Khadi

What is Khadi?

Khadi is cloth spun by hand and woven by hand, mostly from cotton, though silk and wool can be mixed in. The yarn is drawn out on a charkha, a small spinning wheel, and it is the coarseness of the finished cloth that led Gandhi to call it khadi. He promoted it as swadeshi, meaning goods made at home, and the word is understood right across the Indian subcontinent. It is worn as everyday clothing, and it is also bought by people who want to support hand spinning. The cloth does not trap heat in hot weather and holds warmth when it is cold, and it is often starched for a stiffer feel.

Where does Khadi come from?

Cotton cloth from India travelled widely long before the word khadi was in use. Traders from Greece and Rome bought fine cotton in large amounts, and in medieval times it reached Rome along the sea route known as the maritime Silk Road. Merchants from Arabia and Surat carried Gujarat and Coromandel textiles to Basra and Baghdad, and the trade went east towards China by way of Java. Ibn Battuta, travelling in the 14th century, wrote that the sultan of Delhi sent five kinds of cloth as gifts to China's Yuan emperor. Indian mill and hand textile production fell to its lowest point after the uprising of 1857. Khadi then grew into a quiet economic revolution, and the movement that carried its name began in 1918.

How is Khadi made?

The fibre is cleaned and spun into yarn on a charkha. Gandhi used a double-wheel design he called the Patti Charkha, built to spin faster and take up less room, and in 1946 he recommended the simpler takli over the charkha when money was being poured into more productive wheels. Spinning by hand is slow, and the yarn comes out less even than mill yarn, which is stronger and more consistent. That unevenness shows in the woven cloth. Weavers once preferred mill-spun yarn for this reason, and some used it to make finer khadi for wealthier buyers, a practice Gandhi objected to.

How Khadi is worn

Khadi is cloth rather than a single garment, so it is cut and stitched into whatever the wearer needs. In the museum collections the sources mention, it appears as muslin sarees from a 1710 group of 350 pieces held by the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Gandhi himself dressed in a dhoti, a length of cloth wrapped at the waist and drawn between the legs, and added wool shawls when the weather turned cold. The sources do not describe any particular way of draping khadi as a saree.

When Khadi is worn

From 1934 the cloth became something villagers could use for themselves, and it stayed in everyday use alongside its political role. Members of the Indian National Congress were required to spin cotton and pay their dues in yarn, so spinning became part of party life. The first Swadeshi Exhibition, held at the Belgaum Congress session in December 1924, showed khadi, spinning wheels and village crafts together. Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke at Khadi Utsav in August 2022, calling khadi a movement to help people who are poor.

Styles of Khadi

Khadi ranges from coarse cloth to a fine, soft kind known as muslin khadi, which researchers have tried to recreate. They identified phuti carpas as the cotton variety behind muslin, working from the DNA of the plant and from motifs on muslin sarees in a 1710 collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Handspun and mill-spun yarn give different cloth, and weavers long argued over which to use. After independence the government reserved some production, such as towel making, for handlooms, which weakened traditional weaving skills while power looms grew.

What Khadi means

Khadi carries the memory of the freedom struggle. Gandhi made swadeshi, the boycott of foreign cloth, central to the campaign against colonial rule, and he asked Congress members to spin their own yarn. The Khadi and Village Industries Commission, a statutory body created after independence, holds the trademarks khadi and Khadi India, and has defended them in India and abroad, registering them in places including Bhutan, the UAE and Mexico. The oldest khadi organisations still running are in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Bihar, Jharkhand and Tamil Nadu, and the weaving they support remains a livelihood for rural families.

Questions people ask about Khadi

Good reading and sources

• ‘Khadi’, ‘Khadi India’ not generic names, rules tribunalThe Hindu, Article
• Search ResultsV&A, Article
• LifeStyleThe Daily Star, Article

• Khadi on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• More photos on Wikimedia CommonsPhotos and video
• Wikidata recordOpen data