Why Dress Matters - The Meaning of Stitched and Unstiched Clothing
By editor - 24.1 2025
The question of a Vedic dress crops up periodically and is frequently equated to Indian dress. Thereafter, it is equated to a cultural issue, not an issue of principle or spirituality. Many people expect to be able to wear whatever dress they like, and not being able to do so is considered anti-spiritual, under the assumption of mind-body dualism—i.e., religion in mind and dress on the body—that any dress can be fitted on any religion, disregarding the interaction of mind and body, i.e., religion and dress.
In this post, I will demystify the topic of dress in many parts—(a) the dresses worn in the spiritual world, (b) the dress worn by temple deities, (c) the dress worn by humans in the Vedic culture, (d) dress worn in other traditional cultures, (e) the transformation of dress under the influence of Monotheistic cultures, (f) how the Monotheistic dress was reapplied to God and Prophets making God in the image of His followers, (g) the globalization of the Monotheistic cultural dress to all other cultures, and (h) the moral and economic implications of using the Monotheistic dress. Then, we will discuss how dress code is irrelevant to the liberated soul and relevant to the bounded soul. Finally, we will talk about how this issue distracts from a deeper problem—lack of conviction in the Vedic tradition and trying to equate it to Monotheistic religions whose iconoclasm automatically entails that God has no form and hence no dress.
Table of Contents
1 Use of Unstitched Clothing in India
2 Global Use of Unstitched Cloth
3 Monotheism Prioritized Stitching
4 Dressing Styles and Meanings
5 Dressing Styles and Economics
6 Religion and Dressing Styles
7 Making God in the Image of Man
8 Liberated vs. Bounded Souls
9 If We Can’t Follow the Standard
10 Absence of Genuine Conviction
11 Developing Genuine Conviction
12 The Unconvinced Mislead Others
13 Guidance to Sincere People
Use of Unstitched Clothing in India
Let’s begin with the basic principle of clothing in the Vedic tradition—clothes are preferably unstitched. Cutting a cloth into pieces, with different shapes, and then stitching them together into something that fits a particular body shape and size has always been a rare exception at best, and forbidden for the most part. The Lord and His consort are always shown in unstitched cloth. These clothes can be made out of cotton or silk, but never stitched. They can be embroidered with gold, silver, jewels, and diamonds, but still, they are not stitched. In recent times, feminine deities have been draped in stitched blouses but that was never the case in the past when even the upper body was covered in unstitched cloth.
Clothing—for both men and women—comprised of two cloths, one for the bottom half and the other for the top half. In some earlier societies—as shown in the temples of Ajanta and Ellora—the upper half was dispensed for both men and women. Instead, the upper half was covered with garlands and jewelry. In other societies—as is the norm in other temples—both upper and lower halves were covered. In yet other societies, the upper half of men was uncovered and the upper half of women was covered. The deities of the temples are always depicted in the same way—i.e., with two unstitched cloths. In some rare cases, the lower part of the body has two cloths—one longer and the other shorter—the shorter cloth draped around the waist, covering the hips, while the longer cloth can be seen beneath it.
As late as the time of Śri Caitanya and Śri Nityānanda, all pictures depict them with two pieces of unstitched cloth. The cloth of Śri Caitanya is yellow and that of Śri Nityananda is blue. They are called Pitāmbara and Nilāmbara—the “yellow apparel” and the “blue apparel”. They are unstitched cloths. Again, there are typically two pieces of cloth—one for the upper and the other for the lower half.
An exception to this rule is the dressing of temple deities. It is very hard to tie unstitched cloth on a metal, stone, or wooden deity, and so clothes are stitched for them. Also, stitched cloth can be made to look flowing, and thus resemble a living entity because God’s clothing is as alive as Him. If we don’t stitch the cloth, the dress appears dead. Material dress is dead but spiritual dress is alive. Stitching is used to make the dress of the temple deity look alive. Otherwise, divine persons don’t wear stitched clothes.
