the way they appealed to the people. Images of Indian gods and goddesses regularly appeared on these labels. It was as if the association with gods gave divine approval to the goods being sold. The imprinted image of Krishna or Saraswati was also intended to make the manufacture from a foreign land appear somewhat familiar to Indian people.
By the late nineteenth century, manufacturers were printing calendars to popularise their products. Unlike newspapers and magazines, calendars were used even by people who could not read. They were hung in tea shops and in poor people’s homes just as much as in offices and middle-class apartments. And those who hung the calendars had to see the advertisements, day after day, through the year.
In these calendars, once again, we see the figures of gods being used to sell new products. Like the images of gods, figures of important personages, of emperors and nawabs, adorned advertisement and calendars. The message very often seemed to say: if you respect the royal figure, then respect this product; when the product was being used by kings, or produced under royal command, its quality could not be questioned. When Indian manufacturers advertised the nationalist message was clear and loud.
If you care for the nation then buy products that Indians produce. Advertisements became a vehicle of the nationalist message of swadeshi. Conclusion Clearly, the age of industries has meant major technological changes, growth of factories, and the making of a new industrial labour force. However, as you have seen, hand technology and small-scale production remained an important part of the industrial landscape.
Look again at Figs. and . What would you now say of the images they project? Fig.
– Sunlight soap calendar of . Here God Vishnu is shown bringing sunlight from across the skies. Fig. – An Indian mill cloth label.
The goddess is shown offering cloth produced in an Ahmedabad mill, and asking people to use things made in India.