Khakhi

QUESTION = Who invented ' Khaki' fabric (Hindi: “dust-coloured”)?

ANSWER = Sir Harry Lumsden, a British lieutenant in command of a regiment in Northern India invented khaki as an alternative to the traditional British uniform in 1846.  The Punjab region, within which the unit was stationed, was quite hot so Lumsden and his troops began wearing lighter-weight pajama bottoms to combat the tropical climate.  Lumsden then recognized that the uniforms were too detectable to the opposing forces, so he took the cotton and linen pajamas and colored them using mud and plant based dyes.

 The word “khaki” actually comes from the Hindi-Urdu word meaning “dusty” or “earth-colored.” Tops were then fabricated out of the same dust colored fabric, and the khaki uniform was born.  

Sir Henry Lumsden, stationed in India in 1846, dyed his cotton pajamas with a native plant extract named MAZARI to create a uniform more suitable to the climate than the traditional red felt issued at the time. Its tawny colour, similar to the region’s saffron dust, helped the clothing to blend in with sand.

John Haller, a trained European weaver, introduced in 1851 the first handloom with fly shelter cottage industry in Mangalore. He also invented new dyes and colour out of indigenous ingredients. The invention of Khaki dye is attributed to him.

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Question =

In which country KHAKHI was first introduced and by whom?

 

Answer =  

In present day Pakistan then part of India i.e. in Peshawar, Punjab. 

In 1847, Sir Harry Burnett Lumsden brought in the first official khaki uniform.

In the mid-1800s, British soldiers in India began dyeing their white uniforms a dusty colour, using anything from muddy water to tea (camellia sinensis). Cutch (the same as the astringent catechu) was a reliable dye already in use for calico-prints in India's cotton fabric industry. The dye created the colour khak, an Indian word for dust, earth, and ashes. In 1847, Sir Harry Burnett Lumsden brought in the first official khaki uniform.

Khaki was first worn in the Corps of Guides that was raised in December 1846 as the brain-child of Sir Henry Lawrence (1806–1857) Resident at Lahore, and Agent to the Governor-General for the North-West Frontier. Lawrence chose as its commandant Sir Harry Lumsden supported by William Stephen Raikes Hodson as Second-in-Command to begin the process of raising the Corps of Guides for frontier service from British Indian recruits at Peshawar, Punjab.

Khaki-colored uniforms were used officially by British troops for the first time during the Abyssinian campaign of 1867–68, when Indian troops traveled to Ethiopia (Abyssinia) under the command of general Sir Robert Napier to release some British captives and to "persuade the Abyssinian King Theodore, forcibly if necessary, to mend his ways". Subsequently, the British Army adopted khaki for colonial campaign dress and it was used in the Mahdist War (1884–89) and Second Boer War (1899–1902).