All types of unstitched cloth can be worn in many ways, not just one. There are dozens of styles of saree draping in India even today. Women in different parts of India drape sarees in different ways. Men too wear dhotis in different ways. Sometimes they cover the upper part of the body and at other times it is left uncovered. The situation can also change with seasons. In recent times, men and women have started using stitched cloth for the upper body parts but it was never the case in the past. The principle is unstitched cloth, for both men and women, with abundant freedom in the style of draping it.
Global Use of Unstitched Cloth
If we look at other cultures in the past, Greeks and Romans draped unstitched cloths. Even their gods and goddesses wore unstitched cloth. These could be shorter for male deities and longer for female deities, but they were never stitched. These unstitched clothes were often complemented by elaborate headgear, anklets, bracelets, and necklaces. The jewelry was complex but the cloth was unstitched. The same is true of Mesopotamian and Egyptian gods and goddesses, with one additional feature—i.e., they often wear many layers of clothing, the upper and lower levels of cloth have different colors, the upper-level cloth generally covers the lower-level cloth partially, and hence, the lower-cloth is partially seen. The Mesopotamian and Egyptian kings dressed just like their gods and goddesses—i.e., in multiple layers of unstitched clothing. Their priests dressed much simpler, i.e., in just one layer of two cloth pieces.
I’m noting these details to highlight just one point—all traditional cultures dressed in unstitched clothes. This wasn’t just about humans but also about the divine personalities they worshipped. So, the issue is not confined to Indian dressing. This style of dressing was true for all traditional societies. They could use silk or cotton, and they could make gold and silver ornaments, but they wore unstitched cloth. Of course, since all other traditional cultures are now gone, and only the Indian culture remains, therefore, people who haven’t studied history or aren’t interested in traditional cultures, think it is just Indian culture.
Monotheism Prioritized Stitching
Sewn cloth began prominently with Monotheistic religions. Initially, there were long robes and tunics, then heads were covered in cloth, including cloth falling to the sides to cover ears and cheeks, then cloth was draped around shoulders, and then shirts and pants in basic or primitive forms appeared. The Prophets of all Monotheistic religions—Zarathustra, Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed—are depicted in this style. The entire body is covered from head to toe in cloth. The jewelry disappears. The sole facial adornments are beards and mustaches. Even priests—who in traditional cultures always had shaved heads and clean-shaven faces—now start wearing beards and mustaches because Prophets are doing it. Even the imagery of God (wherever such imagery is used or permitted) follows the same principle—mustache, beard, no jewelry, body covered from head to toe in cloth, or at least, fully covered neck downwards. Initially, some of these depictions show the use of unstitched cloth. Eventually, everything is stitched. This becomes the culture of dressing in all Monotheistic societies until the dawn of the 20th century.
The invasions of Islam in Asia and Africa and of Christianity all over the world then destroyed native civilizations where unstitched clothes were mainstream and replaced them with stitched cloth. This transformation occurred even in India where the officials of Islamic and Christian rulers were expected to wear tunics, robes, pants, and shirts. Women could no longer leave their heads uncovered. Their shoulders and upper arms had to be covered and their bellies hidden. They had to dress in bashful styles as if they were ashamed of their bodies, their beauty hidden away from prying eyes. Long gone were the days when women could be bare-chested. Even men were expected to be covered from the neck downwards. Showing your feet—even if they were beautiful—was a mark of disrespect. Using stitched cloth to hide as much of the body as possible, more for women and less for men, was the essence of the dress code enforced by Islamic and Christian rulers upon the citizens of India. The dress wasn’t meant to augment the body’s beauty. It was meant to cover and hide the body as far as possible.
Thus, at present, we find that even Indians have shifted over to the Monotheistic dress style and use the traditional dress only on select occasions, such as Vedic marriages, celebration of childbirth, going to the temple, or during and after the cremation of the dead. This shift is due to 800 years of colonization. However, we must contrast this shift in the dress culture with those in other parts of the world where the dress types of the traditional civilizations have almost completely disappeared. The dress in India is preserved to the extent the traditional Vedic religion is preserved. Since at present Indian society is not purely Vedic—but tainted by Islamic and Christian influence—Indian dress is also not purely Vedic.
