Khadi Shilpa & Its Present status:
Written by: Nilufa Alam, Comilla
‘Cofee House er se Adda ta Aj r Nei’ as like this famous song by great Manna Dey, the khadi Shilpa and industry is no more in its right shape now a days. The real Khadi Shilpa is almost going nowhere else. Khadi Shilpa is a Traditional handicraft of Bangladesh which is mostly concentrated on greater Comilla district.
History of Khadi Shilpa: Hand-loom has always been a very popular handicraft in this sub continent since very ancient times. Hand-loom was always exported to abroad after meeting the demand of regional people. A professional group was always dedicated to produce Hand-loom. The people of that group was known as ‘Jugi’ or ‘Debnath’. With the sequence of that Hand-loom, it becomes very popular during the time of Non-Cooperation Movement of Mahatma Gandhi. During that period of time, Khadi’s cloths were produced from cotton of Rangamati. A large number of Jugi/Debnath were living in Chandina, Debidwar, Burichong and Sadar Thana of Comilla. When Mahatma Gandhi called for avoiding foreign products, whole comilla gets up with revolution and the production of Khadi cloths also started to increase very quickly. People from all over the country started to accept khadi cloths. It becomes famous day by day.
Ovoy Asrom launched by Gandhi played very important role to flourish the Khadi Shilpa. It was used as a social shelter for people. People used to come there and they got the opportunity to buy wheels in very reasonable price from Ovoy Asrom. Ovoy Asrom authority themselves also started to produce Khadi fashions and they also did marketing and distribution of Khadi dresses produced by people from remote areas.
It is known that, a 8 feet Dhuti’s price was only 5 Paisa during 1926-27. In that fiscal year Comilla Ovoy Asrom sold different Khadi items of 9,00,000 taka. In an article of Porimol Dutta, a worker of Ovoy Asrom, he said, there were lots of demands for Khadi items. But, Ovoy Asrom could not supply enough quantity of cloths. To meet up the ongoing demand of Handloom, a cavity was been created by the workers under the leg run paddle for acceleration of the production. As the cloths were produced from Khad (Cavity), so those were getting identified as Khadi. Now ‘Khadi’ is also known as ‘Khoddor’.
Prospect of Khadi Shilpa:
Utilization of local resources:
Khadi shilpa can allow us to utilize a lot of local resources. Because, almost all the ingredients of Khadi items are our local resources. The people engaged with this industry are also from very remote areas of our country. So, if Khadi Shilpa gets a momentum, our human and non-human local resources can be utilized in proper and productive way.
Women empowerment:
Khadi Shilpa of Comilla was mainly a cottage industry. Village women were used to get lots of opportunities for producing these Khadi products and earn some money. The old people who can not work in field. The teen age people who cant do hard work can also do this work by sitting home.
Positive Branding of the Country:
Khadi is one of our own unique assets. It can be a very good tool of positive branding of our country if we can create some good demand of Khadi fashion in abroad. It will represent our country. Khadi dresses are very comfortable and fashionable. So, we just need some fine tuning on this industry to make this uniqueness of Bangladesh in abroad.
Exporting possibility: We all know that, there is a very good reputation of our garments items in outside the country especially in first world countries. If we can produce good quality Khadi dresses, we can export those items in different countries and get a handsome amount of foreign remittance.
