Khadi over the decades: How Gandhi’s fabric found a new life

On the occasion of Gandhi Jayanti, the charkha inevitably returns to public memory as one of the most recognisable symbols of India’s freedom struggle.

But for Mahatma Gandhi himself, spinning yarn was never just about symbolism. It was an economic idea, a political weapon and, perhaps most importantly, a way of allowing ordinary Indians to participate in a national movement.

By asking people to spin their own yarn, wear khadi and reject imported cloth, Gandhi turned something as everyday as clothing into a unifying weapon to challenge the economics of British rule.

When cloth became a weapon

Swadeshi had already emerged as a powerful political idea before Gandhi, most notably during the agitation against the Partition of Bengal in 1905. Gandhi, however, gave it a different scale alogether. He placed self-reliance at the centre of mass politics, with the charkha and khadi becoming its most visible symbols.

There was a clear economic logic behind the movement. Colonial India supplied raw materials, while British factories in Lancashire and Manchester manufactured finished products, including cloth, which was then sold back into the Indian market. As machine-made textiles became more widely available, traditional Indian spinning and weaving came under growing pressure.

Gandhi saw hand-spinning as one way of changing that relationship. In his writings, he argued that millions of agricultural households needed supplementary work and that spinning could put additional income into rural homes and incorporate women into national economics.

According to the Mahatma Gandhi archive, Gandhi saw the charkha as a way of reducing the economic drain from India while supplementing the earnings of peasants. Khadi, in his imagination, was also a decentralised economic model in which production and consumption could remain closer to the village economy.

That was what made khadi such an unusual political tool. One did not necessarily have to march on the streets or court arrest to take part in the freedom movement. An Indian could spin yarn at home, wear locally produced cloth or simply refuse to buy imported fabric.

In other words, even consumption became political.

The movement soon developed an organisational backbone. According to the Prime Ministers Museum and Library, the All-India Spinners’ Association was formed in 1925, taking over the work of the All-India Khadi Board and helping organise khadi production across the country.

By then, khadi was doing more than providing cloth. Economically, it supported local work. Politically, it challenged dependence on British goods. And socially, it offered Indians from very different regions and backgrounds a common symbol of the national movement.

A Rs 7,869-crore khadi market

More than a century later, khadi exists in a very different India. Its association with Gandhi is still central to its identity, but around that legacy has grown to a sizeable commercial ecosystem.

Even today, khadi is not simply a particular look or texture. Under Khadi and Village Industries Commission’s (KVIC) Khadi Mark protocol, genuine khadi has to be made from natural fibres such as cotton, wool or silk and must be hand-spun and hand-woven in India. The certification system is meant to prevent mill-made fabrics from being sold under the khadi name.

And the business has expanded sharply.

Provisional FY2025-26 data released by KVIC in May 2026 show that sales of khadi textiles reached Rs 7,869 crore, up from ₹1,081 crore in 2013-14. Production increased from Rs 811 crore to Rs 3,974 crore over the same period.

KVIC’s FY26 data show that sales across the wider Khadi and Village Industries (KVI) sector reached Rs 1,87,105 crore in 2025-26, compared with Rs 31,154 crore in 2013-14. Production stood at Rs 1,25,296 crore, while employment linked to KVI activities rose to 2.04 crore people, from around 1.30 crore 12 years earlier.

Khadi itself employs around five lakh artisans. KVIC said in May 2026 that women account for more than 80% of the roughly five lakh khadi artisans, while spinning remuneration has increased from Rs 4 per hank in 2013-14 to ₹15 currently.

Behind those numbers lies something familiar from Gandhi’s original idea: every finished kurta, sari or jacket still rests on a labour-intensive chain of spinners and weavers.

From charkha to the global runway

What has changed more dramatically is where khadi now wants to go.

In July 2026, KVIC used Bharat Tex 2026 to showcase khadi under the theme “Khadi Reimagined: Tradition for Contemporary Living”. The pavilion featured contemporary home décor, indigenous-fibre products and designs aimed at younger consumers. The idea was to move khadi beyond its traditional image and align it more closely with the demands of a modern global market.

That push has also begun travelling abroad.

In August 2026, the Fashion Design Council of India took “Khadi Beyond Borders” to New Zealand Fashion Week in Auckland. Designers including Rajesh Pratap Singh, Pawan Sachdeva, Shruti Sancheti and Samant Chauhan showcased khadi through contemporary fashion rather than treating it only as a heritage textile.

That repositioning could be important for the industry. Khadi’s handmade nature makes it difficult to compete with industrial textiles purely on price, speed or volume. But those very qualities can become strengths in markets where consumers value craftsmanship, provenance and slow fashion.

Digital push and a bigger ambition

The next big battleground could be online.

In May 2026, KVIC said it was preparing to launch a revamped khadi e-commerce platform aimed in part at Gen Z consumers. It also set a target of taking overall KVI sales beyond Rs 2.51 lakh crore in FY2026-27.

For a product that has traditionally relied heavily on khadi institutions and physical stores, stronger digital distribution could open up a much wider consumer base including younger buyers who may have little connection with the traditional khadi retail network.

The challenges behind the growth

Yet turning khadi into a larger business is not straightforward.

Its biggest strength is that it is hand-spun and hand-woven but ironically, is also what makes scaling difficult. Khadi cannot match industrial textiles on speed, uniformity or cost. It therefore has to compete on other terms, namely, design, craftsmanship, sustainability and authenticity.

A March 2026 report by Parliament’s Standing Committee on Industry also pointed to some of the structural gaps. Despite the sector’s growth, employment in khadi itself remained at around five lakh people. The committee flagged concerns over market penetration, branding competitiveness and institutional capacity, and called for stronger product diversification, e-commerce integration, export promotion and larger capacity-building programmes.

The same report said the Centre of Excellence for Khadi plans 11 capacity-building programmes between March 2026 and February 2027, with Rs 7.66 crore allocated to train around 400 artisans and personnel, an effort the committee described as modest compared with the scale of the industry’s requirements.

The road ahead

Policy is increasingly trying to address that transition.

According to the Ministry of Textiles, the Mahatma Gandhi Gram Swaraj Initiative, outlined in 2026, aims to strengthen khadi, handloom and handicrafts through training, skilling, better production quality, branding and global market linkages. The larger goal is to help rural enterprises become more scalable and export-oriented.