Babygirl’, ‘fruit cake’, ‘Pakistan’s Ranveer Singh’ — these are some of the boxes people in Pakistan confined New York-based singer Ali Sethi to after he posed in a white angrakha designed by Lahore-based designer Fahad Hussayn at the recently-concluded Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival.
Though many have hailed the Pasoori singer, along with India’s Diljit Dosanjh, for their fashion underlining the theme of brown representation, and making a strong statement at the world stage, some Pakistanis, it seems, are finding the robe with long sleeves ‘blasphemous’.
For Sethi, whose hit track ‘Pasoori’ was the most searched song on Google in 2022, Coachella marked his conclusive arrival on the international music scene. But not everyone was in awe of the 38-year-old Pakistani performer who enthralled audiences with his compositions inside the Gobi Tent.
Many in Pakistan, where gender identity is off-limits, erroneously derided Sethi for his choice of attire — a white angrakha designed by Lahore-based designer Fahad Hussayn — without bothering to check that the outfit in question has been a traditional male garment in South Asia for centuries.
However, Sethi’s fans, too, were quick to rush to his side. One wrote that the episode highlighted how “colonisation has rotten the culture to the extent that this third generation after Brits have no idea what the classic jama/dress for men was barely two centuries ago”.
“Pakistani men in western outfits crying how Ali Sethi donning this Mughal inspired dress does not represent them. Y’all need some deep-rooted decolonising,” wrote another.
Some fans even suggested that Sethi’s choice of outfit hinted at his sexual orientation. “He has been very public about his orientation for a long time,” said one, implying that this may have been Sethi’s ‘coming out’ moment.
Ali, who now lives in New York, has not issued any statement, either confirming or denying these inferences.
Ali is the son of journalist Najam Sethi, who, in addition to being chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board, is also a former chief minister of the country’s Punjab province. Ali’s mother Jugnu Mohsin, meanwhile, is a former member of the provincial assembly of Punjab.
ThePrint reached Ali Sethi via mail for comment but had not received a response by the time of publication. This report will be updated if and when a response is received.
This episode of Pakistanis attributing his “manliness” to his choice of clothes, however, underscores the stifled discourse around gender identity in Pakistan where same-sex relations were criminalised through the enactment of the Hudood Ordinances in 1979.
A Pew Research survey released in 2013 had found that 90 per cent of respondents in Pakistan believed homosexuality was morally wrong, against only one per cent who said it was morally acceptable.
As for South Asian celebrities like Sethi, who deserve credit for putting music from the subcontinent on the map in recent years, criticism for their choice of clothes only reaffirms the unconventional themes that they masterfully incorporate into their music.
Like Sethi told The Washington Post last week, “To be connected to tradition does not necessarily mean that you have to be orthodox or conservative. I think that’s my message.”
(Edited by Anurag Chaubey)