Introduction

I was introduced to the term chapri a few years ago through a friend’s dream. Drunk and excited, he told me how last night he dreamt he was walking with a girl when he was suddenly waylaid by chapris. Living his masculine dreams in his dreams, he started fighting the chapris to save the damsel in distress. He was succeeding and he had beaten up many of them. But the dream ended before the fight could end. I was induced to Google the word chapri next, and what came up were images of men with unconventional dyed hairstyles, flashy brightly coloured shirts, tight jeans, colourful shoes, and jewellery. What was also common among these men was their dark skin tones and thin figures. In the social context of India, where all elements of visual appearance are thickly coded with information about caste-class backgrounds, the photos of chapris communicated their positions in the low rungs of the caste-class hierarchy. In time, I learnt that their appearance in my friend’s dream is how they appear in the middle caste-class imaginations of India. Chapris are distinguishable men from lower caste-class backgrounds who dress weirdly, loiter around, and harass women. However, being poor and weak, they are not serious threats. They are to be hated and dominated, not feared.

The term chapri has been etymologically traced back to the word chapparband. This is the name of a lower caste group in Central and South India whose traditional cast occupation was mending roofs (Cardozo and Waghule 2023). Chapri, therefore, has affinities with words like Chamar, Bhangi, Dom, etc, which are all names of lower caste groups used as slur words by upper castes in India. Unlike others, however, the casteist associations of the word chapri are lesser known. This is arguable because chapparband is a smaller caste group in terms of population, and there hasn’t been a discourse of a similar scale against the use of chapri as a casteist slur word. For now, chapri is used in common parlance by most without guilt or hesitation.

The Hated Chapris

The slur chapri is used against men who practice a certain aesthetic in terms of appearance while belonging to a certain social stratum. Before the app was banned, TikTok was a space where chapris were notably visible to the larger public. In TikTok, they would star themselves in their videos – often involving short romantic acts and dances. They would show off their bikes, their skills at acting and dancing, and their friends and romantic partners. And of course, they appeared in their signature costumes – colourful hairstyles, shirts and shoes, tight jeans, and jewellery, usually complete with dark skins and thin figures. A cursory glance over the names of people identified and ragged as chapris in social media revealed that most of them are Muslims or from Scheduled caste and Scheduled Tribe communities. Many of their videos showed the makers’ residences in urban slums or rural areas of India. Their relative economic deprivation was visible from the state of their homes, their seemingly cheap clothes, and their lack of knowledge of correct English spellings and pronunciation- a sure-shot cultural marker of economic privilege in India.  

Their existence brought them a sea of hatred. ‘Mainstream’ digital creators, almost always from middle caste-class backgrounds (thereby not being from the urban elite sections), bullied them through roast videos, troll comments, insulting posts, demeaning memes, etc. Separate channels were made specifically to bully chapri content creators and insult their aesthetic choices. Multiple react videos centred on abusing chapri content creators and their stylistic choices went viral, garnering lakhs of likes. They were accused of not knowing their place in society, being a nuisance in public spaces, harassing women online, being an embarrassment to their parents and communities, being idle and refusing gainful employment, and having terrible tastes in fashion, amongst many other things. Several videos, which went viral, had dances of chapris overlaid with guttural sounds of puking. Others had soundtracks of contemptuous laughter in the background. They were also abused for their incorrect English and their non-standard accents of regional languages. A wide range of memes demeaning the chapri aesthetic also became popular.¹

The ‘TikTokers versus Youtubers’ cultural event (Mehta 2020) turned hatred against chapris into a popular social media trend. While social media was never known for its niceness, the bullying of chapris was remarkable for its scale and intensity. After TikTok was banned in India, this violence against chapris shifted to other platforms like YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. While it might not be as trendy as it was a few years ago, the hatred against chapris is still prominent in popular culture. New videos of content-creators tagged chapris are still trolled on similar lines. Old hateful reaction videos still occasionally emerge from online depths to moderate virality. Recently, Indian cricketer Hardik Pandya was ragged using the slur chapri in the stadium during an international cricket match by an angry audience (Pandey 2024). In streets and other public spaces, men from lower caste-class backgrounds with unconventional hairstyles and bright clothing are still categorized as chapri and bullied for it (Dablu Lifestyle 2023).

