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Dhoti
Refers to hand-woven Indian cloth. Gandhi encouraged his supporters to wear khadi and boycott British-made cloth.
Khadi Quotes in Kanthapura
The Kanthapura quotes below are all either spoken by Khadi or refer to Khadi. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Section 2
Quotes
“May I ask one thing, Moorthy? How much has one to pay?”
“Nothing, sister. I tell you the Congress gives it free.”
“And why should the Congress give it free?”
“Because millions and millions of yards of foreign cloth come to this country, and everything foreign makes us poor and pollutes us. To wear cloth spun and woven with your own God-given hands is sacred, says the Mahatma. And it gives work to the workless, and work to the lazy. And if you don’t need the cloth, sister—well, you can say, ‘Give it away to the poor,’ and we will give it to the poor. Our country is being bled to death by foreigners. We have to protect our mother.”
Related Characters:
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Explanation and Analysis:
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Khadi Term Timeline in Kanthapura
The timeline below shows where the term Khadi appears in Kanthapura. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Section 1
...When he came back to town two years ago, he started wearing a dhoti and khadi, and he even quit “his city habit of smoking.”
(full context)
Section 4
...start up for the day, carrying their goods in every direction. With “a bundle of khadi on his back and a bundle of books in his arms,” Moorthy heads to Kanthapura,...
(full context)
Section 8
...length of yarn yearly, plus “vow to speak Truth, and wear no cloth but the khadi cloth.” Moorthy admits that this might bring trouble with the government in the future, especially...
(full context)
Section 10
Sankar enlists Advocate Ranganna, Khadi-shop Dasappa, and a number of other volunteers to bring in a crowd for the meeting...
(full context)
Sankar’s father helped Dasappa run the khadi shop, where he sold cloth from around India and distributed political leaflets to aspiring Gandhians....
(full context)
Rather, Sankar takes Hindi classes above the khadi shop, since Hindi will be India’s national language. He does not greet people in Kannada,...
(full context)
Section 18
...refuse to stop even when millions are beaten and thrown in jail. They only buy khadi cloth and the money in circulation ends up with the Congress, not the government. Gandhians...
(full context)
