The Towel Syndrome : Why Indian bureaucracy still looks colonial

Dr Raj Singh
Walk into almost any Government office in Manipur.
Ignore the nameplate.
Forget the organizational chart hanging on the wall. You do not even need to ask who the boss is.
Simply look for the chair wearing a towel.
There it stands-a neat white towel draped over the backrest like a ceremonial robe. Around it are ordinary chairs, completely bare, occupied by assistants, clerks and visitors. Only one chair enjoys the privilege of clothing.
That is not merely a chair.
That is authority.
In India, perhaps no object is so ordinary and yet so revealing as the white towel on an officer’s chair. It is so common that nobody notices it anymore. Yet, without a single spoken word, it tells every visitor where power resides.
Governments have changed. Ministers have come and gone. The British Empire disappeared nearly eight decades ago. Computers replaced typewriters. Files became digital. Air-conditioners replaced ceiling fans.
But the towel remains.
Like many Indian institutions, nobody remembers exactly when it started, yet nobody dares to abolish it.
Perhaps it is time we investigated this curious piece of furniture.
From Sweat to Status
Contrary to popular belief, the towel was not born as a status symbol.
It was born out of common sense.
During the British Raj, senior civil servants-District Collectors, Commissioners, Police Superintendents and Engineers “spent long hours inspecting roads, canals, forests and villages under the unforgiving tropical sun.” Many travelled on horseback or in horse-drawn carriages before motor vehicles became common. Even later, official vehicles had no air-conditioning.
By the time an officer entered the office, he was often soaked in perspiration.
Leather upholstery was expensive. Cotton towels protected the backrest from sweat and could easily be removed and washed. In Victorian Britain, similar furniture covers called “antimacassars” protected chairs from hair oil and dirt. India simply adapted the practice to its tropical climate.
The towel was practical.
Nothing more.
Had history ended there, no one would have written an article about it. But institutions have a peculiar habit of preserving yesterday’s solutions long after yesterday’s problems disappear.
Today’s officers arrive in air-conditioned SUVs. They enter air-conditioned buildings and sit on synthetic executive chairs that scarcely require protection from perspiration.
Yet the towel survives.
History quietly became ritual. And ritual slowly became status.
The Promotion of a Piece of Cotton
Somewhere between Independence and today, the towel received an extraordinary promotion.
It stopped protecting the chair. It began protecting the hierarchy.
Observe carefully.
The towel never accidentally appears on a junior clerk’s chair. It never decorates the accountant’s seat.
It somehow identifies the highest-ranking officer with astonishing precision.
Promotion orders may arrive late. Transfer notifications may take weeks.
But the towel always seems to know who the new boss is.
It quietly migrates to the appropriate chair.
Evolution has produced intelligent species. Indian bureaucracy has produced intelligent towels.
The Mathematics of Distance
The towel tells us something much deeper than office decoration. It tells us about the distance between people.
Dutch social psychologist Geert Hofstede intro- duced the idea of power distance - the degree to which societies accept unequal distribution of authority.
Imagine a simple scale from 1 to 10.
At 1, the chief executive eats lunch with interns.
At 10, a junior employee hesitates even to knock on the boss’s door.
Many Scandinavian countries would probably lie around 2 or 3.
Canada, Australia and much of Western Europe around 3 or 4.
Britain and the United States around 4 or 5.
Government offices in India often behave as though they belong somewhere around 8 or 9.
Whether these numbers are scientific is less important than what every visitor instinctively experiences.
The physical distance mirrors the psychological distance.
Large office. Large desk. Large revolving chair.
Visitor’s chair deliberately placed lower. Personal assistant guarding access.
The towel quietly completes the architecture. It whispers, ‘This person is above you’.
The towel does not create hierarchy. It advertises it.
Cotton Becomes Sacred
Anthropologists describe objects representing authority as status symbols.
Crowns. Military stars. Judicial robes. Academic gowns.
The bureaucratic towel belongs to the same family.
Without saying anything, it announces:
‘This occupant signs’, ‘This chair must not be touched casually’, ‘This is where decisions are made’.
Visitors instinctively become more formal. Junior staff rarely lean against it. Even office attendants handle it with surprising respect.
The towel has acquired something close to administrative holiness.
Manipur and the Language of Symbols
This phenomenon becomes even more interesting in Manipur.
The State has inherited multiple traditions of authority- its own royal history, the colonial bureaucracy, democratic insti- tutions, customary tribal systems and powerful civil society organizations.