I don’t know for sure why Monotheistic cultures have the kind of dress code they do. But I suspect this has to do with the shame of sex, the removal of the feminine from divinity, making God an asexual being, and explicitly blaming the woman (in Abrahamic Monotheism) for the man’s fall in the world, which results in the attempt to hide bodily beauty as that could lead to sexual attraction, which naturally results in covering the body head to toe, with women required to follow stricter rules of covering themselves than men, clearly indicating that body shame is associated much more with women. Adam and Eve are shown naked in heaven and the full body is covered on earth.
Dressing Styles and Meanings
Dress has a deep impact on the mind which we can illustrate through the example of formal and causal dressing. We associate formal dressing—i.e., covering most of the body with precisely fitting clothes—with power, individualism, domination, respect, and discipline. We associate casual dressing—i.e., loose-fitting clothes with many parts of the body uncovered—with friendship, openness, relaxation, love, and playfulness. In the stereotypical image, a man in a suit is tight-lipped but a man in shorts smiles. The man in a suit projects power and the man in shorts invites friendship. The man in a suit is going to work and a man in short is relaxing. The man in a suit has closed himself from others by covering his body tip to toe, but the man in shorts has opened himself to others by keeping some parts of his body uncovered. A fully covered body indicates separation and objectivity while a partially covered body indicates mingling and personhood. We don’t “see” a fully covered person, which indicates that the person is hiding something about himself. We “see” the partially covered person, which indicates that he has nothing to hide.
Traditional styles of clothing constitute a fine balance between these opposites—formal and informal, power and love, respect and friendship, discipline and relaxation, work and playfulness, individuality and openness, hiding and revealing, separation and mingling, isolated and approachable, quiet and smiling. It means that we don’t have to change our clothes to shift from formal to informal. That we communicate friendship doesn’t mean disrespect. That we are individuals doesn’t mean we are closed. That we are smiling doesn’t mean we can’t be quiet. When opposites can be communicated at once, we need fewer clothes, a smaller need to change clothes, and a seamless transition from one state to another without changing clothes. Work and play need not be signified by different clothes. We can play and work at once.
When different kinds of dress communicate different meanings, we cannot say that the mind and the dress are disconnected, or that any mind can wear any dress. There is a strong correlation and causation between our mental state and how we communicate it through dress to others. That doesn’t mean a person in formal dress can’t be relaxed, playful, friendly, open, and loving. It just means that through his formal dress, he is communicating the opposite meaning than through his informal behavior and unless we observe the informal behavior, we will generally infer meanings derived from the formal dress.
Dressing Styles and Economics
To communicate formal and informal meanings, we have to double the number of clothes. To go to a funeral, we must wear a formal dress, and to go to a party, we must wear an informal dress. Essentially, different occasions demand different types of dress because no dress fits all the occasions. To fit into different occasions, we must own many kinds of dress which we use occasionally, not frequently.
Thus, we can see the economics behind traditional and modern styles of dressing—the traditional style is frugal as it needs one type of clothing for many occasions; however, the modern style of dressing is extravagant because it requires different types of clothing for different occasions, which is further compounded by the variety of styles within each type of clothing, a mark of wealth. The frugal style needs fewer clothes that will be used frequently and never wasted. The extravagant style needs more clothes that will be used infrequently and often wasted. The unstitched clothing will always “fit” even if a person becomes fatter or thinner; as the body changes, people don’t need to purchase new clothes. The stitched clothing will easily become bigger or smaller as the person becomes fatter or thinner; as the body changes, people need to purchase new clothes. Stitching contributes to excessiveness.
Data about clothing shows that the garment industry produces 100 billion articles of clothing at present, for merely 8 billion people, most of whom can’t afford clothes because clothing is excessively priced, designed mainly for the wealthier societies who pay excessively for changing designs every season, and throw away at least 25% of clothing every year which either goes into landfills or is burnt. The poor don’t get clothes because the fashion industry makes clothes for the rich and all the resources are vectored toward the maximization of profit. If clothes weren’t stitched, far fewer clothes would be required, the “fashion industry” would not exist, and everyone would have clothes—in fact, they would be wearing the same thing—which means we would not discriminate between people based on their dressing.
