CHENNAI: What emerged as a fashion dictate became a fashion fabric for the sophisticated and elite.” That’s Sabita Radhakrishna, a textile doyen of Tamil Nadu, speaking about the fate of the freedom fabric khadi. India might have moved far from the need to assert a collective identity and put up resistance in the form of self-reliance as in the days when Gandhi spearheaded the khadi movement, but one would think there’s no rewriting the common-man spirit of the fabric.
That is until you find that a khadi kurti with a label to it might demand a month’s paycheck. Somewhere along the way, the disconnect between what sells and what keeps it affordable has removed the garment from the vicinity of its humble origins and allowed it to collect the ‘status symbol’ tag. And feelings are pretty mixed about it.
Ganesh* has been a patron of one of the city’s many Khadi Emporiums since the time his grandfather took him shopping as a young boy. Today, the 36-year-old buys a bulk of his formal shirts there for as cheap as Rs 350. Something that baffles his friends, especially female ones, who usually end up spending that much on just underwear. “And it’s so much more comfortable than what they sell for Rs 2,000-Rs 3,000. It’s not as good looking but it’s really comfortable,” he brags, vouching for the shop’s limited collection. But even this win is limited to menswear.
Where it falters
“I would love to shop at Khadi Emporium. They have some nice readymade kurtas for men. But the garments for women are very shabbily designed. They don’t have the style, the cut. Besides this, if you want low-priced handloom material, you make a beeline for Co-optex. Being a government-run shop, they get subsidies. But, you really have to search for the good ones; it’s not always available. This is the challenge we face,” explains Sabita, putting forth the average woman’s struggle.
Ask Bessie Cecil, an expert in her own right, about this and she says this is about the tenth step in the problem and we can’t get to this unless we take a good hard look at what’s wrong with the industry every step of the way. “There’s a lot of difference between the erstwhile khadi and what we have now. The khadi, when Gandhi started the Swadeshi movement, was completely handmade.
There is something called pre-spinnings and spinning; these processes were completely done by hand. Today, Ponduru in Andhra Pradesh is the only place that continues this method. But even they are struggling. Elsewhere, the first seven steps are done with machines; the eighth process of spinning is semi-mechanised. So nothing is by hand. The Ponduru centre comes under Khadi Board but doesn’t get due credit for its work. Whereas a brand like Fab India, run by one person as a business, manages to do it well on their own,” she points out, offering an explanation to why these products might carry a higher price tag than what’s available through the government.
Sabita says that along the way, polyester yarn was introduced to the khadi process. Given that this made the fabric smoother and came in so many colour options, it caught the attention of designers who began using it for their ramp shows. “That brought khadi into the focus. It served a dual purpose of being ‘patriotic’ in buying khadi; secondly, it was very elegant. There was a lot of versatility in it. But, the common man’s taste has also changed — we no longer want to invest so much in khadi. Being a coarser fabric, they find it oppressive. While it actually absorbs a lot of perspiration and is ideal for this weather, we find ourselves turning to soft fabrics like mulmul that are kinder to the skin. So, unfortunately khadi has veered off to the upper echelons of society,” she offers.
Collaboration for a cause
As disturbing a trend as this may be, khadi is going the way handloom and even cotton went, suggests designer Nalini Sriram. “There are a lot of middle-class people who don’t even want to wear cotton because it is so difficult to maintain. The tendency is to reach for synthetic material. So, khadi will have to fight for survival despite all this. But, right now, khadi is seeing some interest — there are a lot of designers taking it up, organisations supporting khadi weaving. It is becoming a statement fabric,” she says, placing some hope in its revival. While the interest from designers has only served to present the fabric to a section that can afford its price, Nalini suggests that fashion always percolates from the top down. While it might take a while to manifest, it’s bound to happen, she assures.
Sabita herself had been involved in precisely such work. She had worked closely with the Khadi Board and collaborated with weavers through her boutique. For years, she had commissioned fabric from the Gandhigram village in Dindigul a huge khadi centre to design outfits for her clients. All it needed was to be packaged right. “When government has an emporium, they should necessarily have a panel — people with good taste, who have had handloom background, who have worked with weavers, who have a knack for designing. It’s not necessary to bring all NIFT students; while they have been trained to do it, they lack experience. If they were to be guided by someone with experience, they could make a formidable team. Beyond this, if someone wants something exclusive, they can go to the boutiques,” she suggests.
Where priorities lie
But Bessie doesn’t seem to share this belief. While the Khadi Board has been known to recruit designers about the only time it makes news to collaborate with weavers and promote their work, it doesn’t always translate to tangible results, she says. “There are people who run successful labels and have excellent business even internationally. But when they are made part of Khadi Board, I don’t know what their contribution is. There is a disconnect at every level.
The first disconnect is our understanding of the subject itself; unless we do, we do not know the next step. We were shooting a video for Handloom Day and the girl who was weaving was wearing a synthetic dress. The team wanted to make her wear cotton. But that’s the thing — for her, handloom is a livelihood, whereas for me, it’s a way of living. These are two different perspectives. It’s time our vision incorporated this, instead of holding on to structured ideas and forcing it on to people,” she offers. Towards that end, all three women agree that education is a necessary part of revival and reclamation.
Apathy on part of the government machinery, too, is a common grievance. Sabita talks about a huge stock of khadi fabric lying unused in the Khadi Emporiums’ godowns. It’s not often that they manage to put it to good use in time. All this when weavers here desperately need attention.
Another aspect to focus on should be accessibility, says Nalini. “It shouldn’t be that only Khadi Emporium has khadi. Retail stores no longer stock khadi like they used to. On the other hand, there are more Khadi Bhandars in the city than before. When you are looking at bringing it into the general population, every cog in the wheel helps,” she suggests. This time around, maybe the wheel comes together.
*Name changed.