Hand Spinning
ABOUT
Hand spinning is a meditative activity in which fibres are twisted to produce yarns that are woven to make a cloth using different types of tools like Charkha. It produces spun yarn for weaving. It is considered as one of the oldest crafts that is found around the world in some or the other form, using different tools and methods. Hand spinning is an environment friendly activity that does not need electricity or any another to operate and also its tools are very easy to make and maintain. Spinning is not only an art of making yarn but it is also a source of living in the rural lives. It is going to be our lost heritage which is the oldest form of craft that marked its beginning for the sake of covering one’s body, after the primitive ways of using leaves and animal fibres. Later it was found convenient to spin and then weave the fibres to form into cloth and cover them.
HISTORY
When India was not under the British rule, it had a rich culture of producing finest cloths made by doing hand spinning and hand weaving with attractive and beautiful designs by the artisans. But after the set up of industries in India by the British, there was a complete destruction of our tradition replacing handloom production with mill production stopping the individual village industries especially for the cotton textile industry. With the beginning of exporting the raw materials for production from India and again bring them back in India for purchase, they made India a weak from the base restricting different of productions except for the ones they were interested in producing, pressurized the farmers to grow Spices, Cotton and Indigo for processing them back in their country, and introduced American cotton in India which was very cheap. Indians were mastered in Ginning, Spinning and Weaving. To destroy such mastery they started setting up mill industries in huge numbers for mass productions substituting handloom. Such mills were mainly designed for the American Cotton production of long staple length. Slowly the invention of American cotton in India declined the growing of Indian cotton substituting American cotton whose quality was inferior. Introduction of mechanized spinning affected the livelihood of the farmers, spinners, weavers and artisans tremendously. Even today, very less number of people who are doing spinning in the country compared to the mill production because it is less time consuming, cheaper and has faster production capacity. The ones who are in handloom sector, are spinners has no fixed income and have irregular demand due to the very less demand of handloom products. Also from generations to younger generations, handwork artisans are leaving this work and are moving towards the other means of income and resulting to the end of the spinning culture and its craftsmanship. Slowly India turned into a centralized industrialization marking the end of precious Handloom culture.
BACKGROUND
Most of the spinners found are women who used to make yarn from lint during the decentralized culture of spinning in India. They themselves were the consumers or family relatives, thus such a cloth making was a matter of prestige of the family. This made them produce the fine and quality yarn for weaving that produced the best of the clothes they could make. They had emotions and feelings while making the yarn and weaving them for their family which slowly stopped with the invention of machine to spin. The production was mostly consumed by others or the clusters that created a barrier between the direct relationship among the producers and consumers that resulted reducing the quality of the product. The spinners (mostly women) were forced to work in the big industries as a labour for producing yarn leaving their household work were they earned very less working for hours.
MG GRAMODYOG SEWA SANSTHAN
In MG GRAMODYOG SEWA SANSTHAN, we focus on hand spinning using charkha, an initiative by our Founder Mrs. Rubi Rakshit. This initiative started as a passion but now our organisation as a team value the hand work of a hand loom worker even more and aim in spreading such knowledge among people in different ways possible. Currently we have crossed over 30 different institutions where we have conducted hand spinning workshops, seminars and teaching sessions. Even at individual level we try to pass on to this culture and art of Hand Spinning. As CHARKHA is a symbol of SWATANTRA INDIA (INDEPENCE) we keep in our mind the sayings of “Charkha is an instrument of service.”
— Mahatma Gandhi
