The hairy history of the Great Indian Moustache

The New York Times ran a story a few days ago simply titled 'What Your Mustache Says About You'. In India, the mustache (or moustache as the Brits write it and by default, we do too) can say a lot about a person's caste pride, history, or even favourite film heroes.

From Harappans to Hindu gods

The Indian community that gets the most coverage for lusciously thick moustaches is perhaps the Rajputs. But the history of facial hair predates that of the Rajputs. Most Indian history textbooks start with the Indus Valley Civilisation (as long as the NCERT doesn’t omit it) and even one of the posterboys of Harappan society sported a moustache. 

Labelled Priest-King, the small male steatite sculpture was found in Mohenjodaro and continues to be preserved at Pakistan’s National Museum in Karachi. Also known as bearded man, the statue’s male face sports a moustache with a neatly groomed beard. 

Following Harappa’s mysterious demise, Indian historians rushed to studying the emergence of Dravidians in the country and the eventual exodus of the Indo-Aryans who eventually set up the so-called Vedic society. It is highly possible that both Dravidian and Aryan men sported moustaches and beards irrespective of their cultural differences although there is very little material evidence to support this claim. 

But what is obvious is that many of their deities were proponents of No Shave November. From the earliest versions of Ram and Krishna to supreme gods like Vishnu and Shiva, most of the gods (who would later be incorporated under the umbrella term of Hinduism) were preferably depicted in sculpture and painting as clean-shaven males. No particular reason has been offered for this grooming choice but it’s possible that a moustache or a beard wouldn’t have captured the pious nature of these gods. 

This is a major reason why there was much controversy around the 2023 Ramayana adaptation Adipurush with audiences complaining about Prabhas’s moustachioed take on Ram. Even though Valmiki’s original epic poem Ramayana has been reinterpreted in multiple versions like Tulsidas’s Ramcharit Manas, none of these texts ever mentioned Ram as wearing a moustache. Much like the other gods of the Hindu pantheon, Ram too seemed to be too pure for a moustache. 

Rajput pride and Dalit reclamation: The caste behind the moustache

The Hindu gods might not have worn a moustache lest they look impure, but when the caste system seeped into the Indian subcontinent, the moustache interestingly became a symbol of purity for many of the upper castes. To this day, a lot of caste politics centres around wearing a moustache. With forward castes like Rajputs attempting to gatekeep the moustache, many men of the designated lower castes have been humiliated and even killed for attempting to grow out hair above their lips. 

A recent case can be traced back to March 2022 when contractual health worker Jitendra Meghwal was stabbed to death. The 28-year-old Dalit man’s fatal flaw? He wore a moustache.

Meghwal’s killers were men who proudly subscribed to their upper caste identity of being Rajpur purohits who once used to serve as the royal priests and caretakers in Rajasthan. Much like Dalit youths being killed for riding a wedding horse or entering a temple, sporting a moustache can be a major cause to draw the homicidal ire of upper castes. 

And that is exactly why growing out a twirl-worthy moustache has also turned into an act of rebellion for many a Dalit man. This is the reason why Bhim Army leader and social activist Chandrashekhar Azad can be proudly seen twirling his moustache in many a protest against casteism. 

With Azad using his moustache to intimidate oppressor castes, the moustache is acquiring a new political definition in India. This can pose as a challenge to upper caste communities like Rajputs who have famously prided over their moustaches for generations. In fact, the Guinness World Record for the world’s longest moustache is also held by a Rajput man named Ram Singh Chauhan. 

Legend has it that when Akbar’s Rajput wife Jodhabai passed away, a royal decree was passed in the kingdom instructing all men to shed their moustache in her honour. Of course, this decision didn’t sit well with the Mughal emperor’s Rajput subjects who believed that a man will let go of his moustache only when he’s defeated. 

These hypermasculine notions of “moustache pride” have continued to hold power among upper castes. A dialogue from the 2008 Bollywood drama Jaane Tu…Ya Jaane Na even pokes fun at Rajputs and their obsession with facial hair. 

