler draw sustenance from all three areas. The City gentleman commuting with Times and rolled umbrella in hand, Big Mac in briefcase and a bowler perched with careful nonchalance protects himself from the weather and pigeon droppings, appears as a member of a guild by the capping of his pin-striped with a natty hat and enjoys tribal status and regional identity by the fact that only in the Home Counties do you find this phenomenon of the immaculately clad computer. Hill ladies of the high Andes do affect a bowler but the hat being brown in colour obviously is out of touch with what the well-dressed Times reader wears to office. Brown bowlers are almost as unthinkable as brown boots, except to bookies.

On my forays along the Himalayan states I have collected three basic shapes of hat : flat, pointed and folding, the latter referring to the forage cap of the Kumaun Hills. This shape of hat has a vulgar name in the military version which as conscientious objector I should not to be expected to know. However I can say it has nothing to do with the philosophy of Kant. The Nepali topi, at least in its Bhaktapur-(non- military) version is to my mind the most aesthetic of all hill hats and surprising in view of its cotton makeup comfortingly warm at altitudes (All mountaineers know that 80% of bodily heat is lost from the head. Dhotials in the west of Nepal use the same style but cannot explain how its curious conical twist came to be devised or why. Those who confuse this stitched topi with the traditional Leprechawn cap of Irish imps or the Noddy head-stocking of English garden gnomes miss the point since, in spite of appearances, the Nepali topi does have a flat top, albeit rakishly disposed.

Footnote

*He is better known as Bill Aitken.

The pointed caps of the Himalaya will turn out to be the most intriguing but the most common pahari topi is the round woollen, flat-cap worn by the residents of Himachal and Garhwal. Kumaun as stated favours the forage cap and for those in lower Kumaun the white Gandhi cap, easily available in the Khadi Bhandar is popular while the upper (Bhotia) population wear the same shape but in wool. The Kumaun Regiment wears a narrow black forage cap originally designed to fit under a shoulder tab. Nowadays military fashions round the world favour the beret, for the very good reason that it doesn’t fall off as easily as a flat hat. (When I do my daily ten press-ups in Delhi wearing my custom-made Kinnauri topi I end up doing eleven since I have to pick up my hat!) Surprisingly nowhere in the hills has the bonnet caught no, which is strange when that other item of Scots military gear, the bagpipes is found skirling away everywhere from the Khyber to the Se La. The Scots no doubt derived the bonnet from their old ally the French. The Basque beret is so clinging that Jean Barotra could even play tennis in it at Wimbledon.

On a westward survey from the Brahmaputra to the Indus I can only mention the hats that came my way. First was the woven bamboo helmet of the tribes of modern Arunachal. Extremely hardy they contrast with the ceremonial head-bands with feathers I saw moving to west Arunachal. The most fascinating hat of all was worn by Monpa villagers, and designed more like a wig. This was a black mat of yak hair teased into a star shape was said to be both warm and rain proof. I offered to buy one from a lama backpacking a basketful into Bhutan from Tawang, arguing that I needed it to study in the interests of sciences. The lama smiled implying that for him the interests of commerce were more pressing.

Bhutan and Sikkim seem to reserve their hats for ceremonial use and the former’s government diktat on what constitutes national dress so far as I know does not extent to topis. Hats have a real political impact in the age of ethnic identity quests. The British sola topee went out of business in India overnight after independence as a hated symbol of colonialism.

It is (was!) the Gurkhas of Hong Kong in their ceremonial pillbox hats that suggested to me the origins of the pahari topi of Himachal and Garhwal. Chamba has no topi and that is as far as the Gurkhas expanded. In pahari miniature paintings we do not see typical pahari topis though they do show jangia the striped underwear most hill village males continue to wear under their pyjama (a garment that only strips to nocturnal usage in the plural.) On the other hand old prints of Lhasa grandees often show the pill-box hat apparently borrowed from the fashions of Beijing. The Sikkim ruler also affected this style. Then there is the pillbox worn by the Boys Brigade a kind of Scottish riposte to Baden Powell’s Boy Scout movement.

The Daniells aquatints of Garhwal made just before the Gurkha invasion of Uttarakhand do not reveal the prevalence of today’s pahari topi, which leads me to suspect that its popularity has much to do with the advent of British military fashions. Just as in Nepal becoming at Lahori was a mark of manly initiative so in Ranikhet and Lansdowne young paharis queued up for the fitness test that would give them fauzi status in the paltan with which went considerable esteem. It gave you the right to bear arms even after retirement and a pension that reminded one’s neighbours of your warrior blood.

Asia more than the west is alive to the status symbol of a hat. In India particularly the division of the spiritual purush into bodily parts which increase in esteem the higher you look made the head both the seat of learning and the symbol of human dignity. Thus to surrender one’s safa (turban) was to acknowledge another’s suzerainty, the turban being the original basis of the topi before the age of the sewing machine. For the purity of orthodox ritual only unstitched cloth was used and the ceremonial finesse by which it was tied can still be recognised in the daily chore of the smartly turned out Sardar who winds himself into his pugri. (Incidentally Sardars refer to Brahmins as topiwala.)