Religion and Dressing Styles
That brings us to the question of dress code of the followers of the Vedic tradition in modern times. The issue at hand is the conflict between the Vedic and the Monotheistic cultural dress codes. People in favor of the Monotheistic dress code want everyone to believe that all dress codes are equally arbitrary and that religion and dress code are unrelated. This is false at many levels, but we can note them here:
Divinity in the Vedic tradition has the dress code of unstitched cloth, as did the people,
Greece, Rome, Mesopotamia, and Egypt had the same dress code, for people and deities,
Stitched clothing became very prominent with the advent of Monotheistic religions,
Stitched clothing clearly indicates the use of body shaming and power projection,
Monotheistic invasions forced their dress codes on others destroying native dress codes,
To project different kinds of meanings, different kinds of stitched clothes are required,
The total consumption of cloth grows, creates waste, and deprives the poor of clothes,
Unstitched clothing constitutes a fine balance between formal and informal styles.
Thus, if we want to understand the rationale behind traditional clothing, then there are semantic, economic, moral, and religious reasons for it. Relativizing dress to custom, disconnecting dress from the mental state, and eventually disconnecting it from the soul is extremely naïve and ignorant.
And yet, Monotheistic cultures want others to accept their dress as universal or relativize every dress code to a personal choice. That sounds like my way or the highway. This kind of claim is highly ignorant of the spiritual, mental, historical, economic, and moral underpinnings of dress. It also assumes a mind-body dualism in which mind and body are mutually independent which allowed the Monotheistic cultures to separate science and religion as public and private, which then enabled people to create fictions in the name of religious freedom, while reducing science to mathematical formulas. This trajectory is ignorant and false. It was rejected in traditional cultures and it is rejected by the Vedic tradition as well.
Making God in the Image of Man
The historical fact is that some Monotheistic religions reformulated the imagery of God and His Prophets in terms of their culture, rather than making their culture after the imagery of God and His Prophets.
The most egregious example of people reformulating bodily appearance in terms of human culture comes from Christianity where Jesus is shown as a man with brown hair, blue eyes, and other Caucasian facial features when he was already known to be born in West Asia where none of the above is true. While scripture says that God made man in His own image, if God’s image doesn’t match man’s, God’s image is changed to fit man’s image, rather than men accepting that they were not made in God’s image. The same is true of Moses—he could either be a black man from Africa or a brown man from West Asia, but he is always shown as a white Greco-Roman god with Caucasian features neither of which should be the case if Jews were following the narratives of their origins given in their own books. Even Jews cannot accept that they weren’t made in the image of their God and want to change God to fit their image.
If Jews and Christians had been honest about the appearance of Moses and Jesus, they would have been shocked by their Prophets. If God made their Prophets in His own image, it would mean that He did not make Europeans in His image, which would immediately alienate European Jews and Christians. Asking people to change their image is harder than changing God’s appearance to fit the appearance of man. Hence, to create a sense of belonging, religions transform God and His Prophets to fit their image.
I make these points to highlight the historical fact in Judeo-Christian cultures where the looks of God and His Prophets were modified to fit the looks of their followers rather than (a) the followers trying to imitate the looks of their God or His Prophets or (b) where such imitation was impossible, such as in skin color, accepting they weren’t made in the image of God. Instead of making themselves in the image of God, they remade God in their own image, contrary to their history of origin. Dress, skin color, and facial features were modified to create a sense of people belonging to their God and Prophet. The followers didn’t want to be like their God or Prophet. They wanted their God and the Prophet to be like them.
The present attempts to reformulate the Vedic traditions in terms of Monotheistic cultures appear to be the continuation of the thousands of years of prevalent culture. The risk in these attempts is that once the human dress is changed, eventually the dress of divinity will be changed. History shows that if humans can’t change their appearance, they will change God’s appearance. Instead of man remaking himself in the image of God, he will remake God in the image of man. These things have already been done in the past to create cultural comfort for the followers of Judaism and Christianity. Therefore, there is no evidence to suggest that these things are unlikely to happen in the case of the Vedic deities.
