REFLECTIONS | Dressing down at Oval: A power statement by Kyiv | Sunanda K. Datta-Ray

Not since Baroda’s Maharaja Sayajirao Gaekwad III flung a sartorial bomb into the Delhi Durbar of 1911 have attire and attitude caused so much consternation in high places as the recent fiasco in the Oval Office of the White House. Not that it’s at all surprising that the American vice-president should emerge as Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s strident critic. James David Vance may be a white American politician but his gifted Hindu Brahmin vegetarian wife’s roots are in the Telugu heartland of Andhra Pradesh. It being no secret that catch-as-catch-can upwardly mobile Indian immigrants are not noted for cultural sensitivity, some crassness may have rubbed off on Mr Vance who gave Ukraine’s President a dressing down for not dressing up in Donald Trump’s honour.

Clearly, Mr Vance missed the symbolic defiance of Mr Zelenskyy’s military-style black sweatshirt adorned with Ukraine’s trident. Asia’s sartorial signals are usually more muted like Vijayalakshmi Pandit’s khadi sarees which were reputedly smooth as French silk. However, there’s nothing subtle about the flamboyant turbans and waistcoats with which Narendra Modi is transforming the political stage into a Hindu durbar where those who are not dwijas are mlechhas. Pakistan carried prenatal exclusiveness to extremes with Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s sister abandoning the sarees on which she had been weaned for the salwar-kameez she deemed more Pakistani even before Pakistan was born. In contrast, Jinnah’s wife, caring nothing for political messages, draped herself in two (or was it three?) Liberty scarves, according to Lady Willingdon, who feared that the scantily-dressed Mrs Jinnah might catch a cold.

Contrary to what people might think, such symbolism didn’t begin with that shrewd but saintly master of statecraft, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, who when asked if he had tea with the King-Emperor George V in Buckingham Palace wearing only his trademark loin cloth, famously retorted: “His Majesty wore enough for both of us!” The Bengali revolutionary, Jatindra Mohan Sengupta, an anglicised barrister from Cambridge and Middle Temple who became mayor of Calcutta, and is revered as Deshapriya, “Lover of the Land”, probably first used a sartorial semaphore. Deshapriya’s political adversaries sought to malign him with the cartoon of a man swilling whisky in black tie and dinner jacket while a bearer held out his khadi dhoti, kurta and chaddar. The caption, “Meeting ka kapra”, which has passed into the language, speaks of other countries as well.

Like Prime Minister Modi’s telltale waistcoat which betrays his unacknowledged debt to Jawaharlal Nehru, China’s ubiquitous Mao jacket -- which Jiang Zemin tried to banish when launching his “Going Global” policy -- still lurks in some august Beijing wardrobes. The immaculate Xi Jinping, for instance, has been known to discard his smart Western suit and dust down a Mao jacket for the most politically pregnant occasions.

It is possible that Mr Vance’s tirade was really to demand visual reciprocity and prevent Mr Zelenskyy from stealing a march over his host. As guardian of Mr Trump’s dignity, he may have been trying to ensure that the President wasn’t thwarted in his mission to annex Greenland, discipline Canada, Panama and Mexico, cut Europe down to size, earn Vladimir Putin’s approbation and, being a transactional politician, also make a penny from Ukraine’s natural resources.

We know from Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s novel, The Leopard, that the old order’s death knell was sounded when the town’s plebeian mayor turned up in full evening dress at the Prince of Salina’s ball where the prince himself always received guests in informal attire. The radical mayor’s outfit warned that a revolution was brewing. Although roles were reversed at the Delhi Durbar, the Gaekwad’s appearance in white cotton instead of strings of diamonds and emeralds sent similar alarm bells ringing throughout the Raj. It wasn’t only that His Highness’s cotton might have been seditious khadi. His casual stroll towards the throne and the perfunctory bow he sketched before turning his back on Their Majesties, swinging a swagger stick as he walked jauntily away, were as mutinous as the mayor’s glad rags. Watching the filmed sequence which is regularly screened at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, no one can tell whether the Gaekwad was being his simple self, deliberately aiming a deadly insult at the King-Emperor, or whether -- as he claimed -- he was overcome with confusion in that glittering throng of bejewelled potentates. All one knows is that reciprocity alone would have achieved nothing. In any case, the King-Emperor could hardly be expected to clamber down from his throne to the chant of an adapted “Raguhupati Raghava Raja Ram, Jitna kapra, utna kam” slogan and bow three times to his vassal from Baroda. Parity must adjust to a natural order in which poverty also has a price, as the

irreverent Sarojini Naidu naughtily reminded Gandhi.

Of course, Mr Zelenskyy could have told the officious and offensive Mr Vance whose main purpose seemed to be to ingratiate himself with his boss that his own soldier’s attire was not mandatory for all freedom-fighters. An army may rely on foot soldiers to fight but it also needs generals and field-marshals. If Mr Zelenskyy identifies with the humblest defenders of Ukraine’s independence, there is nothing to stop friends from assuming the grander rank they feel is their due. Mr Trump should be flattered to be designated an honorary field-marshal of the Ukrainian Army with an appropriately ornate uniform that his good friend in Delhi’s Panchavati, aka 7 Lok Kalyan Marg, would undoubtedly be happy to design.

First, however, the now obsequious Mr Vance must restore his own credentials. Eight years ago he derided the President as an idiot, which the latter may not have forgotten or forgiven since he told Fox News recently that it is “too early” to tell whether the vice-president can run for President in 2028. Nor can Mr Vance claim an upsurge of popular support since people remember that when he was running for the Ohio Senate in 2022, he told a podcast: “I have got to be honest with you. I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or the other.”

That also seems to be Mr Trump’s attitude since his second coming. Hapless Ukraine must fend for itself while the so-called Leader of the Free World plays footsy with the reincarnation of the Soviet challenger.