Khadi of Comilla

Handwoven cloth

The cloth called khadi is made by hand, and the kind woven in Comilla has been wanted for a very long time. People of every class buy it, at home in Bangladesh and in other countries. Comilla is a district in the east of the country, and weaving there is one of the crafts the area is known for. The work happens in small workshops and in weavers' own houses, on looms that need little more than a frame and a pair of feet. Nobody can say exactly when the first weaver set up in the district, but demand for Comilla cloth on the subcontinent is described as old.

Where the name comes from

Two explanations are offered for the word khadi, and the accounts disagree rather than settle the matter. One ties the name to the process. As demand rose and ordinary buyers wanted more cloth, weavers dug a pit in the earth and drove the loom with a foot pedal. The pit, khad in the local speech, gave the fabric its older name khaddar, and khadi came after. The other explanation looks outside the region and says the term reached these parts from Gujarati. Both versions are given as possibilities rather than certainties.

Gandhi's call

Cloth from Comilla entered politics in 1921. Mahatma Gandhi, campaigning against British rule, asked Indians to take up goods made at home and turn away from imported ones, and khadi became the fabric people wore to show where they stood. Demand for Comilla's cloth grew in those years, and the organised khadi industry of the district is dated from the same period. What had been a household trade and a local market gained a public purpose. The same boom left a memory of Gandhi in the weaving quarters of Chandina, where cloth is still made with that history in mind.

Builders and weavers

The next chapter belongs to the 1950s. After the campaign for the Bengali language in 1952, Akhtar Hameed Khan, who headed Comilla Victoria Government College and who later founded BARD, the rural development academy then called PARD, helped set up the Khadi and Cottage Industries Association, with support from Feroz Khan Noon, the governor of the day. In the same years khadi was woven at the Abhyasram in Comilla, at the Prabartak Sangha in Chittagong and at the Gandhi Ashram in Noakhali. A cooperative in Chandina that Khan had established passed to Shailen Guha, and later to his son Bijan Guha.

The trade today

Chandina, Muradnagar and Debidwar hold thousands of weaving businesses between them, and the families running them work to hold on to the reputation the district has earned. It is not easy. Factory cloth made with modern technology is cheaper to turn out, and the price of the raw materials that go into khadi keeps climbing in ways the weavers cannot plan for. Their cloth was given international recognition for its quality in 1994. Those who write about the trade argue that it needs state help: soft loans for the people at the looms, and some grip on material costs.

How Khadi of Comilla is kept

Weaving khadi in Comilla is daily work rather than a festival or a rite, and it passes through households and small workshops. A loom is set up, once over a pit dug into the ground with a foot pedal to work it, and the weaver turns out cloth to sell. The trade lives on in Chandina, Muradnagar and Debidwar, where thousands of such businesses operate. Associations and cooperatives have carried the public side of the work: the district body formed in the 1950s, and the Chandina cooperative that Shailen Guha took on and his son Bijan Guha later kept going.

When and where

Khadi has no fixed date. Weaving continues through the year in the workshops of Comilla district. Two moments mark its story instead: 1921, when the boycott campaign sent demand upward, and the years after 1952, when the industry was organised into associations and cooperatives.

Comilla district in eastern Bangladesh, with its strongest concentration in the Chandina, Muradnagar and Debidwar upazilas, or sub-districts, which between them contain thousands of weaving businesses. Early accounts also name three other sites of khadi weaving: the Abhyasram in Comilla, the Prabartak Sangha in Chittagong and the Gandhi Ashram in Noakhali.

What Khadi of Comilla means

Khadi once meant a choice about clothing that was also a choice about politics. Wearing cloth made at home, in the years when Gandhi asked Indians to refuse British goods, was a way of saying whose side you were on. In Comilla that meaning has not been forgotten. Today the cloth stands for the skill of the weavers, for the name the district has built abroad, and for the stubbornness of a trade that keeps going while factory cloth undercuts it.

Questions people ask about Khadi of Comilla

See also

Nakshi kanthaA traditional embroidered quilt from Bengal, made by stitching layers of old cloth into colourful, patterned textiles.JamdaniA fine handwoven cotton cloth of Bengal, patterned with motifs worked in by handMuslinA fine handwoven cotton from Bengal, once famed worldwide and woven again todayRangoliFloor patterns of rice flour, sand or petals, drawn at the doorstep for festivals

Good reading and sources

• The story of KhadiThe Daily Star, Article
• The story of KhadiThe Daily Star, Article

• Khadi industry of Comilla on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• Wikidata recordOpen data

It may contain mistakes. Traditions differ from one family, village and community to the next, and the people who keep them know them best. If something is wrong, tell us. Last refreshed 2026-10-14.