In one of our lookbooks, we started to talk about the global historical and current contexts of cotton as a raw material and its economic and political implications. We decided to do this on the one hand because we see it as our duty to gain and share knowledge together, but on the other hand also because much of what you can learn in the process also has to do with the founding of Lebenskleidung.
While in the last text we were initially concerned with a kind of overview, this time we would like to turn our attention to India - and thus to a country that has a special significance for us. The story of Lebenskleidung is directly related to this country: Enrico and Ben studied together in Thiruvananthapuram/Kerala for a few semesters and through the many impressions and experiences they made the decision to found Lebenskleidung in order to be able to counteract the violent and inhumane cultivation and production conditions associated with cotton fabrics in the long term.
Historically, as is unfortunately all too often the case, it is due in particular to the effects of globalization, capitalism and empires that India's cotton industry can look back on centuries of violence and oppression, and the traces and structures of all this are still abundantly clear today.
The Industrial Revolution in England was able to profit significantly from the fact that the British Empire plundered its many colonies, or rather: their subjugation and plundering was a basic prerequisite for its success. The British East India Company was central to this: the main business of the private trading company, which existed between 1600 and the late 19th century, was cotton. Trade with Bengal, a region in the east or northeast of the Indian subcontinent, was monopolized, tax levies were driven up to horrendous levels, and craftsmen were forced to sell their goods at ever lower prices. The great famine in Bengal in 1770 was also a direct result of these power imbalances. The Empire had bought up the rice grown in the region and resold it at a higher price. In combination with crop failures and a drought, this led to an almost unimaginable catastrophe in which 10 million people lost their lives.
The developments that took place in Europe at about the same time further forced the asymmetries between the 'mother country' and the colony. With the Spinning Jenny, an efficient machine for processing cotton was invented in 1764, which weakened India's role in the production of goods, which had been firmly anchored there historically (it is not for nothing that economists speak of Indian cotton products in particular being the first global consumer goods) and turned the colony into a mere supplier of raw materials. India as a competitor for the products made in England was finally a scenario that could be risked. England found strategies for this that were perfidious: The Empire introduced high import duties and prohibited the colony from trading with other countries in Europe.
And something else happened as a result: the Indian markets, which were known for high-quality cotton products, were less and less able to keep their handicraft businesses alive, as more and more low-quality (but cheap) English yarn forced its way into these markets. The colonial power did what colonial powers did: it waited until all the crafts and manufactories were destroyed and millions of spinners and weavers were forced to flee the country. The fact that the Dharma Chakra, which is found today in the Indian national flag, visually resembles a spinning wheel is no coincidence. Together with Gandhi, it became the great symbol of the resistance and struggle for independence between the two world wars, which was decidedly about the boycott of English goods - and a reconquest of the Indian ways of textile production and thus ultimately about a detachment and emancipation from the British Empire.
This detachment actually took place in 1947: The Indian Independence Act marked the partition of British India into Pakistan and India and thus de jure the end of the British colonial period. In an article on European decolonization efforts published in 2018, it says: "Surprisingly quickly, Britain also withdrew from India. There, strengthening nationalist, Hindu, and Muslim movements, the huge Indian war effort, and also the famine that had broken out in Bengal as a result of the war economy had decisively weakened British rule. [The British] decided to flee forward, and when Lord Mountbatten, the last viceroy to exercise governmental authority over the crown colony on behalf of the British government, came to India, he even moved the date of independence forward by a year, to August 15, 1947. [...] The decolonization of India was violent and chaotic. Since it was not possible to unite Muslims and Hindus, the partition of the country into the Hindu-dominated state of India and the Muslim state of Pakistan occurred with independence."
Historically, many examples can be found of the ambivalences that arise when former colonies are granted independence. The question is always how a postcolonial view, which is still Eurocentric, can be dissolved in favor of new constellations - and under what conditions this is possible at all. It is striking that many of today's relevant texts on hybrid spaces of cultural encounter or 'Europe as a province' originate from Indian-born theorists.
But let us turn our gaze back to the years after independence and partition - and also to Gandhi, whose slogan and idea was that independence always and first of all means economic independence. In India, since the 1950s, there have always been serious unrest, often centered on the resistance of workers and peasants. In the 1950s and 1960s, there were so-called land donation campaigns, the aim of which was to persuade large landowners to give up parts of their land to poorer sections of the population. The 1970s, on the other hand, saw the 'Chipko' movement, an organization of rural women whose aim was to protect forests in central India's Uttarakhand - and successfully so.
Also well known are the strikes of the early eighties, when hundreds of thousands of workers from textile factories took to the streets for wage increases and better basic services - but in vain. The list of forms of struggle and resistance is long, and yet one must observe that in India, as in other parts of the world, an economic liberalization policy has increasingly prevailed since the 1990s, opening doors and gates for multinational corporations in particular: cynically, the country and its resources are once again being sold out.
Around half of India's workforce now works in agriculture. Often, however, the indebtedness of families increases in the course of this. The reasons for this are falling sales prices and rising production costs. Seeds and fertilizers in particular are often so expensive that farmers cannot actually afford them. Behind this, of course, is a strategy of large corporations such as Bayer's Monsanto, which want to maintain the dependency relationships of the farmers and earn more and more from them.
In recent years, these developments have culminated in Prime Minister Modi's efforts to reform agriculture, which pushes for the liberalization of agriculture and, in the eyes of many small farmers, primarily favors large corporations. The resistance that ensued was incredible: more than 500,000 women farmers took to the streets for months, the most since Modi came to power in 2014, and it was successful! Last November, Modi withdrew the planned agrarian reform. With an eye on the upcoming regional elections this spring, political calculation was certainly the driving force here, and yet: it is evident that resistance and protest are means that can bring about change.
The belief in transformative processes and revolution is what runs through the centuries - and something worth fighting for in everything we do. It is not for nothing that we are regularly in India and are a founding member of the Green Fashion India Initiative, which focuses on local production, the use of natural fibers and ethical standards in processing. Just a few months ago, at the end of November 2021, Lebenskleidung co-founder Ben was in Pune in the Western Indian state of Maharashtra, speaking at the 8th GFI conference alongside Vijayalakshmi Nachiar (founder and creative director of the sustainable South Indian saree label 'Ethicus'), Dr. Patsy Perry (lecturer in fashion marketing at the Manchester Fashion Institute) or Yogesh Gaikwad from the Society of Dyers and Colourists.
Such exchanges are incredibly important to us and make it clear that countries and regions that we perceive as peripheries from a Western perspective and due to historical structures are precisely not that. In fact, they are centers where incredibly important conversations and changes are taking place.
