Clothing : A Social History

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In 1905, Lord Curzon decided to partition Bengal on the pretext of better management. The Swadeshi movement was a reaction to the partition.

People boycotted British goods and started patronising things made in India.

Many Indian goods were patronised especially khadi. Cloth became a symbolic weapon against British rule.

Khadi: Gandhiji made khadi a forceful weapon against the British. Mahatma Gandhi even experimented with various forms of clothing starting from the western form of dress to wearing it with a turban. He decided, by the beginning of the 20th century, to wear a lungi and kurta (in Durban). A few years later he adorned himself as a Kathiawadi peasant. The dhoti was adopted by him in 1921. But not all could wear khadi.

In 1905, Lord Curzon decided to partition Bengal on the pretext of better management. The Swadeshi movement was a reaction to the partition.

People boycotted British goods and started patronising things made in India.

Many Indian goods were patronised especially khadi. Cloth became a symbolic weapon against British rule.

Khadi: Gandhiji made khadi a forceful weapon against the British. Mahatma Gandhi even experimented with various forms of clothing starting from the western form of dress to wearing it with a turban. He decided, by the beginning of the 20th century, to wear a lungi and kurta (in Durban). A few years later he adorned himself as a Kathiawadi peasant. The dhoti was adopted by him in 1921. But not all could wear khadi.

Mahatma Gandhi’s dream was to clothe the whole nation in khadi. He felt khadi would be a means of erasing the difference between religions, classes, etc.

some examples of other responses to Mahatma Gandhi’s call:

1. Nationalists such as Motilal Nehru, a successful barrister from Allahabad, gave up his expensive Western-style suits and adopted the Indian dhoti and kurta. But these were not made of coarse cloth.
2. Those who had been deprived by caste norms for centuries were attracted to Western dress styles. Therefore, unlike Mahatma Gandhi, other nationalists such as Babasaheb Ambedkar never gave up the Western-style suit.
3. Many Dalits began in the early 1910s to wear three-piece suits, and shoes and socks on all public occasions, as a political statement of self-respect.

The Indian Dress: Indians wanted to create a dress which could express the unity of the nation. But this did not fully succeed.

The Swadeshi and Khadi: British political control of India had two important effects —peasants grew cash crops and the British goods flooded the Indian markets, especially cotton. A lot of weavers and spinners were left without any work. Murshidabad, Machilipatnam and Surat which were important textile centres declined as demand decreased.