Doffing one’s topi

In 1919, Mahatma Gandhi decided to fashion a headpiece that would soon become India’s first national headgear. Rejecting the stately turban, the knotty pagdi, and the sola topi for being too British, Gandhi settled on the khadi cap saying, “The khadi cap can be used by all, the rich and poor… that all should have the same kind of cap is worth considering.”

Nearly a century later, the Gandhi topi, which became a symbol for swaraj, was pulled out of the political wilderness when a sea of such topis engulfed Ramlila Maidan in 2011, led by anti-corruption messiahs Anna Hazare and Arvind Kejriwal. As Aam Aadmi Party emerges as the rank outsider and a giant-killer, the topi, with ‘Main hoon aam aadmi’ printed on the sides, has now found a permanent home on the aam aadmi’s crown.

To find the origins of the AAP topis, I travelled to the winding lanes of Nabi Karim in Paharganj, located close to the New Delhi Railway Station. Here in cramped and noisy quarters, migrant workers from Bihar, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh work for 12-hour stretches, folding, pressing, stitching, turning out close to 8,000 to 10,000 caps every day. In the neighbouring streets of Sadar Bazar, mounds of these topis sit alongside NaMo and RaGa merchandise. A contractor who supervises one of the sweatshops says, “Business has skyrocketed after AAP. Right now, we are working on an order of 10 lakh caps for an AAP candidate.” At the wholesale market, the humble topi goes for a humble ₹2.50. On the streets though, they are sold for anything from ₹10 to ₹15.

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