The social life of things: The origins of swadeshi (home industry): cloth and Indian society, 1700–1930

After 1905, the import of British-made cloth into India and the ensuing destruction of Indian handicraft production became the key theme of Indian nationalism. In the hands first of Bengali leaders and later of Mahatma Gandhi and his supporters, the need to support swadeshi (home) industries and boycott foreign goods was woven through with notions of neighborliness, patriotism, purity, and sacrifice, all of which provided unifying ideologies more powerful than any single call for political representation or independence. The destruction of indigenous weaving and the influx of foreign cloth became visible, material symbols for nationalists, comparable to those represented in other societies by literary or legendary motifs: “loss of country” in Indochina and China, the coming of the Just King in Indonesia, or the notion of the ending of Babylonian Exile in Caribbean and African societies. That cloth could evoke such powerful symbols of community and right conduct was due to the important role cloth and clothes played in Indian society - not merely in fixing and symbolizing social and political statuses, but in transmitting holiness, purity, and pollution. This essay seeks first to elucidate these roles of cloth in precolonial society and then to show how they were transformed in the colonial period. In doing so, the essay uncovers some special features of the role and meaning of commodities in Indian society over the last three hundred years.