As Imran Khan’s clean-shaven Rajput protagonist Jai Singh Rathore mentions the three true qualities required for becoming a “Ranjore ka Rathore”, 

- Steal a girl
- Ride a horse
- GROW A MOUSTACHE

Moustache at Midnight, moustaches and freedom fighters

Remember Mangal Pandey’s white friend Captain William Gordon in the Aamir Khan-led biopic? Also remember the grumpy “gora” villain in Lagaan? Both of these East India Company employees sport a moustache. And they would have relied on this fashion choice even if they were not fictional characters. That’s because the Company is believed to have received pressure all the way from the top to grow moustaches. 

When the Britishers began expanding their influence in the country, many of their clean-shaven cheeks failed to increase the hypermasculinity meter in front of martial tribes like Rajputs with their hairy pride. To show that they too were virile and masculine, many East India Company soldiers began growing out moustaches to the point where it became compulsory for them. 

However, the history of moustaches in colonial India is incomplete without the multiple styles sported by the 20th century’s freedom fighters. While the likes of Mahatma Gandhi, Rajendra Prasad and Lala Lajpat Rai sported a medium-sized downward-sloping moustaches, Bhagat Singh and Chandrashekhar Azad preferred keeping thinner ones with twirled edges.

Bal Gangadhar Tilak, on the other hand, sported scruffy whiskers that can almost double as a walrus moustache. While none of these freedom fighters vocally advertised their moustaches as a tool of politics, their facial hair is now an inescapable element of the image in which they are immortalised. 

From Veerapan to Dawood, the criminal era of the Indian moustache

In the last few decades of the 20th century, growing a moustache acquired an antagonistic overtone thanks to some iconically notorious moustaches by criminals like the Karnataka bandit Veerappan and the Mumbai don Dawood Ibrahim. While Ibrahim’s moustache was groomed in a simple paintbrush style, Veerappan’s moustache was quite an entity in itself.

Ibrahim and fellow Mumbai gangsters like Chhota Rajan and Arun Gawli sported moustaches that can be classified as ordinary, Veerappan’s humongous 'stache became almost synonymous with his name. The dacoit’s moustache branched out in two unmatted and dishevelled clumps of jet black facial hair that populated most of his lower face. 

Such has been the craze behind Veerappan’s monstrous whiskers that in 2015, British cosmetics retailer Lush released a controversial moustache wax product named after him, complete with a Veerappan caricature on the tin. 

Moustache and the Indian film hero 

Apart from caste and crime, the moustache has also served as a recurring visual element in Indian cinema. After all, India’s very first motion picture Raja Harishchandra featured the titular protagonist sporting a scruffy prop moustache. Since then, many actors have branded their entire image around moustaches. 

Even though Bollywood has had its fair share of clean-shaven heroes from Dilip Kumar and Dev Anand to present-day actors, some industry veterans like Anil Kapoor and Jackie Shroff are so tied to their moustaches that it is difficult to imagine them sans the 'stache (remember Lamhe, where Kapoor went moustache-less, and promptly went back to his usual look after the movie?). 

The same can be said in the case of the South where the moustache has endured as the perfect macho symbol for the masculine heroes. Irrespective of language, this has been the norm when it comes to star-building be it Tamil superstars Rajinikanth and Kamal Haasan or Malayalam stalwarts Mohanlal and Mammootty. 

In the Telugu industry, Nagarjuna, Chiranjeevi and Venkatesh have similarly endured as moustachioed superstars. The same can be said for new-age Telugu talents (read “nepo kids) like Ram Charan, Jr NTR and Allu Arjun. For Charan’s take on Alluri Sitaram Raju in RRR, growing a thick handlebar moustache boosted the testosterone-heavy character’s masculinity as much as Charan’s chiselled abs. 

Further, Charan’s moustache went in line with his initial introduction as a policeman. Since the early years of Indian cinema, physically strong characters associated with either the police or the armed forces have often been depicted with heavy moustaches, the hair grown out to differentiate the lover-boy persona that these actors might emulate in other works. 

