English

Noun

pagri ‎(plural pagris)

1. (India) A headdress worn by men in India, comprising a several-metre-long band of fabric wound around the head.
   • 1913, Shaikh Chilli, "The Story of Hira and Lal" in Folk-tales of Hindustan, Bahadurganj, Calcutta: Abinash Chandra Sarkar, p. 98,

     The poor labourer was at first somewhat astonished, and frightened by this sudden metamorphosis, but soon overcoming the new feeling, he carefully tied the ruby in his pagri or turban, and returned home […]

   • 2005, Edith Samuel, Integrative Racism: South Asians in Canadian Academe, University of Toronto Press, p. 89,

     'People look at my pagri and you can kind of tell from the way they look and behave and from their body language. My pagri gives me away and I feel that people react strangely to it. Some people laugh at you because of your pagri. Others say, "You are wearing a nice hat," or something like that. Fellow students don't know a thing about the Sikh religion […] .'

   • 2016, "Sidhartha," "Takeover battle begins at 2 of Abhey Oswal's cos," The Times of India, Business, 8 April, 2016,

     Pankaj claims to be the legal heir citing that he was made to wear the "pagri", which he saw as a sign that the Oswal family recognized him as the main heir to head the business.

2. (India) A puggry.
   • 1888, Rudyard Kipling, "False Dawn" in Plain Tales from the Hills,

     I recognized the eldest Miss Copleigh, because she had a pagri round her helmet, and the younger had not.

3. (India, Pakistan) A payment made to secure the long-term rental of a property.
   • 2010, Vazira Fazila-Yacoobali Zamindar, The Long Partition and the Making of Modern South Asia: Refugees, Boundaries, Histories, New York: Columbia University Press, Chapter 2, p. 64,

     A pagri was a form of "illegal payment" that had developed to circumvent colonial rent restrictions. Landlords demanded a large lump-sum payment in lieu of the low monthly rent, and this also made it very difficult for refugees without means to rent houses in the city.

   • 2012, Kazim Alam, "Paperless pagri system still exists in old city areas," The Express Tribune, 7 January, 2012,

     Simply defined, it means a landlord letting a ‘tenant’ use his property – forever in most cases – after receiving a “pagri,” an amount that is a little less than the prevailing market price. In return, the tenant pays a nominal monthly rent and stays on the premises for years on end without any fear of eviction. The property remains in landlord’s name and he continues to pay taxes on it.

Synonyms

• turban

Derived terms

• pagri cloth