Where several systems of authority coexist, symbols become unusually important.
Official vehicles. Large offices. Reserved parking. VIP seating.
And quietly hanging behind the officer, the towel.
Sometimes the towel appears more permanent than the officer himself.
It has witnessed more transfers than the Establishment Section.
If towels could testify before commissions of inquiry, they might become the most reliable witnesses in Manipur.
When Symbols Outlive Their Purpose
Every institution requires symbols.
The problem begins when symbols replace substance.
Across much of the developed world, leaders increasingly reduce visible barriers between themselves and their staff.
Corporate executives sit in open offices. University presidents walk freely across campuses.
Mayors answer questions directly.
Government Ministers often work without elaborate ceremonies separating them from ordinary employees.
The emphasis shifts from visible authority to visible accessibility.
Confidence requires fewer symbols. Insecure au-thority usually requires more.
The towel belongs to an older philosophy inherited from colonial administration, in which rulers governed subjects from above rather than serving citizens alongside them.
Imagine the Great Towel Reform
Suppose every towel disappeared tomorrow morning from every Government office in Manipur.
Nothing else changes.
The same officers. The same powers. The same salaries. The same files.
Would governance collapse ? Would development stop ? Would the Constitution require amendment ?
Of course not.
There would merely be a few confused visitors wondering, ‘Which one is the boss?’
That simple question reveals something profound. If authority depends upon a piece of white cotton for recognition, perhaps it deserves closer examination.
The Towel Is Innocent
Let us be fair.
The towel itself has committed no crime. Cotton is innocent. Comfort is desirable.
If an officer genuinely prefers a washable cover, there is absolutely nothing objectionable.
But if comfort is the objective, why should only one chair enjoy it ?
Either every chair deserves a towel. Or none of them do.
Equality has never damaged upholstery.
The Last Colonial Flag
Perhaps the towel deserves a place in a museum.
Not because it is old. But because it represents one of the smallest surviving relics of the British Raj.
Independent India lowered the Union Jack. We adopted our own Constitution, our own Parliament and our own civil service. Yet hidden in plain sight, one tiny colonial habit quietly escaped decolonization.
The towel stayed behind.
Its original purpose disappeared decades ago. Air-conditioners replaced tropical discomfort.
Official SUVs replaced horses and carriages. Digital files replaced dusty ledgers.
Only the towel refused retirement. It reinvented itself.
From absorbing sweat, it graduated to absorbing prestige.
From protecting furniture, it began protecting the hierarchy.
The remarkable thing is that no Government ever passed a law requiring towels on officers chairs.
No Civil Service Rule prescribes one. No Finance Department sanctions a ‘Chair Towel’, ‘Allowance’, No training academy teaches officers how to fold it.
Yet every generation faithfully reproduces the practice.
A young officer joins Government service and notices that senior officers have towels.
Years later, after promotion, a towel mysteriously appears on his own chair.
The initiation is complete.
Power has found its cloth.
That is how cultures reproduce themselves - not through legislation, but through imitation.
The towel is only one example.
We inherited many invisible colonial reflexes: oversized offices, unnecessary ceremonial distance, excessive reverence for rank and an administrative culture where authority often announces itself before competence does.
The towel simply makes those invisible ideas visible.
It hangs there every day, silently teaching everyone who enters the room where power sits.
That should make us pause.
If our bureaucracy still requires a piece of white cotton to announce authority nearly eighty years after Independence, have we truly decolonized our institutions - or have we merely replaced the flag outside the Secretariat while leaving the colonial mindset comfortably seated inside ?
Perhaps the next administrative reform in Manipur will not begin with another committee, another circular or another management workshop.
Perhaps it will begin on an ordinary Monday morning.
An officer will enter his room, look at the faithful white towel hanging behind his chair, smile, fold it neatly and place it inside a drawer.
Then he will invite his staff to sit around the same table.
Nothing dramatic will happen.
The files will not stop moving. The Constitution will not collapse. The Government will continue functioning.
But something far more important may quietly begin.
The office will stop looking like a colonial Court and start feeling like a democratic workplace.
On that day, the towel will finally receive the retirement it has patiently postponed since the British left India.
After serving two empires - the British Empire and the Empire of Bureaucratic Ego, it would surely deserve a dignified farewell to usher in the culture of competence.
This column, “Beyond the Obvious,” seeks to examine public controversies not through emotional binaries but through deeper historical memory, constitutional logic, and compa- rative political thought-in the belief that durable peace lies not in louder demands, but in wiser design.