July 2005
By Michael Field in New Delhi
   Clothing has long been political in India and never more so in the hands of philosopher and political activist Mahatma Gandhi whose symbol was the fabric khadi which he wove himself and wore throughout his lifelong campaign.
   While Gandhi died over 50 years ago his last granddaughter, Tara Gandhi Bhattacharya, views khadi as "the heritage of humanity, the atom-bomb of non-violence", a counterpoint to globalisation.
   The Mahatma was born in 1869 in Gujarat and as a 14-year-old married Kasturba of the same age. Dressed as an Englishman he trained in England as a lawyer and in 1893 went to South Africa and prototype apartheid. He started wearing a turban but was made to take it off by a magistrate.
   Politicised by the plight of Indians, Gandhi believed in the symbolic power of clothing. In 1915 he arrived back from South Africa dressed as a peasant to start his Satyagraha Ashram, dedicated to non-cooperation with the Raj.
   Khadi or khaddar, central to Indian clothing, is hand-woven cloth using hand-spun yarn which can be cotton, wool or silk. Khadi can be coarse or of a legendary fineness such as muslin or some silks. Every family, every village, makes its own khadi.
   A story is told of Gandhi asking an old lady who lived in a dark hut in a poor village whether she needed anything. No, she replied, she had everything and pointed to her charkha or spinning wheel.
   In 1921 he started wearing the khadi loincloth he wore for the rest of his life.  
   It was a rejection of European civilisation and colonialism and a call to improve wealth through swadeshi, or homemade products. Gandhi's believed it was better to wear a loincloth than to wear clothes from overseas. The British were taking Indian grown cotton and exporting it raw to its own mills in England , turning it into fabric to be sold back to Indians at high profit.
   Gandhi did not want to duplicate the vast cotton mills of England in India , but wanted to revive the artistry of Indian clothing and honour the dignity of making it. Gandhi gave the poor independence of mind and self sufficiency and dignity.
   In 1944 his wife Kasturba died and he wrapped her body in a sari he wove. Four years later he was assassinated in the capital of the newly independent India .    Of various organisations the Mahatma founded, he lent his name to only one: the Kasturba Gandhi National Memorial Trust, set up the year after her death, to address the issues of rural women.
   Seventy-one-year-old Tara Gandhi is patron of khadi and of that trust.
   Mrs Bhattacharya wants the world to know more about her grandmother, saying that she had been the guardian of the Mahatma's conscience.
   "We still have to do it, there is still so much of India that is rural and are women."
  These days downtown New Delhi is undeniably part of the global economy; McDonalds are finding growing markets over street vendors and designer shops compete with sari emporiums.
   Mrs Bhattacharya doesn't oppose globalisation where it is appropriate, but khadi is local and good for communities.
   Khadi, she says, is "production by the masses, not by mass production".
   "The British were hurting our economy, so Gandhi said that the spinning wheel should be bought out."
   When globalisation took away the work of hands it was bad, although Mrs Bhattacharya was not dogmatic about it, seeing advantages, such as in health and science.
   Her local vegetable vendor was among the first to use a cell phone and it had plainly improved his business.
   "We live on many levels in India ."
   Recently, khadi was in a trough, caught up in something of a state funded dependency trap. The spinners and weavers, the backbone of the craft, were getting little out of it, and this had to change.

   "The creators of this supreme handicraft are the spinners and the weavers. Khadi can not survive without the welfare of these artists."
   Spinning had to be revived.
   "Even when we do not have the need for hand spinning as a source of livelihood, it is a great mental therapy and creative outlet. It has a universal appeal and its creative force will bring people together against violence and divisions. Hand spinning should be introduced in schools and colleges and clubs and hobby programmes."
   Mrs Bhattacharya, who served on a government khadi commission, was against exporting the fabric; "We need it."
   “Khadi means bread on the plate for millions of people."
   Economic growth, like khadi, had to come from the earth, from the people.
   "If it comes from the top it should go into the roots to grow trees."
   Elegantly dressed in a khadi sari, she resists the temptation to be the spokeswoman for the Mahatma. What Gandhi did was honour his conscience and what anybody wanting to be true to the message had to do was be truthful to themselves, not to what they thought Gandhi might have wanted.
   "What is our truth?" Mrs Bhattacharya says.
   She said there was a huge search for Gandhi outside India but it was as if he was going the way of Buddha: lost to India  
   Few realise that Buddha was Indian and while every Indian city has an " MG Street " and the rupee notes have his portrait on them, the Mahatma is distant to many Indians today.
   Bombings in London and killings in Ayodhya, east of Delhi , posed the obvious question of what a Gandhian response to terrorism would be. Mrs Bhattacharya said her grandfather would have sought to help the victims and understand the cause.
   The language used, such as "Islamic terrorism", was inappropriate.
   "Once you are a terrorist you are not Islamic. We are using the wrong words."
   The world was caught in a dreadful moment, “a chain of continuous violence, revenge and again violence.
   “The sentiment of fear is always the reason and the result. Somewhere, someone will have to give up the idea of taking revenge. We have to break this chain of continuous violence. Fear and love do not go together."
   Modern life, she said, was full of fear and it was why countries, including her own, experimented with atomic weapons.
   Fear of terrorism and fear of age: "Everywhere there is a fear of loneliness."
   Earlier India did not have this.
   "Our front door was always open, and the sky was not polluted. Today we have everything polluted and in a mess. Violence of the human mind and the pollution of the atmosphere are in a direct relationship."
   Grand politics are not part of her scene and she says nuclear weapons development reflects "the fear element in us all". That a country like New Zealand could declare itself nuclear free was inspirational; "it looks like a little paradise in a polluted world".
   She saw a link between terrorism and the environment, pointing to scenes of terror related deaths in Gujarat and Ayodhya: "In both places the rivers were dry and the places were so dirty. Violence is pollution and pollution is violence."
    India had the bad habit of throwing its rubbish anywhere, in marked contrast to the holiness and cleanliness important in Gandhi's doctrine.
   "We have good people, a few. Bad, even less, but we are a careless people."
   This has resulted in confusion and huge slums.
   "Everybody does what they want to do in India and that is our trouble."
   She had faith in the fascination and complicity of India .
   "This is still a country where the person who will help you will be some one who is poorer than you."
   Just across the road from her apartment, an office block had been built. Among the workers had been a solo mother who washed her child in the cold street each day.
   "But she had a smile all the same, she was working and she was not begging. This country is very complex."
   And she added: "We are a very brainy people."