ABSTRACT
The first two chapters traced the path from early-nineteenth-century paintings of spinning to its isolation as a standardised, gendered iconography of nostalgia for the constructed, bucolic Indian village. This chapter serves as a culmination of these discussions, and examines the appropriation of spinning by the anticolonial movement, specifically within Gandhi’s visual rhetoric. It asks why spinning operated as a potent symbol of unity, swaraj (self-rule), and swadeshi (support of India-made goods) during the early years of the movement, how it was deployed alongside other symbols like khadi (homespun cloth), and what visual and political payoffs came from employing spinning as a symbol and performative act.