Liberated vs. Bounded Souls
A liberated soul is completely unaffected by the world—hot and cold, respect and disrespect, fame and ignominy, wealth and poverty, pleasure and pain. For such a soul, dress doesn’t matter. He can wear just a loincloth or even go naked. He can also wear stitched or unstitched cloth. He has completely separated himself from the material body, so the covering of the body—i.e., clothes—doesn’t matter. However, we can’t make the same claims about the bounded soul. He is deeply affected by the world—hot and cold, respect and disrespect, fame and ignominy, wealth and poverty, pleasure and pain. Therefore, different standards of dress also apply to liberated and bounded souls. The liberated soul can wear anything but the bounded soul is recommended to wear a specific type of dress, as the path toward liberation.
However, dress is still a suggestion or advice, not a rule. There are no rules in the Vedic tradition. Even God describes but doesn’t prescribe. That description says—If you do this, you will get this result—it is scientific because it is cause-effect causality. And yet, there is always an “if” in the causal picture. One has to make the choice to receive the consequences. That choice isn’t forced. Therefore, everything in the Vedic tradition is advice and suggestion. Nobody is forced to follow the advice or suggestion. They can choose their way of life, and having made those choices, the consequences are their own.
In general, if we follow the advice, we get more advice. But if we make our own path, then the advice stops. Thereby, those who follow the advice of the Vedic tradition keep getting inspiration and advice both internally and externally, which motivates them and propels them toward perfection. However, those who make up their own path don’t get inspiration and advice, and they lose motivation to progress toward perfection. As they make their path, they must navigate its consequences on their own. Thereby, there is a difference between the Vedic tradition and Monotheistic religions—the former is advice and inspiration and the latter is rules and commandments. The freedom to choose in the Vedic tradition is not without its costs. Those who want to make their own path have to ensure that they don’t get lost. They could have followed the well-trodden path but they chose to make their own path. When we try to make our path, different from the advised path, then the most likely outcome is getting lost.
If We Can’t Follow the Standard
If someone is unable to follow the advice, he can honestly say—There is an ideal of dress but I’m not able to follow it. I find it alienating from the people around me, isolating me from my peer group, which makes me lonely and sad. Once I’m lonely and sad, I tend to give up Kṛṣṇa Bhakti completely, so I want to compromise the ideal. I would like to be accepted in my society rather than be alienated or isolated from it. I don’t want other people to think I’m crazy, ask me unnecessary questions about my dress, or shy away from conversations with me. I want to be a part of my society and not be separated from it.
That’s an acceptable answer because (a) it doesn’t deny the presence of an ideal, (b) it shifts the choice and responsibility to each person, and (c) one who gives this answer will slowly try to reach the ideal. The answer doesn’t relativize the dress to each person’s choice, denying the presence of an ideal.
Human life is all about ideal emotions, thoughts, relations, and behaviors. Likewise, there are ideal kinds of foods, dresses, and housing. However, following these ideals also requires an ideal environment and an ideal individual ability. If the environment and ability are non-ideal, then the maximum amount of ideal permitted by them is accepted as a compromise. For instance, eating vegetarian food is ideal. However, if there is no vegetarian food available, then meat can also be eaten for survival. Once vegetarian food is available again, we can return to the ideal. Likewise, some individuals may be incapable of digesting milk or related products. In that case, they can use other kinds of foods, but if the capacity to digest milk is regained, one can consume it again. Thus, human life is all about ideals, however, due to individual inability or contextual pressures, we may have to compromise the ideal sometimes, and that is okay.
The basic principle of dharma is overall collective good over the long term. If I die due to lack of food, then all the good things I could have done would not be done. Hence, survival—even if it means eating non-vegetarian food—is a greater collective good than death. But in other cases, death—such as a soldier dying to protect dharma—is a greater collective good. Therefore, sometimes survival is ideal and at other times death is ideal. God acts ideally. Therefore, godly behavior is simply ideal behavior. One who understands God can say—He would have acted in a so-and-so way in this situation so that is what we should do. Otherwise, it is very hard to understand the ideal behavior. Thus, Vedic texts describe how dharma or duty is very hard to determine and then say that one must follow great devotees.
