A couple of evenings ago, with the temperature dipping low and the stale winter air thickly polluted with smog, my mother and I happened upon the National Khadi Fair in a suburb of New Delhi, India. Even though we had pending errands to run, we were inexorably drawn to the Fair, seduced by the texture of patriotism spun deep through its handcrafted threads. Khadi (Hindi: खादी), a kind of coarse homespun cloth woven from cotton, once called "the livery of freedom," gained ascendancy during the Indian Independence Movement. It's "core semiotic," it has been argued, "lay in its being a commodity of resistance against colonial exploitation"; as a symbol of Indian self-reliance due largely to Mahatma Gandhi's efforts, खादी continues to be deeply entwined with our ideas of nationhood.
In my family, as in many other families, we patronize खादी clothing not only because we like the texture of the fabric, but primarily because we consider buying खादी a part of our civic duty. During the Indian Independence Movement, my maternal great-grandfather was summarily dismissed from the elite Indian Civil Service in Bengal when his pro-खादी, Swadeshi (Hindi: स्वदेशी) sympathies came to light. Dadu (my maternal grandfather) would wear only खादी dhutis, while Dida (grandma), a politically engaged active member of the Indian National Congress party, would patriotically wear coarsely spun खादी sarees. My mother's maternal uncle, jailed sixteen times by the British for his involvement in the freedom struggle, never wore anything but खादी. My mother's brother, who was in his early teens at the height of the struggle for independence, spent hours spinning cotton in his spare time. My father, once hauled to jail-as a ten-year-old child-for participating in a rally against the British Raj, vividly remembers seeing strong Swadeshi supporters spinning खादी on charkhas in his neighborhood in the Bihari city of Khagaria...
Both my parents recall what Maria Misra labeled the "bonfire of vanities": where foreign-made clothes were burnt in massive piles by Indians, as a part of a refusal to remain dependent on foreign manufacturing (Gandhi was arrested for doing so in 1929). खादी, in that context, became a symbol of our revolutionary zeal, of our struggle to unshackle ourselves from colonial oppression; of our desire to self-govern. Officially, the Indian flag may only be made out of Khadi cloth, and at one point, an image of the charkha was on the Indian flag. It makes sense, then, that for my parents, like millions of others, खादी is no mere cloth. It is a symbol of Indian independence; of the sacrifices, hardships, and struggles that got us here; its texture is woven into the national langscape, the invincible spirit of an oppressed nation, and the hopeful dreams of the one free.
जय हिंद!
For a gallery of pictures from the Fair, click here.