ABSTRACT
Agriculture was the heart and core of Hindu civilisation. Cotton remained the authentic product of village industry, employing the traditional tools of the peasant in sharp contrast to the cotton mills of Bombay, symbols of a wholly alien mode of life. The cultivation of cotton fulfilled a variety of functions in the life of society. It facilitated the agrarian colonisation of the interior of the subcontinent and brought cotton into the regular rotation of crops amongst a people who disliked change more than anything else. Cotton remained a labour-intensive crop and so created employment upon an immense scale in cultivation, processing, transportation, storing and marketing. Yields remained low and the typical staple short but the number of varieties of the plant rose by 1905 to 323, compared to 129 in the USA.2