The resolution of the dress issue is that there is an ideal dress but if we cannot follow the ideal due to exigent circumstances or individual incapacities, then we should compromise, without rejecting the ideal, or relativizing it to each culture. The exigent circumstances or individual capacities will change over time. A person may gain the capacity to tolerate isolation from his society. Then, he can go back to the ideal dress because the previous limits have now disappeared. If instead we say that dress is a personal choice, we are basically saying that there is no ideal. That mindset will not be limited to dress. It will slowly spread to emotions, thoughts, relations, and behaviors. After saying there is no ideal dress, over time, we will say there are no ideal emotions, thoughts, relations, and behaviors. And so, the ideal must always be remembered. That is not very hard if we always remember Kṛṣṇa, and what He wears!
Absence of Genuine Conviction
The above resolution is simple enough for everyone to understand and follow. So why is this issue not resolved yet? I think it is a symptom of a deeper malaise—the belief that Kṛṣṇa Bhakti is something like a Monotheistic religion. Once this equivalence is created, people keep trying to bring the practices of the Monotheistic religions into the Vedic traditions. For instance, they argue that Christians can wear any dress, so the Vedic tradition must also permit arbitrary dresses. They either don’t know or don’t want to accept, that Monotheisms are man-made fictions and not divine revelations. They have zero idea about what God looks like or what He wears. Their ignorance about God’s form and His clothes translates into iconoclasm. Since they don’t know what God wears, they don’t know what we should wear. Thereafter, they make up their dress, remake God and Prophets into their image, and force their dress upon others. This problem began not in dress, but in the Monotheistic religions not knowing what God looks like. If God had made a revelation, the person to whom the revelation was made could reveal God’s form.
The fact is that pagan religions worshipped dozens of deities, which Monotheistic religions merged into one deity. After that merger, they didn’t know what the syncretized deity looked like, so they made that God formless. In the pagan religions, each deity wears a specific type of dress and holds a specific type of implement in their hands. But after the merger, God became formless. The iconoclasm of Monotheistic religions is what is called nirviśeṣa—or impersonalism—of Monotheistic religions. They have no idea of what God looks like, or what He wears because they never had a divine revelation. They just amalgamated the deities of pagan religions and then made God formless. After that, people began casting God in their own image because they had no idea about the ideal embodied in God.
This problem doesn’t exist in the Vedic tradition because God’s form and dress are described in great detail. He is not just transcendental. He appears in this world too where people can see Him clearly. That form and dress are recorded in the Vedic texts as historical facts. The pictures of God and His pastimes are drawn based on these. The ideal dress is decided by what God wears because He is ideal. How can dress be relativized when there is an ideal person? The relativization of dress is a type of atheism in which we insist that there is no ideal dress which entails that there could not be an ideal person.
Now for someone to insist that there is no ideal dress, or that dress is relative to each culture, is the extension of the ignorant mindset of the Monotheistic religions devoid of any revelation. They have never seen God’s dress so they think that nobody else has seen. But foolish people equate the Vedic tradition to Monotheistic religions. If anyone had seen God in the Monotheistic religions, they would have a clear idea of God, including His dress. If they had received a revelation, they would know what God looks like and what He wears. Moreover, they would never be iconoclastic. But they never had any revelation, no one ever saw God, so they have no clue about what God actually looks like. Their God is a formless entity, not a person. To equate their mental concoction to the Vedic tradition where there are clear visions of God is equating ignorance to knowledge. Why would anyone equate knowledge to ignorance? The answer is that those who do such things have no conviction in the truth. They don’t actually believe that the Vedic tradition is true.
Developing Genuine Conviction
The Bhagavad Gita describes a ladder of six types of yoga—(a) knowledge, (b) penance and meditation, (c) selfless duty, (d) deity worship, (e) doing God’s work, (f) complete surrender. The first step in this ladder is acquiring knowledge and becoming convinced that the Vedic texts are true. Once we have conviction, then we can do penance and meditation. Once we have become resolute by this penance and meditation, then we can do our duties selflessly. Once we can do our duties selflessly, then we can go beyond our duty and start doing God’s work, which is destroying adharma and establishing dharma. Once we have become experts in doing God’s work, then we can fully surrender to God.
