By Yoshika Sharma
Did you know in 1st century CE Roman Noble women were been given india cotton to wear and for this the Roman Empire used to spend 2 crore gold coin.
Natural fibers are the fibres that come from natural sources like plants and anmals . India was always home natural fibers . In about 5000 BCE farmers in the Indus valley civilization used to cultivated cotton which was India' s first natural fibre , they were also the first ones who started the spinning and weaving of cotton . The vedas include unlimited texts regarding spinning , weaving and dress designing .
In Rigveda male weaver were termed as ''vaya'' and female weaver were termed as ''vayatri'' . Threads , shuttle , loom, were one of the important object in this industry.
In 327 BCE when Alexander attacked India , the soldiers of his army started to like india cotton wear instead of their wool uniform , as cotton was breathable, allowed coolig and drying airflow , and made it a summer staple. other than cotton , India is a home to many other natural fibers like jute , coir etc .
Coir ; coir is made from extracting the action hair of coconut , it was used to made ropes and threads . In chola empire coir was used in ship building which made this fibre more prominent .
In 16th century during Akbar's regin . Akbar considering the warm climate of india introduced cotton to the nobility instead of silk . Due to the boost in textile industry the Mughal era was termed as the golden period for the indian textile industry.
Like cotton jute is also a natural fibre , which was usedby the Indus valley civilization from 3rd millennium BCE for manufacturing of clothes . Jute is most prominently grown in West Bengal and Assam . Rope , twine , Mat , and sack are some of the articles made from jute .
During the 17th century the Dutch and french merchants started the jute trade from Bengal to Europe . In the British colonial rule the Britishers established jute factory in eastern India and cotton factory in western India . The Britishers started the first jute mill in the 1855 kolkata from which Burlap ( a special white jute cloth) got its place in the iternationa market . During the 1880 the manufacturing rate of jute in India was 50% of the world jute production.
During early 18th century a fibres made century a fibre made from cotton named Calico ( a cheap fabric rom Calicut ) was gaining market iin Britain . Seeing the increasing demand for Calico , Britain passed a Calico law 1700 to stop the import of Calico from India , and England started the export its synthetic fibres to India which made Indian weavers unemployed and made Indian textile industry flattered for years , there was no coming back of the indian natural fibres . But then in 1918 at the sabarmati ashram in Gujrat , Khadi cloth was weaved and thus this gain marked the begining of start of new era . Seeing this boost , Mahatma Gandhi initiated the Khadi movement in which synthetic fibres from Britishers were boycotted and people were encouraged to use Desi goods and khadi and other natural fibres .
Natural fibres are considered the backbone of Indian textile industry which is projected to reach $195 billion by 2025
References
Ahmed, F., & Mondal, M. I. H. (2021). Introduction to natural fibres and textiles. In Fundamentals of natural fibres and textiles (pp. 1-32). Woodhead Publishing.
Kumar, P. S., & Suganya, S. (2017). Introduction to sustainable fibres and textiles. In Sustainable fibres and textiles (pp. 1-18). Woodhead Publishing.
Olhan, S., Khatkar, V., & Behera, B. K. (2021). Textile-based natural fibre-reinforced polymeric composites in automotive lightweighting. Journal of Materials Science, 1-44.
Thomas, S., Paul, S. A., Pothan, L. A., & Deepa, B. (2011). Natural fibres: structure, properties and applications. Cellulose Fibers: Bio-and Nano-Polymer Composites: Green Chemistry and Technology, 3-42.
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