HISTORY OF COTTON IN INDIA

Cotton in India is the "King of Crops" and is also the "White Gold" of India. The history of Cotton is as old as the history of India. From time immemorial, India was the only country known for its cotton fabrics, the rest of the world being clad in wool. An examination of the samples of apparel found in the excavation at Mohen-jo-daro disclosed to the world the height of excellence reached in the manufacture of cotton textiles on India some 5000 years ago.

In fact, for over 3000 years (1500 BC to AD 1700) India was recognized as the cradle of the cotton industry. The earliest reference to cotton is found in the Rig-Veda written about 1500 BC. More than a thousand years later, the great Greek historian Herodotus testified that Indians possessed "a kind of plant, which, instead of fruit, produces wool, of a finer and better quality than that of sheep : of this the Indians make their clothes". Soon India had a flourishing trade in cotton textiles with Greece, Egypt, Persia and the Roman Empire. For twenty centuries thereafter, Indian cotton fabrics clothed the kings, the nobles and the slaves alike in most parts of the Old World.

What is astonishing is that even two milleniums after the Indian cotton muslins found their way in the ancient civilization of Athens and Rome, cotton spinning and weaving remained almost the exclusive monopoly of skilful Indian craftsmen. As Baines observes, it was not until the 13th century that the cotton industry "was introduced into Italy or Constantinopole, or even secured a footing in the neighbouring empire of China". And even so, outside India, in both Europe and Asia, the industry had only "a lingering and ignoble existence" and was hard put to face the stiff competition from imports of finer Indian muslins and calicoes.

While cotton marked the beginning of human civilization, it also inaugurated the Industrial Revolution in England during the 18th century with the advent of Hargreaves "jenny" in 1764 and Arkwright's "spinning frame" in 1769, both of which mechanised cotton spinning. Soon followed Cartwright's powerloom that mechanised weaving. The establishment and development of the Lancashire textile industry was only a short step from these inventions. The factory system began in England in 1785. The spread of British rule over India coincided with the growth of industrial revolution in England. And what the mighty Roman and Ottoman Empires failed to achieve, the British did. They gave a deathblow to the ancient Indian cotton industry through massive import of cheaper cotton textiles into India from the United Kingdom. The Indian monopoly in cotton muslins for more than three milleniums ended in less than three decades after the British consolidated their power in India following the defeat of the Marathas in 1818.

Yet, even the British rulers of India could not neglect Indian cotton. For "practically till the end of the eighteenth century, no source of supply of cotton other than India was known to the world". Even as early as in 1764, India exported about 10,000 bales of cotton to Great Britain. But the growing Lancashire industry needed more and better cotton. Small wonder, the British Government in India "took every conceivable measure to aid and encourage - and even to undertake - the cultivation in India of more and better cotton and its clean marketing to Great Britain". While these efforts reduced India from riches to rags in less than half a century, and transformed the age-old ace producer of finest cotton muslins in the world into a decayed colonial vestige supplying raw-cotton to feed the industrial revolution of both the West and East (Japan), to the dismay of the British Government the spirit of Swadeshi also emerged simultaneously, which later fanned the freedom movement and led eventually to the exit of the British from this country in 1947.

The twentieth century began with a new upsurge in cotton cultivation. Exports to Japan peaked 1.6 million bales in 1916-17 and though declined after the cessation of World War I hostilities in 1918 following the revival of European markets, they were still high and averaged around 40 to 50 per cent of India's total exports. Meanwhile, as India began to lose its export market in yarn in the face of intensive competition from Japan, the stage was set for the vertical integration of the Indian cotton textile industry. Till then the emphasis in the industry was more on spinning than on weaving. The situation now began to change and composite mills with both spinning and weaving units emerged. The Swadeshi movement of 1906-10 also gave a good impetus to the development of the industry. By 1914, the number of mills had increased to 214. And on the eve of the establishment of the East India Cotton Association in 1921-22, there were 271 cotton mills in the country with nearly 7 million active spindles and 1,25,000 looms, producing more than 300 million kg. of yarn and 1500 million meters of cloth. It is therefore not surprising that cotton acreage spread to 10 million hectares and production of lint rose to a new all time high of 5.5 million bales towards the end of the 1920s. Exports still absorbed almost two-third of the output.

Such was the Indian cotton scene at the time of the birth of the East India Cotton Association in 1922. During the preceding hundred years, cotton cultivation and production in the country had grown nearly ten-fold. No doubt, during the 19th century India was ravaged by frequent famines and droughts and after failed to feed its own people. But we continued to grow more and more cotton to feed the textile industry of the world.