Question

why was national dress needed to define the cultural identity?how did mahatma gandhi use khadias a national symbol?

Answer 1

1)
As nationalist feelings swept across India by the late nineteenth century, Indians began devising cultural symbols that would express the unity of the nation. Artists looked for a national style of art. The search for a national dress was part of this move to define the cultural identity of the nation in symbolic ways.

2)

• Mahatma Gandhi consciously rejected the well-known clothes of the Indian ascetic and adopted the dress of the poorest Indian.
• Khadi, white and coarse, was to him a sign of purity, of simplicity, and of poverty.
• Wearing it became also a symbol of nationalism, a rejection of Western mill- made cloth. He wore the short dhoti without a shirt when he went to England for the Round Table Conference in 1931. He refused to compromise and wore it even before King George V in Buckingham Palace.

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