CLOTHING IS CONSIDERED A POWERFUL SYMBOL in anti-colonial movements. In colonial India, textiles were closely associated with imperial economic domination; this was particularly done via the displacement of indigenous production by British industrial cloth. In this context, hand-spun khadi1 and “traditional” women’s clothing gained significant political significance. This research delves into how dress became a mediating cultural form within nationalist politics. While women’s sartorial practices varied across regions, religions, and castes, this research focuses centrally on khadi as the key case study. It will hence be via khadi that broader questions of gendered nationalism can be examined.
A propos khadi, it does not stand in for all women’s dress; more precisely, it serves as a particularly visible and ideologically intersection point where politics, economy and morality meet. According to Partha Chatterjee’s argument in The Nation and Its Fragments (1993), Indian nationalism divided the world into an outer/material domain2 and an inner/spiritual domain3. While the outer domain could adopt Western techniques, the inner domain had to preserve authentic national culture. This reason is why women became symbolic guardians of this inner sphere. Their clothing was not incidental; it became one of the most visible markers of national identity par excellence. The “new woman” had two sides of the same coin; for instance, she was educated while being modest, and politically aware while morally restrained. Clothing was central to this reconfiguration.
Now, this question can be raised: were women shaping sartorial nationalism (as active agents), or were they being shaped by it (passive agents)? According to Tanika Sarkar, nationalist discourse often intensified expectations of female purity and sacrifice. The adoption of khadi, for instance, symbolized simplicity and moral discipline; however, at the same time it also carried prescriptive implications regarding women’s labor. In this view, khadi must be approached critically. Mahatma Gandhi framed khadi as the ethical fabric of the nation — a symbol of self reliance and dignity. His own minimal attire functioned as a deliberate political language by signalling solidarity with rural poverty and critique of industrial capitalism. In this view, scholars such as Judith Brown and Faisal Devji have shown that Gandhian politics was also profoundly ethical and disciplinary. Within this context, this article asks the main question on how women’s clothing functioned as a contested cultural and political site within the Indian Independence Movement.
