Handlooms, Weavers, and Ethical Fashion

Purushu Arie

5 years ago

Handlooms at Banaras, India

Gandhi adopted Khadi as a political iconography in protest against British mill-made cotton. In the 21^st century, Gandhi’s anti-Colonial Swadeshi politics are garnished with the ethos of sustainability, dressed with notions of handmade luxury, and marketed as the beacon of hope to uplift the indigenous weavers of India. Khadi’s share in textile production has doubled in the last five years. While the handlooms movement has empowered various elite sections of the Indian textile industry, the weavers, however, continue to remain underpaid labourers often working in hazardous environment.

POWERLOOM VS HANDLOOM

Looms operated with the aid of electric power for the manufacturing of cloth are called as Powerlooms whereas the Handlooms are looms operated without aid of power. The elite-castes owned powerloom sector roughly accounts for 60% of fabric production in India whereas the oppressed-castes dominated the handloom sector despite employing a whopping 11 million indigenous artisans, contributes to 15% of fabric production. While the Government of India protects the interests of the handloom sector from the encroachment of the powerloom industry by way of reserving certain specifications for exclusive production by handlooms (Handlooms Reservation of Articles for Production Act, 1985), the need to nurture powerloom industries were also addressed simultaneously by the state.

“The hand loom worker was lured with the carrot of sops to race on a bullock cart on a road that moved much faster than his vehicle, and against a competitor who drove a racing car. It was a race that was illogical, the hand operated loom can never be as productive as the mechanized, power driven mill. It can never achieve the economies of scale required to compete in a commoditized market, because the hand loom is a lone worker and his family, not an organization like the mill.” – Round Table India

When I visited Benaras craft clusters in the early 2010s, inadequate wages and resultant high-job dropout rates were the biggest concerns bothering handloom weavers on the ground reality. The weavers at Benaras were then paid a meagre wage averaging about Rs.150 per day. A recent study by the Centre for Handloom Information and Advocacy in Andhra Pradesh found that 55% of weavers’ families earn less than Rs 1,000 a month. Handloom weavers are forced to look out for other jobs with better pay and there’s no bigger loss to the craft than the loss of such highly skilled artisans & craftsmen. Gandhi championed Khadi in colonial India to compete British-mill made goods. Average Indian weavers still don’t have access to the power-driven machines the British used even 70 years ago!

ETHICAL FASHION & GANDHIAN HANDLOOMS

Small scale industries are scattered and largely supported by individuals (and immediate family) unlike the powerloom mills operated in larger scales. Loss of eyesight due to inadequate lighting conditions is alarmingly common among handloom weavers.

“The hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord” – Karl Marx

Craft specific labour groups like the handloom-weavers, as well as the hegemony of elite classes in powerloom sectors, are salient characteristics of Varnashrama society.

UPDATE: LINKS À LA MODE, AUGUST 9TH, 2019

This post was featured on Links à la Mode fashion roundup by Independent Fashion Bloggers.