Fragility of a Sacred Cloth

Fragility of a Sacred Cloth

By S. Kalidas

Indian Weavers

By Sarojini Naidu (1879-1949)

WEAVERS, weaving at break of day,

Why do you weave a garment so gay?

Blue as the wing of a halcyon wild,

We weave the robes of a new-born child.

Weavers, weaving at fall of night,

Why do you weave a garment so bright?

Like the plumes of a peacock, purple and green,

We weave the marriage-veils of a queen.

Weavers, weaving solemn and still,

What do you weave in the moonlight chill?

White as a feather and white as a cloud,

We weave a dead man's funeral shroud.

“Khadi stands for simplicity, not shoddiness. It sits well on the shoulders of the poor, and it can be made, as it was made in the days of the yore, to adorn the bodies of the richest and the most artistic of men and women.”

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi in Young India, 17-3-1927

My earliest subliminal memories are of being enveloped by the feel and smell of the Khadi cloth right from birth. My father, who had run away from home and school to join the Quit India movement as a teenager, wore only Khadi clothes all his adult life — even his under-garments were of Khadi. When I was born, his old worn out Khadi dhotis were cut up to make nappies and sheets for me. When he picked me up in his arms, I would feel the texture and smell of his Khadi kurta. A little later, as young boys, my brother and I would be taken by our mother to the Khadi shop twice every year — on Gandhiji’s birth and death anniversaries, as on those days the Khadi shops give huge discounts. She would then buy clothes for us and our father for the whole of the next year. Despite being a rather colourful painter in later life, my father preferred to wear plain white Khadi. And although Khadi can be (and is) dyed in many colours, it is this simple white Khadi that embodies the cardinal values that Mahatma Gandhi stood for namely: Freedom, Truth, Simplicity and Non-violence.

Khadi, or khaddar as it is called in Hindi, is a cloth that is hand-woven using hand-spun cotton yarn. The techniques to spin the yarn and weave the cloth differ from region to region as do the quality and texture of cloth thus produced. For centuries, this cloth was worn by peasants and artisans in India till the advent of British colonialism. Khadi was made from locally grown cotton which would be harvested by peasants, then spun into yarn by their women and woven into cloth in small home-based units. By the time Gandhiji returned to India in 1915 to lead the freedom movement, the production and use of Khadi had declined systematically in favour of imported cloth made in the industrial hubs of Lancashire and Manchester in Great Britain. Not only were the British taking away all our cotton, but they had also adopted violent methods. Legend has it  that the methods included cutting off the thumbs and fingers of Indian weavers, to ensure that the cloth produced in the British mills found ready buyers in India. Gandhiji immediately realised the potential of Khadi as a powerful symbol against colonial rule and one of his earliest acts was to call for a public boycott of all imported goods and clothing by self-respecting Indians.

Although my grandfather worked for the colonial government and was a staunch colonialist, my grandmother, aunts and uncles all joined in the public burning of foreign goods and imported clothing along with thousands of other Indians in what has been called ‘The Non-Cooperation Movement’. Gandhiji argued that if large numbers of Indians shunned fabrics and goods imported from Britain, it would serve a big blow to the economics of British colonial practice. And in lieu of imported cloth, he advocated home spun Khadi. But by that time Khadi was not to be found easily in India as the British had effectively killed the tradition of spinning and weaving. So Gandhiji insisted that every member of the Congress Party should acquire a spinning wheel and spend at least one hour every day in spinning Khadi yarn out of cotton. He organised cooperatives in every part of India to help produce and market Khadi. All freedom fighters were asked to wear only Khadi. Even an Anglicised upper-class man like Jawaharlal Nehru, who till then wore only Savile Row suits and sent them back to London for washing and ironing, was obliged to wear the plain white hand-spun and hand-woven Khadi.

Today, blinded by the mantra of Globalisation, it is easy to underestimate the radical dialectic in Gandhiji’s advocacy of Khadi. At that time in India, it not only helped to demolish the long established barriers of class and caste but also ensured that the thousands of un-educated and poor peasants and artisans living in rural India felt a sense of participation in the Freedom Movement. During the freedom struggle, even urban households in India had acquired a spinning wheel even if all were not as diligent as Gandhiji in their spinning and weaving. Until well into my youth, the charkha or spinning wheel remained a much venerated social icon in India.

As historian Emma Tarlo writes: “To Gandhi Khadi was more than simply cloth. It was the material embodiment of an ideal. It represented not only freedom from the yoke of colonialism, but also economic self sufficiency, political independence, spiritual humility, moral purity, national integrity, communal unity, social equality, the end of untouchability and the embracing of non-violence. The spinning wheel was, he argued, the new weapon in the fight for swaraj (home rule). Through spinning their own yarn, Indians could regain their autonomy just as by wearing Khadi, they would not only struggle for independence but also experience the state of being independent.”

Now, 60 years after independence was achieved, Khadi is facing a far greater threat than British colonialism of the 19th and 20th centuries. For this time round, the threat is as much from within as from outside. On one hand, by becoming a self-imposed uniform of politicians of all hues in India — everyone from the Ultra Marxists to the Right-wing Hindu Fundamentalists wear a polyester mixed Khadi today — it can be seen as the apparel of political opportunism. On the other, decades of state subsidy and organisational decadence has made Khadi products aesthetically clumsy and commercially unviable. To these one has to add, of course, the looming spectre of globalisation and the WTO that go against the very concept of hand spun hand woven Khadi. Even the most ardent champions of Khadi today realise that both the system of production of Khadi and the making and marketing of Khadi garments need to be completely overhauled for it to become suitable for contemporary wear and sustainable in the long run. Khadi, today, needs a thousand mahatmas.

What is needed today is a revolution in the production and use of Khadi. Just as Karl Marx inverted the philosophy of Immanuel Kant to arrive at his theory of historical materialism, the Gandhian philosophy of Khadi, too, needs a total reversal in its social dynamics. For it to successfully cross the tide of technology and the ever enlarging swamp of global marketing, Khadi needs value addition in terms of quality, design and usage. From being the unaesthetic utilitarian uniform of the politically corrupt, it needs to become the chic and selected garment of a discerning international elite. From being sloppily sold in local bazaars, it needs to be stylishly showcased in the select club of haute cuture. Only then would Khadi be able to find new relevance and survive the challenges of our time. Only then would the expert Indian weaver receive his fair livelihood and be able to continue to produce the wondrous range of pure cotton fabrics we know as Khadi.

Happily, over the last decade or so, a few serious textile experts and designers in India and abroad have been working towards such a 21st century Khadi revolution. Bess Nielsen, with her Khadi and Co, is definitely in the forefront of this effort. With deep love for India, her personal passion for detail and first hand knowledge of fabric she has created a line of Khadi garments and accessories that are truly Gandhian in their simplicity yet highly evolved in their sense of design. With the opening of her latest exhibition on Gandhiji’s birth anniversary this year, I feel I am returning to a Khadi store again with the same sense of wonder and reverence that I felt as a ten-year-old boy clinging to my mother’s Khadi saree on our annual pilgrimage to the local Khadi emporium some forty years ago. But there is a difference. The Khadi garments never looked as beautiful in my childhood as they are now thanks to Bess’s critical intervention. Amen.

S.Kalidas is a musicologist by training and a writer on Indian cultural affairs by profession.