The reality at present is that people have never pursued knowledge and they are not convinced if Veda is true. Since there is little to no conviction, therefore, penance and meditation are very hard. Then doing the duty with detachment is very hard; everything has to be incentivized by external success, such as gathering more followers and worshippers. When the mind is filled with materialistic desires, then there is no devotion during deity worship. Even if someone says he is doing God’s work he is actually working for himself—the symptom of that self-service is that what is good for God’s service is discarded and what is good for self-service is prioritized. In this self-serving mindset, there can be no surrender to God.
The spiritual journey begins with the acquisition of knowledge. This takes as long as one needs to become fully convinced that Veda is true. If there is even an iota of doubt, then one should persist with the acquisition of knowledge. Of course, if someone is 100% convinced that Veda is true, then they don’t need to pursue knowledge. They can pursue austerity and meditation—austerity is withdrawing from the outer world and meditation is focusing on the inner world. Once someone is detached like this, they can do their duties selflessly. Then they can do deity worship, God’s work, and eventually surrender.
The Unconvinced Mislead Others
But those who don’t pursue knowledge, never become convinced. They keep looking here and there and say: Oh, that guy is doing this, and this guy is doing that, and so maybe I should do the same. When someone wants to emulate Christians, it means that he has accepted Christians as his guru. His half-hearted allegiance to the Vedic tradition will keep his followers and listeners ambivalent and confused and by misguiding people in this way he is just a blind man leading other blind men into a ditch.
Those who don’t want to be misled by such people should spend time studying the Vedic texts and become 100% convinced that the Veda is true. All the answers—including about the dress—are already there. The ideal dress is shown in each book through many pictures. Those who are still looking at others are indicating to everyone that they never read a book, or at least, they were never convinced about it. They want their pragmatic and worldly success more than they want the ideal truth in the Vedic texts. Their impatience and restlessness clearly indicate they lack conviction and so they cannot convince anyone else. Even if they get thousands of followers by such methods, their own lack of conviction will eventually be imparted to others producing many more ambivalent and half-hearted followers. These followers will again look at others and say—he is doing that, she is doing this, and so maybe I should do the same—and gradually they will keep mixing the Vedic tradition with what others are doing.
Western society has always been a speculative and experimental society. Many things are attempted based on a trial-and-error mindset. There is no focus on finding the truth, and sticking with the truth, no matter what. Most people who came to Kṛṣṇa Bhakti in the West came because of this trial-and-error mentality. They had tried many things, so they wanted to try something new. Novelty excites the Western mind. But after some time, the novelty fades and again a person starts looking for something new. That is because he never spent the time getting convinced that this novelty is true. And so, there is no staying power.
Guidance to Sincere People
All sincere people should not worry about dress. That’s a very late topic. They should focus on the nature of matter and cosmos, why there is regularity in nature, what is the nature of morality, how the universe is governed, why God is necessary for the world to work, what is mind and body, how the soul interacts with mind and body, how it separates itself from mind and body, how the soul goes from one mind and body to another, etc.
Once we understand these issues, then we will understand the world is meaning. Even dress is meaning. Each dress sends a different message—as we have discussed, there is a semantic difference between formal and informal clothing, fully covered body, partially covered body, and naked body. Since dress is meaning, therefore, there is a science underlying the dress, which is the science of meanings. When there is a science, things cannot be arbitrary. Those who make it arbitrary don’t know any science.
Meanwhile, if we want to know what dress to wear while we pursue this conviction, the answer is simple—just do as God does, if you can. If you can’t do what God does, then do the most you can. But don’t deny the ideal dress because that denial amounts to the atheistic denial of an ideal person—i.e., God. If someone asks you about the Vedic dress, you can say that it was worn by all traditional cultures, it was changed by Monotheistic cultures, but we are still a traditional culture. You can also tell them about the meanings communicated by the dress, and how the Vedic dress communicates different meanings than the Monotheistic dress.
In this way, everything can be explained scientifically. If we demonstrate a scientific attitude toward religion, then many sincere people will be attracted by the fact that we explain things scientifically. There is no other religion on this planet that can explain things scientifically. The Vedic tradition is the only scientific religion. This is the Vedic tradition’s unique selling point. If we accept it, then all the controversy about cultural dress will disappear. It exists only as long as religion means belief and not science.