The charm of khadi is in its artistry and in the irregularity of the yarn, which creates a unique tactile fabric. This handspun and handwoven fabric, using natural fibres, is comfortable to wear since the low-twisted yarn allows the fabric to breathe and absorb moisture, and it becomes softer with every wash. This ‘fabric of freedom’ continues to spin incomes for the rural poor while reminding the country of its legacy of sustainable living and self-reliance. This remarkable fabric from the past has the potential of becoming the fabric of the future.

I have been fascinated by all things handcrafted, especially textiles. Since the last few years, I have been trying to identify the exceptional qualities, beyond heritage value, of handloom fabrics to differentiate these products from machine-made textiles, and to emphasise their uniqueness for these fabrics to continue being relevant in present times. These deliberations led me to Gandhiji’s writings to understand how and why he chose khaddar, the coarse handspun and handwoven cotton worn by the common man, which he named ‘khadi’, as a symbol of India’s Independence.

During India’s struggle for freedom from British rule, social and political activism reached new heights under the visionary leadership of Mahatma Gandhi. He saw the revival of the local village economy as the key to India’s spiritual and economic regeneration and he envisioned homespun khadi as the catalyst for India’s economic independence. Khadi became the fabric of the freedom struggle, and the charkha, the spinning wheel, the symbol of India’s Independence Movement. Rahul Ramagundam in his book, Gandhi’s Khadi, mentions that ‘Gandhi’s khadi movement, in many substantive ways, was the first social movement in modern India that brought poverty to the centre stage of Indian consciousness and made livelihood rights an issue of mass mobilisation’.

Soon after Gandhiji returned to India from South Africa in May 1915, he established the Satyagraha Ashram with 25 residents at Kochrab, Ahmedabad, and in July 1917, the ashram was shifted to a new location on the banks of the river Sabarmati. It was collectively decided that all the members of the ashram should wear khadi. Their objective was to stop using the imported mill-made cloth, which benefited the British at the expense of the Indian artisans, and clothe themselves in fabrics created by their own hands.

The American Civil War (1861–1865) had caused a shortage of American cotton, and Britain started buying raw cotton from India. Indian cotton was exported to Britain, starving its own looms of raw material, and cheaper British machine-made yarn and manufactured cloth were sent back to India taking away the livelihood of millions of men and women who earned a living by spinning yarn manually. Before the Industrial Revolution, Indian fabrics had been in great demand in Britain and comprised almost 70 per cent of the East India Company’s exports, but later, Britain had imposed restrictions on their import, and the multitude of people involved in the production of cotton textiles in India had been affected.

Everyone at the ashram was willing to learn to spin and wear the khadi fabric produced from their own handspun yarn but they could not find either a spinning wheel or someone to teach them how to spin. Around this time, Gandhiji was invited to preside at the Broach Educational Conference where he met Gangaben Majmundar, a remarkable woman with an enterprising spirit. Gandhiji requested her to look for spinning wheels, and after a long search she found what she was looking for in Vijapur, in what was then Baroda State. Many in this region had spinning wheels stored in their lofts as there was no demand for handspun yarn since the market was flooded with the imported yarn from Britain. They expressed their willingness to resume spinning if they were assured of a steady supply of cotton slivers, and that the yarn they produced would be bought back.

Gandhiji mentioned the need for a regular supply of cotton slivers to Umar Sobani, a textile mill owner, who willingly sent the sliver ropes from his spinning mill to Gangaben, and soon, vast quantities of yarn began to pour in from Vijapur. Gandhiji could not take Umar Sobani’s generosity for granted, and he also realised that it was morally wrong to use mill-made slivers. Once again, Gandhiji requested Gangaben to find a person who would be willing to teach a few youngsters to clean and card cotton by hand and make slivers. She went a step further and also found weavers to weave the yarn that was spun in Vijapur, and soon, Vijapur khadi gained a solid reputation.

While these developments were taking place in Vijapur, the spinning wheel gained a strong footing at the ashram. Maganlal Gandhi, who was closely associated with the Satyagraha Movement, was able to make some improvements in the traditional spinning wheel. He developed a new model of the box charkha with a double-wheel drive, which helped control its speed, and was an improvement as far as comfort, productivity and portability were concerned. Gandhiji led by example and spun for an hour every day. All ashram inmates started wearing khadi and were encouraged to spin daily for a minimum of one hour. They realised that apart from creating the yarn for their clothing, spinning calmed their minds, helped to increase their focus and was a meditative experience.

Gandhiji wore Indian mill-made dhotis but was impatient to start wearing only handspun and handwoven cotton khadi, but the coarse khadi produced at the ashram and at Vijapur was only 30 inches (76 cm) in width. He asked Gangaben to find a weaver who could weave a khaddar dhoti in 45 inches (114 cm) width for him. She managed this within a month and, soon after, there was a full-fledged weaving centre at the ashram to weave sarees, dhotis and running yardage. This was the beginning of the Khadi Movement. Soon after, spinning and weaving were elevated to an ideology for promoting self-reliance and self-government. To identify with the poor, in 1921 Gandhiji changed from formal Gujarati clothing to a simple, short dhoti and a shawl from formal Gujarati attire.

In the past, the charkha had supplemented agricultural income. It was a friend of the poor, the solace of the widow who was shunned by society, and kept the villagers from idleness. Every village had a family of weavers who wove coarse cotton fabrics without any patterns for use by the local communities. The weavers were supported by the women in the family who, in their free time, spun the yarn and created the bobbins for weaving. They had all lost their livelihood to the machine-made fabrics from Britain that were flooding the markets. The new demand for khadi provided them with regular work and rescued them from abject poverty. Gandhiji did not just revive India’s flagging handloom industry, he made the humble handspun khadi fabric the symbol of the Swadeshi Movement. He wrote: ‘Swaraj (self-rule) without swadeshi (goods made in the country) is a lifeless corpse and if swadeshi is the soul of swaraj, khadi is the essence of swadeshi.’ Through his initiative, khadi became not only a symbol of resistance but the face of an Indian identity, ‘The message of the spinning wheel was much wider than its circumference.’

Gandhiji saw khadi as a tool for reviving the village economy but he never suggested that ‘those, who are more lucratively employed should give up their employment and prefer spinning’. As he clarified to Charlie Chaplin in 1931, ‘The return to spinning did not mean a rejection of all modern technology but of the exploitative and controlling economic and political system in which textile manufacture had become entangled. Machinery in the past has made us dependent on England, and the only way we can rid ourselves of the dependence is to boycott all goods made by machinery.’ He continues ‘This is why we have made it the patriotic duty of every Indian to spin his own cotton and weave his own cloth.’

When Gandhiji encouraged people across India to boycott clothes made in Britain, spin their own yarn and wear khadi, he was encouraging them to rediscover their heritage as well as to support handloom production in rural centres. This understated masterstroke took the Freedom Movement beyond the rarefied circles of the social elite and out to the masses.

[Niyogi Books has given Fair Observer permission to publish this excerpt from Crafting a Future: Stories of Indian Textiles and Sustainable Practices, Archana Shah, Niyogi Books, 2021.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.