The Field of Men’s Fashion

To better understand this hatred against men categorized as chapris, certain insights from the works of Pierre Bourdieu might be helpful. Bourdieu tells us that cultural fields have internal hierarchies (Swartz 1997). The field of fashion in India has such hierarchies too. The clothes designed and sold by Sabyasachi, Manish Malhotra, Biba, Zara or Gucci are considered incomparably better than any cloth sold in footpath stalls of India’s cities.  Bourdieu points out that these hierarchies, although it might seem so, are not based on the intrinsic properties of these cultural products in question. A shirt sold in a footpath stall might be more comfortable to wear than a shirt of Gucci, other than being cheaper. But this doesn’t affect their relative statuses. Bourdieu argues that such arbitrary hierarchies exist because individual social classes which dominate cultural fields establish certain cultural items as superior ones than others, usually through their economic prowess. This serves their interests as the items they establish as superior are the ones under their possession and control. Once this hierarchy is established, and the process of its formation is forgotten, the dominant classes end up gaining advantages because they possess the now ‘naturally’ superior cultural items (Schubert 2008). If we ask the question of why a Raymond shirt is deemed superior to an unbranded one sold in Delhi’s Sarojini market, which is of the same quality, we will find the answer in Raymond’s brand creation. The brand value of Raymond, like that of the other brands mentioned above, has been established and continues to be maintained through massive economic resources being spent on marketing and advertisement. These tell us that a Raymond shirt has a status that the shirt of Sarojini market does not. It inserts in it a mysterious invisible quality and conversely, the lack of that quality in the shirt of Sarojini, making all the difference needed. We forget/ ignore/ misrecognize this process through which the hierarchy between the shirts has been created, and a Raymond shirt, for us, becomes ‘naturally better’. The problem is the Raymond shirt is beyond the purchasing power of most. Only a few, including the higher managers of Raymond who helped establish its brand, can buy it. These few men who can wear the shirt which to us is ‘naturally better’, now seem better in themselves because of it. Indeed, as Raymond shirts become the exclusive domain of rich men, their higher status compared to the shirt of Sarojini, which poor men can afford, is only reinforced. Poorer men can try to emulate the rich by buying cheaper shirts that look the same, with even a similar-sounding brand. But something will always be missing. They will never fully succeed.

The field of men’s fashion in India at large is certainly not this simple. But the broad contours of Bourdieu’s theory still hold. The upper classes of India have control over media representations. They also can confer legitimacy to cultural items through their consumption of the same. They have used these to manage the public imagination of what respectable menswear looks like, and have set certain basic standards for the cultural field. They have established the rules of the game based on what they consume. And what they consume ends up being exclusively consumed by them because those dresses are sold by select brands at prices unaffordable by others. The most respectable menswear is therefore always worn by them because what is worn by them has been made into the most respectable menswear.  

As a result, the unicolour men’s suits sold by Louis Philippe, Van Heusen, Raymond, Blackberry and others became the epitome of respectable office wear. If it’s too hot because the AC isn’t working, the man of corporate can wear the unicolour formal shirts sold by the same brands. For less formal occasions, say an after-office party or a stint at the gold club, these men can wear T-shirts sold by Polo, Adidas, Tommy Hilfiger, Allen Solly, and others. The monochromatic designs of these T-shirts are once again noticeable. In our neoliberal present, the men in the higher managerial positions of the leading corporations are the men par excellence, and the rules of men’s fashion are set looking up at these men. The top of the men’s fashion hierarchy is captured by the pallid monochromatic clothes worn by these men. The lower levels are given to the inferior copies of their clothes. The conception of a perfect men’s suit is determined by what the color and cut of the suits of CEOs are, and which brands sell them. Less perfect suits are the ones like these suits but of the wrong brand, colour or tailoring. Since it is quite unlikely that one of these rich men at a party will wear a T-shirt with four different bright colours, such colourful shirts are deemed to be aesthetically inferior. But these aesthetically inferior clothes are what is consumed by most men. Most men, unable to buy the clothes at the top of the symbolic hierarchy, must remain satisfied consuming the products of hundreds of companies which try to roughly emulate the designs patronized by the upper classes through the top brands. Even if the quality remains the same, Adidas becomes Adibas, the horse in the Polo logo turns into a unicorn, and in most cases the maker of the apparel becomes unrecognizable or invisible. As a result, that invisible quality goes missing and the highest respectabilities stay out of their reach.

