page_title: Gandhi cap
section_title: After independence
hierarchical_section_title: Gandhi cap / After independence
caption_attribution_description: People wearing Topi during Wari Dehugaon, Maharashtra
context_page_description: The Gandhi cap is a white coloured sidecap, pointed in front and back and having a wide band. It is made out of khadi. It takes its name after the Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi, who first popularised its use during the Indian independence movement. Worn commonly by Indian independence activists, it became a symbolic tradition for politicians and political activists to wear it in independent India.
context_section_description: The first generation of post-independence Indian politicians were almost universally members of the freedom struggle. Gandhi's assassination in 1948 gave an emotional importance to the Gandhi cap, which was regularly worn by Indian leaders like Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first Prime Minister. Succeeding prime ministers such as Lal Bahadur Shastri and Morarji Desai would continue the tradition. Most members of the Indian Parliament (especially politicians and activists of the Congress party) wore khadi clothing and the Gandhi cap. Large numbers of people donned the cap while celebrating India's independence on August 15 or the promulgation of a republic on January 26.
  Jawarharlal Nehru was always remembered as having worn the cap. In 1964 a coin showing Nehru in profile was released which was widely criticized for lacking the cap. Another Nehru coin was later released in 1989 on his birth centenary, which showed him wearing a cap.
  In later times, the cap had lost its popular and political appeal. Although many members of the Congress party continued the tradition, rival political parties preferred to dissociate themselves from the tradition linked with the Congress. The mass acceptance of Western-style clothing had also diminished the importance of wearing Indian-style clothes for politicians.
  The cap remains the most popular everyday headgear worn by men in rural parts of Maharashtra.
  In the "I Have a Dream" speech of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1963, many people standing behind him on stage wore Gandhi caps.
caption: Thousands of people wearing Topi during Wari, Dehugaon, Maharashtra
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