COTTON REVOLUTIONARY

COTTON  REVOLUTIONARY CONTRIBUTION OF INDIA TO TEXTILE INDUSTRY WORLD
 

In 1492 when Christopher Columbus found cotton being cultivated in the Bahamas, it was declared to have ‘discovered’. Cotton is estimated to be about 7,000 years old .It is the most widely used natural fiber cloth in clothing today. It has its origin in ancient India.
 

According to the Columbia Encyclopedia, Cotton has been spun, woven, and dyed since prehistoric times in ancient India and cotton textiles were woven in India with matchless skill, and their use spread to the Mediterranean countries.
 

Cotton was used in the Old World at least 7,000 years ago (5th millennium BC) in Mehrgarh, of present pakistan, where early cotton threads have been preserved in copper beads. Cotton cultivation became more widespread during the Indus Valley Civilization, which covered parts of modern eastern Pakistan and northwestern India. The Indus cotton industry was well developed and some methods used in cotton spinning and fabrication continued to be used until the industrialization of India. Between 2000 and 1000 BC cotton became widespread across much of India. For example, it has been found at the site of Hallus in Karnataka dating from around 1000 BC.
 

The Greeks and the Arabs were not familiar with cotton until the Wars of Alexander the Great, as his contemporary Megasthenes told Seleucus I Nicator of "there being trees on which wool grows" in "Indica". This might actually be a reference to the 'tree cotton', Gossypium arboreum, which is a native of the Indian subcontinent. SO THAT IS HOW IT REACHED GREECE..
 

A dark period in the history of Indian cotton industry was when English people chopped off hands of Indian weavers from Bengal to destroy the Indian weaving industry and promote textiles imported from Britain.
 

British government discouraged the production of cotton cloth in India; rather, the raw fibre was sent to England for processing. Mahatma Gandhi described the process:
 

1. English people buy Indian cotton in the field, picked by Indian labor at seven cents a day, through an optional monopoly.
 

2. This cotton is shipped on British ships, a three-week journey across the Indian Ocean, down the Red Sea, across the Mediterranean, through Gibraltar, across the Bay of Biscay and the Atlantic Ocean to London. One hundred per cent profit on this freight is regarded as small.
 

3. The cotton is turned into cloth in Lancashire. You pay shilling wages instead of Indian pennies to your workers. The English worker not only has the advantage of better wages, but the steel companies of England get the profit of building the factories and machines. Wages; profits; all these are spent in England.
 

4. The finished product is sent back to India at European shipping rates, once again on British ships. The captains, officers, sailors of these ships, whose wages must be paid, are English. The only Indians who profit are a few lascars who do the dirty work on the boats for a few cents a day.
 

5. The cloth is finally sold back to the kings and landlords of India who got the money to buy this expensive cloth out of the poor peasants of India who worked at seven cents a day. (Fisher 1932 pp 154–156)
 

NO WONDER THE SPINNING WHEEL LATER BECAME THE ICON OF INDIAN FREEDOM STRUGGLE… BOSS! INDIA IS DIFFERENT…HERE IT IS NOT THE SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST; IT IS SURVIVAL OF THE NOBLEST.

PROUD TO BE BORN IN INDIA