It must be noted that it is possible to deviate from these norms by, for example, wearing something very colourful, while maintaining a certain amount of respectability. But only if this deviation itself is disciplined, presenting little challenge to the established symbolic regime. A man can present his overall persona as someone who is into ethnic aesthetics and buys shirts from other respectable and costly brands like Fabindia. Even Hawaiian shirts are fine if one can present the image of someone who can afford to go to Hawaii regularly. Colourful Sherwanis become the most respectable if they are from brands like Sabyasachi and Manish Malhotra and are only worn during marriage ceremonies. Such disciplined deviations are affordable for very few, presenting no serious challenge to the established symbolic regime.  When deviations emerge out of necessity, the disrespect that is conferred on the man clothed that way is simply accepted. No poor man wearing cheap shorts with a sleeveless vest on a humid summer day presents himself in public with pride. He too accepts and reinforces the dominant symbolic regime.

The domain of men’s haircuts is marked more by conformity than an elaborate internal hierarchy. The conceptual attachment of elaborate hairstyles with femininity probably dissuades most men in all classes from keeping elaborate hairdos. The buzz cut, the crew cut, the bowl cut or the bald head is casually worn by men of all classes on all occasions. Respectable deviations are once again possible, but only if they are supported by the presentation of an overall respectably deviant personality- the maintenance of which requires considerable economic capital. Deviant hairstyles are fine for male football players who are rich cultural icons. A man can wear long hair, elaborately set up, as long as he is a rich male actor. The case is similar for men wearing jewellery – another practice closely associated with femininity. While most men don’t wear jewellery, other than maybe a necklace, one can respectably wear multiple gold chains if he is in very select positions like that of a music producer (remember Bappi Lahiri) or a Rap icon.

Chapri Rebellion and the Suppression

Within this context, what chapris do seem to me like a rebellion. Their colourful shirts, hairstyles and jewellery disrupt the established rules of men’s fashion in India. Against the ‘less is more’ fashion norm set by the upper class, chapri fashion attaches value to bright colours, stark visual variations, liveliness, shine, and quantity. They present a figure alternative to the corporate man in his monochrome suit or shirt, being someone colourful, confident, proud and boastful. They strikingly violate the rules regarding men’s hairstyles and jewellery. They disrupt the symbolic rules of men’s fashion established by the upper classes and act by rules of their own making. This connects them with other groups like punks, rockers, goths, mods, or other groups around the world who had their rebellious subcultures which found manifestation through deviant fashion choices among other things. The main difference lies in the fact that the chapris come from far more disadvantaged social backgrounds than their comrades in these other groups.  

Chapris lack the resources, economic or otherwise, to flaunt respectability to their deviant tastes. For the upper classes that have established the symbolic hierarchy, chapris are a humorous peculiarity not worth serious consideration. Indeed, the stark differences between the tastes of their men and the chapris arguably help reinforce their superior position in the social hierarchy. But if what chapris did was only to reinforce established hierarchies, what explains the astounding hatred directed at them? The answer can be found in the observable fact that most of the men bullying chapris in social media are not from the uppermost or the lowermost sections of the social hierarchy. While having more economic and cultural capital from men who fill the ranks of chapris, they get to play no role in establishing the symbolic hierarchy of men’s fashion in India either. We must remember that these men from the middle caste- classes are themselves victims of symbolic domination and violence of the upper classes. While working as low-paid IT workers or running small businesses, they desire to present themselves as the top managers of corporations. Viewing the aesthetics of the upper classes as intrinsically superior, they try to emulate them. But the Allen Solly suit or the original Adidas T-Shirt remains well beyond their reach. Even if their limited resources can buy similar quality, they hardly ever buy the brand. They realize their inferior position, and their inability to attain proper respectability through fashion. Bourdieu pointed out, that the misrecognition of the nature of symbolic hierarchies transfers responsibility of domination to the dominated themselves (Schubert 2008). The men from these groups consider their inability to rise to the hierarchy of men’s fashion as their failures.