Just take the lore of the police officer Singam as a case in point. Introduced in Suriya’s Tamil hit of the same name, Singam was shown as a ripped man in khaki, with bulging muscles and a damsel in distress; and a wavy variation of the horseshoe moustache.

When Kannada star Sudeep remade Singam as Kempe Gowda, he sported a similar style that went in tandem with the film’s title. Even though Sudip’s Kempe Gowda is a Kannada stand-in for Singham, the name is a direct reference to the Vijayangara chieftain of the same name who founded the city of Bengaluru and also sported a similar moustache. 

Singam received its Hindi remake in the form of Rohit Shetty’s Singham that featured an aviator-wearing Ajay Devgn with an authoritative Dallas moustache. Devgn has continued sporting this same style in many of his other roles that require a sense of authority or maturity. Examples include his characters in Raid, Drishyam and now, Maidaan. 

Another actor who has largely followed Devgn’s moustache trajectory is Akshay Kumar who has worn variations of the handlebar and pencil moustache for many of his recent “patriotic” appearances in films like Rustom, Toilet: Ek Prem Katha, Baby and Jolly LLB 2. Naturally, when he played the Rajput ruler Privthiraj Chauhan in the biopic of the same name, the moustache came back. 

All three of Bollywood’s big three Khans have had their own experimentations with moustaches. Aamir Khan, who has grown out a thick black line in Mangal Pandey and Talaash also had a strange run-in with a curved handlebar moustache in Thugs of Hindostan.

Salman Khan, on the other hand, brought the slim pencil back in fashion ever since he played the vigilante cop Chulbul Pandey in the Dabangg franchise. Shah Rukh Khan however (a moustache veteran with Paheli) redefined the pencil as a common man’s moustache. 

To play Surinder Sahni, a seemingly ordinary and rather boring man in Rabb Ne Bana Di Jodi, Khan sported a pencil moustache that almost feels like it was pasted above his upper lip. The moustache was intentionally added to complete the character’s “common man” image, contrasting well with his clean-shaven flamboyant alter ego Raj Kapoor (ironic considering that the real Raj Kapoor was mostly spotted with a moustache in his stellar career). 

But SRK’s usage of a moustache for an aam-aadmi makeover has proven to find its way in other Bollywood movies whenever a character is supposed to be portrayed as an innocent and meek working class hero. Varun Dhawan in Sui Dhaaga and Rajkumar Rao in City Lights are a few examples. The moustaches that these characters sport are mostly very simple to groom and lack the spectacle of a Singam moustache. 

Hence, the moustache might be a symbol of masculinity for many filmstars but its variation in style can also project different levels of masculinity.

From Air India’s Maharaja to India’s gay prince: The Indian moustache continues twirling 

When Indian fighter pilot Gp Cpt Abhinandan Varthaman was held captive in Pakistan after an aerial dogfight in 2019, the country indulged in discussing his Rajasthani-style horseshoe 'stache as much as his act of valour. It must be noted that such an outward-protruding long trail of a moustache is very rare among Indian Air Force personnel. They are mostly allowed to wear a short moustache (beards are not allowed except for those with religious exemptions) but with Varthaman’s pompous facial hair making the headlines, the moustache became synonymous with the pilot. 

Such is the relevance of the moustache in India that even its homegrown airline Air India has had the pointy-moustached Maharaja as its mascot since its inception. With a war hero like Varthaman, the relevance remains. It must still be noted that in today’s era of ever-changing conversations on gender and sexuality, a moustache might not just stand for a homogenous heterosexual idea of masculinity. 

Just take the case of Manvendra Singh Gohil, one of the country’s foremost LGBTQIA+ activists and largely considered as the world’s first openly gay prince. Hailing from a royal family in Ajmer, Gohil sports a regal moustache that was commonly worn by many princes and kings before. But rather than growing it out as a symbol of heteronormative virility, the moustache adds to the gay prince’s self-expression.

From being used to challenge upper castes to being sported by a homosexual royal, the Indian moustache is definitely getting reborn and rebranded, hopefully with more inclusive results.