By Dr Ashish Virk & Dr Aman Amrit Cheema
With Gandhi Jayanti celebrations concluding, this is a good time to ruminate about an aspect of Mahatma Gandhi that few have thought about. The “half-naked fakir”, as Prime Minister Winston Churchill called him, is a reflection of the Britisher’s western concept of clothing. The comment was taken as a compliment by Gandhi as it showed his Indian sartorial integrity.
Clothing, no doubt, is an important element through which one’s personality is communicated. However, in the present era of fast fashion, it has become a source of anxiety. The cheap production of trendy clothes by the textile industry has resulted in a throw-away culture. There is no limit to the consumer’s demand for knock offs of the season’s latest trends. This has resulted not only in various global prejudices, but deviated from the Gandhian Moral Marg of Re-Clothè India, a route he introduced through his Swadeshi Movement and led to him becoming a Fashion Icon.
The popular Swadeshi Movement, which started in 1905 in Bengal, was part of the Indian freedom struggle and enhanced national movements such as the Non-Cooperation Movement and the Civil Disobedience Movement. It was under Gandhi’s guidance that the Swadeshi Movement became more of a spiritual awakening for people to make, wear and use their garments than of boycotting foreign products. However, the popular movement did not lose its significance with the attainment of freedom as it is relevant today and can guide us in different ways.
Swadeshi Vow for Sustainable Consumption
For Gandhi, khadi and charkha were tools to show the strength of one’s body, mind and soul. He believed that hand-made khadi made the soul strong as one practices the principles of hard work and simple living. They can then concentrate on strengthening their soul, rather than exhausting their lives on external elements and sartorial pleasures.
He also encouraged people to take a swadeshi vow to simplify their lifestyle by limiting their wants. Through the Swadeshi concept, Gandhi introduced us not only to handmade, organic and limited clothing, but also to the moral philosophies of needful and sustainable consumption, beauty beyond admiration and appreciation and recognition of self, inner happiness and simplicity.
Independence brought with it western liberal thought of freedom of choice and right to consumption, resulting in the fast fashion movement in India. Though Gandhi gets the credit for being a whistle-blower of consumer rights in India, he always promoted it at a basic moral and sustainable principle. Superabundance, the darker side of consumerism, is the focus of fast fashion. It is completely delinked from the Gandhian idea of soulful clothing and consumerism.
Colin Campbell, in his book The Romantic Ethic and The Modern-Day Consumption, talks about the concept of Imaginative Hedonism and Fast Fashion. He said that present-day consumption of clothes is like imaginative escapism, a phenomenon that is bound to fail every time, leaving the consumer with a new desire again. This vicious circle of desire, acquisition, use and throw, disillusionment and renewed desire is never-ending, said Campbell.
So, we are living in times where we have made our wants our needs. The textile industry, coupled with social media, has made us slaves of these endless desires. Moreover, the ability to choose from a wide range of costumes, to exercise one’s purchasing power, the mad and mindless rush to consume and the desire to show off wealth have all changed today’s expression of happiness and beauty. They are subject to the number of likes on social media. Indian society, which has a glorified history, is moving away from it in praxis. The Gandhian Swadeshi vow needs re-routing, especially in the minds of the youth so that expenditure on clothing decreases, leading to sustainable consumption.
Fashion Diet
The meaning of Swadeshi in the context of clothing has other deep rooted and multifaceted dimensions. Gandhi believed that machine-made cloth led to two kinds of ills—it brought suffering to labourers and secondly, the machines used for the manufacturing led to the release of excessive heat resulting in destruction of life in myriad ways.
The advent of fast fashion resulted in both his apprehensions coming true. The Rana Plaza Disaster 2013 at Dhaka is one such horrific example. Here, an eight-storied commercial building, containing five clothing factories of big brands like Walmart, Adidas and Gap collapsed during working hours killing 1,100 workers, and injuring more than 25,000. The incident ignited debate on the safety measures for workers of the garment industry in developing countries like Bangladesh, China and India and the growing demand for trendy cheap clothes throughout the world to satisfy the fashion appetite.
Secondly, the excessive heat from manufacturing is not only leading to air pollution, but land and water pollution too, causing environmental injustice. According to World Wildlife Fund 2019, 200 tonnes of fresh water is used for washing, bleaching, dyeing of fibers, resulting in water pollution. Moreover, synthetic fibers like polyester and polyamide cannot be recycled. Nylon, for instance, takes 30-40 years to decompose.
Greenhouse emissions are another environmental issue which needs attention. Studies have shown that the fashion industry is responsible for the release of million tons of carbon-dioxide. Soil erosion, land degradation and threat to various plant species are also environmental concerns associated with the fast fashion industry. Therefore, Gandhi’s suspicions came true about mill-made cloth resulting in the destruction of the environment.
Gandhi logically believed that integrity in a fabric comes through various factors like its origins, means and modes of production and the results of its production which should be an enhancement of an equitable society. The disappointing conclusion is that mass-produced fabric is largely cheap, chemically made and hence, synthetic in nature. The means and modes have always been questioned on moral and legal grounds.
Moreover, high-end designers have created a market beyond the reach of the middle class, resulting not only in a replica culture, but dividing society into new classes of originals and duplicates. The Gandhian morality of cloth has lost all relevance, creating a different mission for clothes—status satisfaction rather than soul enhancement. The moral, ethical and environmental ills attached with fast fashion can be curbed if we move towards organic clothing like khadi.
Gandhian Moral Limits
However, while dealing with clothing in the context of economics and consumerism, the practical issue that may invalidate all this is the business behind fast fashion. UN Sustainable Development Goals, which has been acknowledged worldwide including in India, talks about economic growth of nations keeping in view social and environmental concerns. Advancement, resulting in injustice of any kind, is not worth appreciation. Such development has to be sustainable, and that is a legal and moral duty.
Gandhi can again be a beacon light in this situation as he always believed that true economy had to serve the poorest before it can serve the rich. Emma Torlo, in her article, Clothing Matters, Dress & Identity in India says that Gandhi’s idea about the Swadeshi Movement was to bring awareness amongst Indian consumers, respect for local products and to establish a sustainable society. He had a vision for economic growth with social equality. For Gandhi, means were more important than the ends. So economic development as an end would be appreciable only when it is through the right kind of moral norms, and fast fashion is definitely neither ethical nor moral.
Thus, the textile industry should be cautious about its social obligations and consumers should be vigilant towards their individual responsibility. Manufacturing details, labour issues, material used and sustainability percentage should be harmonious towards self and society. Under the philosophy of the Swadeshi Movement, there are always moral limits of the market. We, as Indians, need to appreciate that clothing is related to our soul and strength and we have a traditional moral and ethical principle towards it.
The real tribute to the Mahatma will be if we can prove to the world that we are clothed in spite of our nakedness, and that they are naked in spite of their clothing. But this is possible only if we take a Swadeshi Vow of Fashion Diet and re-route Gandhi as our Fashion Icon.
—Dr Ashish Virk and Dr Aman Amrit Cheema are professors at Faculty of Laws, Panjab University, Chandigarh