Maybe the only route of relief for them is the knowledge that there are people from even lower caste-class backgrounds who fail even more sensationally at emulating upper-class men’s fashion. And indeed the blue or green lungi, the rolled-up sleeveless vest, the faded worn-out T-shirt, the synthetic full-sleeved shirt without a few buttons, the cotton scarf worn for use, and other items of clothing associated with men from the lowest classes can provide a sense of relief. These clothes are worn for their ability to meet practical needs and their affordability. The men who wear them do not even attempt to portray a discernable sense of fashion, forgetting any successful emulation of the upper classes. They seem to know their place in society. But then comes the chapris- men from these same low caste-class backgrounds who confidently flaunt their colourful shirts, styled hair, jeans, jewellery, and bikes. They don’t just seem to be spending more than is necessary for sustenance to portray a sense of fashion. That sense of fashion is strikingly different from that of the dominating classes. While the middle caste-class men, victims of the dominant symbolic regime set by the upper classes, try and fail to rise to the ranks of its symbolic hierarchy, the chapris seem to have found freedom in its complete rejection. Instead of vain attempts at emulation, they appear to have developed their own rules of the game and are happy within them. This becomes unbearable to the men from the middle caste classes. The visible confidence and self-assertion of chapris, who are essentially men lower in the hierarchy than middle caste classes,disturbs the imagination of their superiority. Caste and class prejudice mixed with the misrecognition of symbolic logic in the fields of fashion enables the unleashing of immense hatred against men categorized as chapris.

Middle-class trolls console themselves that regardless of this assertion through fashion, chapris will always stay lower in social hierarchies. They draw attention to other forms of cultural capital that they possess and chapris lack – like the knowledge of English and higher education. Chapris are reminded of their place in society by comparing Chapri hairstyles with brushes used for cleaning toilets and polishing shoes. The middle-class men engaged in this symbolic warfare then find it irritating and un-understandable that chapri men sometimes have girlfriends who are conventionally attractive and therefore desirable even to them. These women who appear in the videos of chapris as their romantic partners are also bullied. Their videos of dancing are mocked and they are trolled for their choices in men. KTM, the company which sells the bikes now associated with chapri culture is abused for selling good fast bikes at cheap rates and providing a chance to chapris to flaunt.

The variety of symbolic violence that men who are marked as chapris face doesn’t need to be discussed in detail here mainly because it’s endless (see note 1). A Google search of the word chapri or searching for the term on any of the social media sites reveals the shocking intensity and scale of the online vitriol and hatred against chapris. What do the chapris do in the face of this ruthless violence? Well, they persist. Indeed, they have been persisting since long before the word chapri became popular. I remember from my childhood that whenever I wanted to get a haircut other than the short unremarkable mainstream male one, my mother would say ‘Don’t like boys of Dhangarpara (residence of the scheduled tribes Dhangars of West Bengal)’. In Kerala, the youth from middle caste-class backgrounds are told not to dress like the youth from colonies- colonies being the localities where people from lower caste-class backgrounds are housed.

In Bangladesh, offbeat fashion choices among upper-class youth draw the insult of being from Dompara (residence of lower caste Doms). Middle and upper caste-class women in North India are told not to dress like Bhangis. This on one hand means that symbolic violence has been waged against the fashion cultures of marginalized caste-classes in various other times and across social contexts. On the other hand, and perhaps more importantly, this also means that marginalized caste-class groups always produce independent cultural capital in the field of fashion and assert themselves in social spaces through them. Despite unrelenting symbolic violence against them, they continue to persist and rebel against cultural domination. This is probably because the habitus that the chapris and their fellows from similar caste-class backgrounds possess is produced in fundamentally different material and cultural conditions from the habitus of the dominating classes who establish the symbolic regimes. The resulting difference in habitus can’t help but make them rebel against the dominant cultures.

We must remember that Bourdieu didn’t think this is possible (Swartz 1997). In his schema, the lowest classes of the social hierarchy have so little capital of all forms that they just meekly submit to the dominant symbolic regimes. They have no time or money to try and emulate the fashion sense of the rich or create a fashion sense of their own. They wear what is needed based on their material conditions and accept that it is worse than others. They remain dominated- in their place in society. The chapris of India provide one more example of how Bourdieu was wrong. Resistance against domination seems to be possible even with very meagre resources. Resistance can emerge in refusing to follow the symbolic rules of a cultural field and thereby challenging them. It doesn’t necessarily have to involve sustained efforts at convincing others of the legitimacy of the new rules- which requires considerable capital. It might be enough to carve out a rebellious space for oneself where the dominant rules are violated. This is enough to shake the cultural field and push certain classes to hysteric hatred. This space to resist dominant rules might also be the space where some amount of liberation is experienced. An example of this might be found in the recent reclamation of the word chapri by several musical content creators tagged as such. Through lines like ‘Haq se mai chapri’ (I am a proud chapri) (Cardozo and Waghule 2023) and ‘Is chapri ki fan ye duniya hori rey’ (the world is becoming the fan of this chapri) (Ark Aadil 2023), they seem to be helping to develop that liberated subcultural space where deviance can be displayed with pride. My free usage of the term chapri in this article is an attempt to help the same forces.

