New Delhi : Mahatma Gandhi adopted a unique sartorial strategy to achieve India's liberation from British rule by creating a fashion system through the laborious unfolding of the swadeshi social drama, says a communication expert. Gandhi's discarding of Western fashion was his loudest cry on behalf of colonised humanity and the zenith of his search for sartorial significance, writes Peter Gonsalves, a teacher of social sciences at a Paris university, in his book "Clothing for Liberation".

"For those who heeded Gandhi's cry, this 'clothing for liberalisation' was equivalent to putting one's life on the line. It meant giving up time, family and social privileges in the cause of moral duty. The choice for khadi was no arbitrary fashion statement; it was an option for perfect and uncompromising integrity," the writer says.

Gandhi's decision to reduce his conventional clothing to a mere waist-covering dhoti transformed him into an international icon, he writes. The book investigates the communicative power of Gandhi's style of dressing and use of home-spun cloth for staging a revolution involving over 300 million people.

The study is situated in the context of Gandhi's communication skills: his verbal output, his linguistic capacity, his journalistic and letter-writing style, his peace communication in conflict, his organisational ability and the international repercussions of his mass mediated messages, his non-verbal communication through silence, his fasting, his personal presence and charisma.

The author uses the theories of Ronald Barthes, Victor Turner and Erving Goffman as the framework for a deeper communication analysis which brings to light Gandhi's unique sartorial strategy for India's liberation: the creation of a 'fashion system' through the laborious unfolding of the swadeshi 'social drama' while he remained the undisputed 'performance manager' of the 30-year-long freedom struggle. According to the author, the unclothing of the Mahatma was his loudest cry on behalf of colonised humanity.

"It was the zenith of his search for sartorial significance. Hence, in his own person, wedged between the clash of two great civilisations, he pursued an exceptional strategy to speak to an Empire that was too stubborn to listen, on behalf of the millions who spoke through their nakedness and their tears," the book brought out by Sage publication says.

This is the perhaps the first analysis of Gandhi's dressing style in terms of communication theory and an exploration of the subliminal messages that were subtly communicated to a large audience.

The author first prepares the ground for the theoretical investigation by exploring the breadth of Gandhi's communication skills. He provides essential information on a wide range of Gandhi's communication skills, with a view to proposing interesting areas of research for communication scholars. The book deals with the qualitative and quantitative aspects of Gandhi's verbal output, his linguistic capacity, his journalistic and letter-writing style, his peace communication in an atmosphere of conflict, his organisational ability and the international repercussions of his mass mediated messages.