Document 8b

The British desire for raw cotton from India influenced the development of the British textile industry and

Great Britain’s relationship with India.

… Inevitably, Indian cotton had the makings of a contentious [controversial] political issue.

By depriving India of the fruits of its own labor, England all but guaranteed that the crop

would one day come to symbolize colonial subjugation [control] and provide a rallying point

against it. When that day finally arrived in the early 190os, a frail warrior with the heart of a

lion, Mahatma Gandhi, intertwined the destinies of homespun cotton and self-rule so adroitly

[skillfully] that he made one indistinguishable from the other. Freedom became the cotton

cloth you wove and wore, a tangible [visible] protest against tyranny from abroad.…

Source: Stephen Yafa, Cotton: The Biography of a Revolutionary Fiber, Penguin Books

According to Stephen Yafa, what effect did the British cotton textile industry have on India? [1]