Conclusion

We must guard ourselves against intellectual romanticisation. Bourdieu rightly pointed out that the intellectual class, including sociologists, often tend to project themselves as allies of the dominant classes to advance their own interests. My writing about chapris only helps me and doesn’t do anything for them. Their everyday receipt of and struggle against symbolic violence continues unabated. Indeed, while their resistance against cultural domination will probably be sustained, there is very little chance that they will ever be able to pose any serious challenge to the established symbolic order within the field of fashion. Just like how the classes with high status can bestow high status to cultural items just by visibly consuming them, cultural items visibly consumed by groups with low status can be pushed to the lower rungs of the status hierarchy just because of such consumption. The cultural items which are a part of chapri fashion are and will be considered tacky, ugly, and inferior by the upper and middle caste classes just because they are consumed by chapris who are men from the lowest rungs of society. The black Raymond suit and the white Polo T-shirt will therefore continue being the most respectable dresses, while the colourful shirts of chapris will continue to draw ridicule and ire. But standing up against that ire and continuing to wear that colourful shirt might still be important. It might enable them to create small but sustained spaces of resistance while showing the rest of us how dominant regimes can’t always dominate everybody.

Notes

1. I have chosen not to cite videos exemplifying the hatred faced by chapris to ensure that they don’t receive additional popularity because of my work. The keenly interested reader that visits the following links to view the hatred being discussed, along with searching for the term in social media sites –

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/bSBR4Z3SwOo

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/0MpkjzQ-IlQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0sD0arinig&t=20s&ab_channel=DannyPandit

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVrEs5UckJM&ab_channel=Aliensofsociety

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCqRVcjZnPk&ab_channel=TheImMatureObserver

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/947VCwvFtps

References:

Ark Aadil. 2023. “Chapri Chapri Na Bolya Kar | Official Music Video | Ark Aadil”. https://youtu.be/lPCDo7RIUmg?si=HJHaQvyUqs57kaye, accessed on 31 May 2024.

Cardozo, Elliot and Pradnya Waghule. 2023. “’Haq Se Main Chapri ’: Casteist Slurs and Cultural Commentary in India.” Journal for the Institute of Comparative Studies in Literature, Arts and Culture. 1 (1): 21–33.

Dablu Lifestyle, 2023 “ROAD RAGE With Chapri Rider 🤬 Fight Ho Geya Road Pe – Dablulifestyle”, https://youtu.be/lC8PBsFsx9E?si=NBApDxvX9-xUyppp, accessed on 31 May 2024.

Mehta, Kriti. 2020. “Explained | TikTok vs YouTube: Why’s the Internet Divided?” Mirror Now News, 20 May 2020. https://www.timesnownews.com/mirror-now/in-focus/article/explained-tiktok-vs-youtube-why-s-the-internet-divided/594785, accessed on 31 May 2024.

Pandey, Subham. 2024. “Opinion: Calling Hardik Pandya ‘Chhapri’ Should Stop Right Away As It Does Not Just Hurt MI Captain But A Whole Community.” Zee News. 27 March 2024. https://zeenews.india.com/cricket/opinion-calling-hardik-pandya-chhapri-should-stop-right-away-as-it-does-just-jut-hurt-mi-captain-but-a-whole-community-ipl-2024-srh-vs-mi-2734468.html, accessed on 31 May 31 2024.

Schubert, Daniel J. 2008. “Suffering/Symbolic Violence” in Pierre Bourdieu: Key Concepts edited by Michael Grenfell. Acumen Publishing Limited. pp. 183-198.

Swartz, David. 1997. Culture & Power: The Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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Sohom Roy is pursuing a Master’s in Sociology from South Asian University (SAU), New Delhi.