IF FABRICS WERE HEROES, khadi would be a superhero.
For how else does one describe a fabric which gets better with age, is skin-friendly, adapts to the weather, does no harm to the environment and lasts a really long time?
Now the fabric, long overlooked in favour of its snootier cousin linen, is “going places”, said Navneet Sehgal, additional chief secretary, Uttar Pradesh Khadi and Village Industries Board (UPKVIB).
It is a fabric that gets its name from khad—the Hindi/Punjabi for ‘pit’. It was originally called khaddar—born of the pit loom on which its earliest versions were woven.
Even though the most popular identification of khadi is with Mahatma Gandhi and the freedom struggle (and thus the Gandhi ashrams which retail the fabric and other handmade products), in his autobiography, Gandhi writes that he had no recollection of when he first saw a charkha. But by 1908 it was clear to him that the surest way to attain freedom was to climb out of poverty by harnessing traditional skills. Weaving was one such skill.
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