National First Handloom Day

Prime Minister Narendra Modi today announced August 7 as National Handloom Day to mark the 1905 Swadeshi movement.

Modi also launched the 'India Handloom' brand at a function in Chennai. The brand will help weavers cater to more global markets, he added.

The PM also called for increased use of handloom products, saying a 5% increase in comsumption will increase revenues by 33% for the sector.

“The handloom sector has inherent strengths that we need to market. Can we not enhance use of handlooms in our daily lives,” he said in his speech. “We should enlarge the scope of e-commerce for sale of handloom products."

The PM landed at Chennai airport at 10.35 am and was received by Tamil Nadu governor K Rosiah, J Jayalalithaa and her five senior cabinet ministers. Later the Prime Minister and governor left for Madras University, where the Prime Minister officially announced the day.

It was on August 7, 1905 that the formal proclamation of the Swadeshi Movement was made in a meeting at the Calcutta Town hall. The movement involved boycotting British products and the revival of domestic products and production processes. 

Around 3,000 handloom weavers from various parts of the country attended the function at the Madras University Auditorium today. 

Tamil Nadu CM, however, gave the function as miss, without providing an official reason. Jayalalithaa had not attended former President APJ Abdul Kalam's funeral earlier due to health reasons.

The Prime Minister also conferred the Sant Kabir awards and National awards for the years 2012, 2013 and 2014 to handloom personalities.

"The observance of National Handloom Day and honouring of handloom weavers will not only provide an impetus to India's handloom industry but would also serve to promote handloom as a genuine international product of good quality," an official statement said.

Handloom weaving provides direct and indirect employment to more than 43 lakh weavers and allied workers. The sector is responsible for nearly 15% of cloth production in the country and also contributes to export earnings. Around 95% of the world's hand woven fabric comes from India.

HIROSHIMA DAY

On this day in 1945, at 8:16 a.m. Japanese time, an American B-29 bomber, the Enola Gay, drops the world’s first atom bomb, over the city of Hiroshima. Approximately 80,000 people are killed as a direct result of the blast, and another 35,000 are injured. At least another 60,000 would be dead by the end of the year from the effects of the fallout.

U.S. President Harry S. Truman, discouraged by the Japanese response to the Potsdam Conference’s demand for unconditional surrender, made the decision to use the atom bomb to end the war in order to prevent what he predicted would be a much greater loss of life were the United States to invade the Japanese mainland. And so on August 5, while a “conventional” bombing of Japan was underway, “Little Boy,” (the nickname for one of two atom bombs available for use against Japan), was loaded onto Lt. Col. Paul W. Tibbets’ plane on Tinian Island in the Marianas. Tibbets’ B-29, named the Enola Gay after his mother, left the island at 2:45 a.m. on August 6. Five and a half hours later, “Little Boy” was dropped, exploding 1,900 feet over a hospital and unleashing the equivalent of 12,500 tons of TNT. The bomb had several inscriptions scribbled on its shell, one of which read “Greetings to the Emperor from the men of the Indianapolis” (the ship that transported the bomb to the Marianas).

There were 90,000 buildings in Hiroshima before the bomb was dropped; only 28,000 remained after the bombing. Of the city’s 200 doctors before the explosion; only 20 were left alive or capable of working. There were 1,780 nurses before—only 150 remained who were able to tend to the sick and dying.

According to John Hersey’s classic work Hiroshima, the Hiroshima city government had put hundreds of schoolgirls to work clearing fire lanes in the event of incendiary bomb attacks. They were out in the open when the Enola Gay dropped its load.

There were so many spontaneous fires set as a result of the bomb that a crewman of the Enola Gay stopped trying to count them. Another crewman remarked, “It’s pretty terrific. What a relief it worked.”