The regional touches to hill hats are best brought out in Himachal, the Kullu cap with its embroidered flash being the best known thanks to aggressive marketing. Next best known and often flaunted by political netas is the Kinnaur topi which has a parrot green flash of (Smuggled) velvet. The neighbouring competition with a red velvet flash denotes Rampur and Shimla villages, while back velvet is sported around Netwar (actually in Garhwal) I had a Kinnaur cap made in Sangla while I waited and it took the tailor about an hour and cost some 50 rupees ten years ago. They come in one size only since the tree stump used as a last allows no variation. In the Baspa valley both men and women wear this handsome topi though schoolgirls are being brainwashed by Hindu teachers from the lower hills to give up what is considered Buddhist egalitarian behaviour. Outside Nepal Hindu hill women fall halfway between the purdah of Islam and the freedom of Buddhism. Hereabouts the locals (as in Lahaul) all sport two names, one Buddhist that reflects the culture of their hearth, the other Hindu to avail of government perks to backward classes. Lahaul men wear a maroon coloured Himachal topi with white piping. While the Gaddi shepherds of Kangra, perhaps because of their rigorous lifestyle (that involves the annual crossing of the sheer passes of the Pir Panjal) do not boast any flash to their undyed woollen caps. However I am assured that in Brahmaur is worn a pointed cotton cap of the Macedonian type favoured across the Pir Panjal in the Pangi valley. As it happens both the Pangi and Ravi valleys claim to host descendants of the army of Alexander (who did in fact get as far as the Beas.) Another fascinating touch to Pangi head-gear is the beautiful embroidered jhoji worn on the head by women, not extensive enough to be called a hat but highly alluring as a beauty aid. I find it more winning than the perak worn (for flaunted by) Ladakhi ladies who display their mineral wealth in turquoises in what looks more like a hawker’s tray than a feminine tiara. Much more to my liking are the hats of the Drogpas settled on the Indus, further claimants to Greek ancestry. The men have a Himachal style plain woollen topi with a higher prow while the women wear a tighter cap bedecked with cowries, ribbons and flowers.

Religion may have something to do with the Sirmur topi which I am told resembles the Muslim prayer caps of the plains. With the highest peak of the Lesser Himalaya on its confines the Sirmur raja would send barge-loads of ice to the Mughal court down the Giri-Yamuna. Snow lies on Chur-Chandni till May. Hence the name of this mountain that glints in the moonlight. across from Chail (where the Maharaja of Patiala batted long inning on the world’s highest cricket pitch-because the umpires dared not give His Highness out!)

One of the great puzzles of Himalayan hat lore may be answered by theological determinants. When you see Sherpa mountaineering porters in the east Himalaya no local topi is espied. They all wear expedition hand-me-downs, from the monkey-cap (the ‘Balaclava’ descended from the Crimean War) to the baseball cap (descended) from the Surperbowl, courtesy ESPN) Its true the old Himalayan Club mugshots do show the occasional ‘tiger’ sporting a battered Lamaist hat but even then most preferred to go bareheaded. By contrast the Balti porters from Karakoram expeditions to a man all wear the regulation rolled woollen ‘Ph.D.’ topi. Islam demands the head be covered (and comprehensively if you are a women) while Buddhism shrugs it off, philosophically indifferent. (If God wanted creation to cover their heads, he would have provided the needful!)

One curiosity that requires some fathoming is the fashion of tall velvet hats worn by Ladakhi ladies, only from the nineteenth century. Prior to that Tibetan nobles wore this pagoda-style hat with turned up earflaps. Another curiosity the student of headgear notes is that in 1905 overnight all turbans shrank to 50% of their volume: Look at any album prior to this year and you find: Sikhs wearing voluminous turbans that billow like Kremlin domes. Then all at once they appear sanforized, tightly bound and unfloppy. Was this caused by textile technology or an accident of fashion?

Strangely the towering Ladakhi topi has no practical use. It perches on top of the head so that both ears and forehead are unprotected. (Even the lowly Gaddi cap can have its flap pulled down over the ears. Presumably the ladies got the idea from Potala palace ceremonial where the lamas really went to town devising eye-catching ShangriLa fashions. So much so that the differing sects of Mahayana Buddhism are recognised by the colour and style of their headgear (as opposed to Richard ‘Gear’:)

So we conclude that religion and military needs played a key role in the spread of the hillman’s hat. Hill economies were too austere to allow the luxury of fancy hats (as in the Alps) and army pensions helped maintain the custom of the paltan. Retired soldiers became shepherds and slowly the wound cloth turban of the Rajputs was demoted to be worn by the Shilpkar drummer. As with Macauley’s minute that set English as the fashion for trendy high caste families, the Jang-i-Lat’s insistence on shakos and kepis achieved an image of desirable modernity. As a post-war London Times ad put it: ‘If you want to get ahead, get a hat.’ Militarily hats are still OK but the US peaked style (as worn by formula one drivers) is threatening the beret. Young hillmen have eschewed their traditional topi as being too regional. They seek a more national identity and probably also want to show off their latest hair styles. In Kargil when I tried to buy a Gilgit topi I found they were all too tight. Did they have one size bigger I asked? ‘Yes’, said the shopkeeper and pointed to a barber squatting alongside. ‘Have your head shaved and this size will fit.’ Which reminds me of my bald Mussoorie neighbour’s profound observation on the fallout of too-tight hats. According to Prof. Sudharkar Misra, Hinduism boasts the only known cure for baldness. Rebirth !

SUMMARY

Observations on various hats used in the Himalayan regions.

 

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