"The tannin water [from animal hide processing] was there all the time. So these fellows were asked to dip their clothes into the tannin water tank and get free color. So they got a weak, red sort of color. Brown red.

"This is how they began to call them Red Shirts.

"After that of course nobody put them into the tannin tank. They used to get a little bit of color from the bazaar and color them red."

December 23, 1990
Mohammad Naray, NWFP