Compliments for malkha

"You are beautiful, raw and rustic and so very elegant" says Tina Roy on Malkhafreedom's facebook page. A nice combination of adjectives to describe malkha fabric!

Why malkha?

"There is no beauty in the finest cloth if it makes hunger and unhappiness". Today the business of making cotton yarn is in the hands of those who can put big money into setting up big spinning mills, using high energy technology, to make a profit only for the investor, not for those who actually run the machines. But making yarn from cotton lint  is easy as Gandhi showed. Malkha takes a step towards that simplicity by doing away with 'baling'. Baling, pressing loose lint into tight cubes, is the first step in the industrial process. Uses lots of energy, damages the fibre. Surely a better way can be found when cotton farms and mills are cheek by jowl!

And mechanization of cloth making has thrown millions out of work, not just weavers but all those who provided the services that hand-weaving needs. Mass-produced cloth is cheaper to buy, but social and ecological costs are far higher.

The resilient handloom

The handloom is a resilient tool, and coton handloom weaving has survived many deliberate attempts to destroy it. Well documented studies of such efforts include the decimation of the cotton industry of Bengal by importing subsidized machine made yarn and cloth. Dr James Taylor speaking of the city of Dhaka in 1840 describes the results thus:

"The manufacture of thread, the occupation in former times of almost every family in the district is now, owing to the comparative cheapness of English thread, almost entirely abandoned, and thus the arts of spinning and weaving, which for ages have afforded employment to a numerous and industrious population, have in the course of 60 years, passed into other hands that supply the wants not only of foreign nations, but of the rivalled country itself. This decline of manufactures and commerce, as may be naturally expected, has occasioned a diminution of the population of the city. In 1800 the inhabitants were 200,000, but now they do not amount to more than 68,038 in number, according to the census of 1838. Poverty has increased in a far greater ratio than population has decreased, … the majority of the people belonging to the lower classes, are from want of work in a very destitute condition, and are glad to procure any employment, however unsuited to their previous habits, to enable them to earn a subsistence for themselves and families.

The town presents symptoms of decay corresponding with the diminished population and reduced circumstances of its present inhabitants. A great number of houses are unoccupied or in a state of ruin. Drains, ghauts, lanes, and bridges are neglected from the want of funds to keep them in repair. The suburbs are overrun with jungle, while the interior of the town is filled with stagnant canals and sinks, containing refuse
animal and vegetable matters, which taint the water of the neighbouring wells. Disease prevails as may be supposed, to a great extent, throughout all classes of the community, but especially among the poorer inhabitants in whom it is aggravated by their impoverished diet. It is chiefly dependent however on locality for its development, and has its origin in the unwholesome water and the numerous muddy canals and stagnant pools above mentioned. These sources of malaria are extending widely every year, and whilst impure exhalations thus generated, affect the great body of the people with disease, incurable maladies and infirmities of the most humiliating character, are every where presented to our view in a crowd of wretched, helpless objects, who procure a precarious subsistence by begging in the streets."

Even the Governor-General, William Bentinck, was forced to report that 'the misery hardly finds parallel in the history of commerce. The bones of the cotton-weavers are bleaching the plains of India.' Crocodile tears, because he did nothing about it.

So its pretty amazing and a great tribute to the resilience of the handloom industry that in the 21st century it is the largest employer in India after agriculture, hanging on in spite of cheaply made powerloom fabrics pretending to be handwoven, while the Government looks on and does nothing, like Lord Bentinck. In fact the Government itself has produced a new threat: a plan to change the very definition of handloom to include several mechanized processes!

For fabric lovers

"There is nothing more exhilarating for a fabric-lover to enter a village for the first time and hear the vibrant sound of looms clicking away into the 21st century" says Katherine Joseph in the May 2010 issue of The Ecologist. And who is not a fabric-lover? The marvels created by hand looms and shuttles seem to delight the heart in a way that machine made cloth cannot. Here is a pic from  this year's Puja edition of the Bengali magazine Shananda of an indigo dyed malkha saree: