AMSUAhimsa clothing – The Story

Back ground – re-establishing the connection

Cows are sent to slaughterhouses because, “Farmer left Mother Cow”.

Farmers are committing suicide because of the same reason, “Farmer left Mother Cow”.

After Maharaja’s lectures in the summer of 2016, we wanted to re-establish this natural connection between Agriculture and Mother Cow.

Apart from food cultivation, we also focused on cotton cultivation as there are more suicides among cotton farmers and hence they are in more need of Gau Mata.

But seed was important. With BT seeds (Genetically Modified) Cow Based Natural Farming is not very successful as the seed itself is not natural.

So we started with NON GMO seeds. When we learnt that most of the Indigenous variety cotton are not compatible with cotton mills, we started working on Hand Made Cloth.

Cows and Farmers:

2 quintals of Non GM (non BT) cotton was

purchased from a farmer named Lavanya

Ramana Reddy, Nagar Kurnool , Mehaboob

Nagar, Telangana.

Perhaps she is the only farmer in Telangana

who is cultivating cotton through Cow Based

Natural Farming. We got 70 kg seeds from the

1st quintal which is used for cultivation this

year in Polkampalli and also distributed 3 kg

seed to 2 farmers (devotees).

We paid 20% more than the regular price at

that time.

Making Ginning Machine

Worked on this for more than 2 months to

understand and make this simple hand operated

machine.

Tirumallayya local carpernter in Polakampalli

worked with dedication and completed this

wooden machine after doing lot of research on

various types of wood needed for separate parts.

Pic : Tirumallayya making hand operated ginning

machine.

Ginning Cotton – Removing Seed From Cotton

100 kg of Cotton contain 70kg of seed, this tells

us how tedious this task is. With the above

machine a person can remove seeds from 3- 4 kg

of cotton.

Our Godbrother Laksminath Prabhu and Narayana

Reddy worked for 45 days to remove seeds

completely from 100kg cotton.

Carding – Loosening the Cotton

We spent nearly 1 month for understanding and searching for

traditional carding (Dhunki). Finally a person (we call him

Saheb) from Miriyalaguda, Telengana helped us in this

activity.

Pic of his son Mastaan, with traditional carding instrument.

Hand Spinning – Lint to Yarn (thread) making

Parallelly, we covered the oldest khadi institutes in

Telangana for 2 – 3 months, no use. Met many

wonderful people in this journey and finally we

were directed to Gopuri, Wardha, Maharashtra.

This is a very long story, just to keep it short. This

institute in Wardha, Gramseva Mandal, agreed to

help us in making hand operated machines (though

they don’t exist now).

But they could only give us one machine (assembled

from their old scrap) in the whole process.

So we couldn’t make it Zero Electricity this cycle.

Hand Weaving – Yarn to Cloth

We nearly spent more than 3 months, covering 13

villages searching for independent Khadi weavers.

There are many weavers, but Khadi weavers are

very few because now weavers prefer “Mill Yarn”

and Khadi weaving is more labor intensive.

Narsimhulu Garu of Koyala Gudem, Telangana

guided us through the initial phase.

Pic : Narsimhulu Garu weaving a cotton saree.

Continued …

Finally we found 9 weavers in a village near

Siddipet who were abandoned by a Khadi Samithi

4 years back and they were jobless . They even do

not have proper tools now.

So we had to spend time to understand and funds

to get their tools made.

They weaved approx. 150 meters of cloth with the

yarn we gave them.

We are paying 100% more than the wage they were

getting previously.

Pics : Beam machine which we had made in Siricilla

Our weaver Venkatesham with our cloth on Pedal

Handloom.

Natural Dyeing – Applying Colors with Plant

Based Dyes

Bina Rao, an elderly lady expert in natural dyeing with

over 20 years of experience helped us in Dyeing process.

Blue color is extracted from natural Indigo plant, and

red from Alum.

Finally the colors were vibrant!

Cost Distribution of the Project

Cows & Natural Farmers

7%

Rural Hand Spinners

14%

Handloom Weavers9%

Natural Dyeing20%

Stiching18%

Training, Infra, Sustainance

32%