Cotton cultivation and hand-weaving in the Indian subcontinent stretches back thousands of years — among the earliest textile traditions on Earth. Long before industrial machinery existed anywhere, Indian weavers were already producing cloth so fine that visiting traders struggled to describe it. In 1518, the Portuguese traveler Duarte Barbosa marvelled at the
of Gujarat and the Coromandel coast — two centuries before Britain's own textile industry existed in any recognizable form.
Cotton plant, Gujarat, India — Photo: Raunak Gayen / Unsplash
Bengal's muslin became legendary across the ancient world — cloth so fine it was known by names like aab-e-rawan ("running water") and "woven wind." It was master craftsmanship refined over generations, not marketing myth.
It was Indian cotton and calico that first taught Britain to love the fabric. Chintz and muslin from India became so fashionable in 17th and 18th century Britain that English wool and silk weavers successfully lobbied Parliament to ban Indian cotton imports outright — twice, in 1701 and again in 1721 — simply to protect their own industry. Only after this did Britain build the mechanized mills of Lancashire, industrializing what Indian hands had already perfected over centuries.
That imitation came at a devastating cost to the weavers who had originated it. By 1813, Indian cotton goods faced import duties of up to 85% entering Britain, while British cloth entered India at a mere 5%. By 1834, the human toll was severe enough that the British colonial administrator Lord William Bentinck himself wrote to Parliament:
A century later, cotton became the fabric of India's own path back to self-reliance. Mahatma Gandhi made hand-spun khadi cloth the emblem of the independence movement, calling it
— what Jawaharlal Nehru, in Gandhi's own words, called "the livery of India's freedom."
That manufacturing credibility is not an accident. Few nations can match India's particular combination — an unbroken, centuries-deep relationship with the cotton plant itself, paired with fully vertically-integrated production, from raw fibre to finished towel, at genuine scale. It is a craft passed down, not a capability built overnight.
Sources: Duarte Barbosa quote and Gujarat/Coromandel textile trade — ikfoundation.org · 25% global textile trade share, early 18th century — Vridar.org, citing East India Company histories · Calico Acts of 1701 and 1721, 85%/5% tariff asymmetry — organiser.org · Lord William Bentinck quote, 1834 — Parliamentary Papers of the British House of Commons · Gandhi khadi quote — mkgandhi.org official archive · Wimbledon towels manufactured in Gujarat since 2010 — gulfnews.com, yourstory.com, robbreportindia.com