C is for...Crucial ... n ... Change

 

All this month I am writing about aspects of Indian textiles, a quick but captivating dive into the saree specifically, a garment worn by Indians for five millennia. Come with me into the colourful, complex and utterly fascinating world of yarn and thread, of skills and techniques of dyeing and printing and embroidery, traditions unchanged for centuries. Of sumptuous finished fabrics that not only make a fashion statement, but also constitute our cultural and political identity. 

C is for Company 

There are several types of sarees that one could pick for C - Chanderi for one, Chettinad for another. One could talk about the textile hubs such as Coimbatore, the 'Manchester of South India' or Calicut. But...nope, not going there.   

Instead, let's talk about a slightly different C. The company above is the Company Bahadur a k a The East India Company. C is for Colonialism, the struggle for independence and how Indian Cloth was at the Centre of an avalanche of Change.

 

In 1608, when the first trading ship of EIC docked at the west coast of India, this country was a manufacturing hub of world class textiles. India had 25% of the global exports of textiles, profits from which made the Indian Emperor Jehangir the wealthiest monarch in the world. Britain at the time had about 2-3% of the textiles market worldwide. 

The Company introduced calico and chintz to Britain, initially as a sideline from its main trade in spices. However, by the late 1600s, textile goods had overtaken them in importance. Indian textiles proved to be wildly popular in Britain threatening the domestic weavers and leading to the first of the Calico Acts in 1700 - a ban on the import of finished cotton fabrics. 

...also for Clive...n... the Charkha

Image credit

Robert Clive established Company rule in India in 1757 by winning the Battle of Plassey, defeating Nawab Siraj-ud-daula of Bengal. And meanwhile, on the other side in Britain, the Industrial Revolution took shape and the first British textile mills came to be established in the 1770s. With the invention of the 'spinning Jenny,' the power loom etc, the growth of cloth production was scaled up manifold from a cottage industry to commercial levels. 

Beyond the Atlantic, the American Revolutionary War meant that the source of raw cotton dried up. The British needed both raw materials to keep the mills fed and a large overseas market to sell the finished textile goods.  So naturally, they continued to block the import of finished textiles and instead scooped up raw cotton bales from India to process and flooded the Indian market with cheaper mill made fabrics. 

Throughout colonial rule, British policies kept the local Indian industries shackled. Mill made British cloth was taxed at absurdly low rates whereas indigenous cloth was exorbitantly taxed. Skilled Indian weavers, in the trade for generations, lost their livelihood and were pushed into abject poverty. The entire Indian textile industry was crippled. And so India's millennia long domination of the global textiles market, from the days of Ancient Rome and Egypt, practically vanished in the short space of a century and a half. 

Consequently, the Indian political aspirations for independence - the Swadeshi (swa - self, desh -country; native-made), Swaraj (raj - rule) and Quit India movements, crystallised around the boycott of foreign goods, including mill made British textiles. 

The early 1920s saw huge political rallies in Bombay and Calcutta where symbolical bonfires of foreign textiles were lit as part of civil disobedience protests. The spinning and wearing of 'Khadi'  a coarse, handspun, handwoven Indian fabric, as well as spinning and weaving hubs set up throughout rural India,  characterised the Swadeshi movement and the drive towards economic self sufficiency. The spinning wheel or charkha was the symbol of Swaraj or self-rule, spinning/weaving/wearing Khadi an act of nonviolent rebellion.  In other words, Indian handspun handloom cloth became the face of the Indian freedom struggle. Coarse handspun was weaponised to a tool of political resistance.

Image credit. This was adopted as the national flag in 1933
 and incorporated the spinning wheel. It was replaced by the
 Ashoka Chakra in July 1947 and hoisted on Independence
Day on 15th August of the same year.

When the long march to freedom ended in August 1947, the first Prime Minister of an independent India hoisted the Indian flag in Delhi. It was made of Khadi, the Indian handspun, handloom cotton cloth, its historical weight far exceeding its mere grammage.

Indian flag 1947-present. Till 2021, the
flag was mandatorily made of Khadi,
handspun, handwoven cotton or silk. 

~~~

Did you know about the crass protectionism practised by the Western colonial governments? Something to consider, isn't it? - when contemporary Western nations complain about Indian markets being restrictive and Indian tariffs preventing foreign goods being sold freely in India! 

Do you think WTO should take into account the wrongs of colonialism and the destruction of thriving industries due to shamelessly unfair tax/tariff regimens of the past centuries? Should sectors like the handloom industry in India be compensated for the havoc that colonial governments wreaked and if so, how? 

Thank you for reading. And happy A-Zing to you if you are participating in the challenge. 

A-Z Challenge 2025