Journal Archive

The landmark Colonial and Indian Exhibition of 1886 showcased the best resources and products from over 33 British dominions. Inaugurated by Queen Victoria it received over 5.5 million visitors – an unprecedented record for an exhibition. The comprehensive catalogue that accompanied the exhibition while describing the magnificent array displayed at the Indian pavilion contained these cryptic words “3 pieces of the Benaras Kinkhabs or cloth of gold brocades call for no special remarks….” Going on to say “…but (they) command attention as the most effective of all the fabrics shown.” Elaborating further they described the fabrics as “the gorgeous and beautiful Kinkhabs and gold brocades from the looms of the holy Banaras” Kashi, Banaras, Varanasi - the many names of one of the oldest inhabited cities of the world whose textile links have been and remain an interinsic part of the city. From the c. 2nd century B.C when Patanjal, the great grammarian in his text Mahabhasya mentions kasika textiles as being more precious than others to references in ancient Buddhist and Jain literary sources that mention Kashi as an important weaving and trading centre, the glimpses continue through the ages. The principle history of Mahmud of Gazni, Tarikh –us –Subuktigin by Baihaqiin written in the 10^th century listed the textiles of Banaras as one of the prized plunders of his raids. Kabir the great weaver-mystic poet lived and worked in Banaras in the 15^th century. In his 16^th century chronicle Ralph Fitch, merchant and trader wrote of the cloth is made there for the Mughal court. Though his visit to Banaras was brief Jean Baptiste Tavernier the French jeweler and merchant was struck by the wealth of Banaras that he credited to its textile industry. Accounts of weaving and the trade in the textiles of Banaras continued from the Storia Do Mogor by Nicolai Manucci, the Italian who wrote of the great trade of gold and silver fabrics from Banaras to other parts of India and overseas in his detailed account of the Mughal court in the late 17^th century to writings on Banaras up to the present times the unchallengable links remain. The textiles that writers and traders exclaimed about were not only the sumptuous silk brocades or the Tarbana with its silk warp and metallic gold weft that created the fine, tissue textiles and the fine cotton weaves that Banaras was known for since antiquity but the legendary Kinkhab the jewel like cloth of gold and silver literally meaning 'little dreams' in Urdu. With over a hundred thousand people engaged in both the weaving and the pre and postloom activity the economy of Banaras remains inextricable connected to the loom. Using techniques that include the Kadwa which uses several weft shuttles of differently coloured threads to create the patterns to the Urtu where different grounds are made possible in individual patterns. The Fekwa throw shuttle method results in surface patterning to the Katraua cutwork patterning. The Nal Pherwa three shuttle technique where two of the shuttles wove the contrast borders while the third is used for the base the textiles are woven using a variety of loom structures from the pit looms with throw shuttles to the Gathwa thread frame and Jacquard looms. The continuing familial handloom traditions with weaves whose structures, techniques and physical quality remains related to the past can be seen in the 6^th generation of the family that wove the cloth of gold that were displayed at the 1886 Colonial and Indian Exhibition. Located in Pilli Kothi, the ancient stronghold of Banarasi weaving the family patriarch Badrudin Ansari of Kasim Silk Emporium strives to achieve a balance between the preservation of the established while innovating and adapting textures and patterns to the times and changing clientele. While Kinkhwab with specially commissioned real gold and silver metalic yarns continue to be woven – taking two months to complete a bolt of four meters - the family is now equally known for the weaving of the Gyasar brocades for Buddhist monasteries across the globe. The densely patterned silk with auspicious Buddhist symbols and floral imagery is rich with gold and silver threads. Usually woven in widths of 24 inches in pit-looms using the discontinuous supplementary warp technique it is used as altar pieces, drapery for walls, canopies, door and window frames, robes for the Buddhist clergy, as hangings, as a backing for Thankha paintings. The latest addition being the use of the textiles in building authentic film sets for Hollywood movies like Kundan and Back to Tibet. For the laity the weaves are woven for special wear as robes for women , capes for men and as trims.The weaving of the Gyasar was introduced at the time of Badrudin Ansari’s father Haji Nooruddin. Since the 1970’s the weaves have been supplied for traditional dress to the Royal family of Bhutan, while their Kinkhab are used across the globe for both dress and furnishing in palaces and luxury homes. The house of Kasim is also known for its Morpankhi, woven with peacock feathers combined with a silk warp. The textile shimmers in iridescent colors and Badrudin Ansari was awarded the Presidents National Award in 1987for his skill in weaving it. The feathers gathered in the monsoon when the peacock moults are painstaking woven in a time consuming process that allows for the completion of a 8 meter bolt taking about 2 months to complete with the furnishing fabric supplied to not only Rastrapati Bhavan but to the Kuwait Royal home. Continuing to nurture their ties and trade links with the world outside they now have a customer base spread across the globe that includes international designers to their the weaving of sacerdotal fabrics for Greek Orthodox churches. [gallery ids="165458,165459,165460,165461,165462,165463,165464"] First published in the Sunday Herald.

Issue #002, Monsoon, 2019 ISSN: 2581- 9410 Design intervention has been an established initiative of development projects initiated by Governments and NGOs across the world as a means to enhance market reach and the livelihood of craft communities. However, these multiple initiatives which are meant to support craftspeople and their communities often end up benefiting the designer’s and other commercial interests. Innumerable instances have been cited by craftspeople and others on the ethics of engagement where design development of craft traditions has ended up publicizing the designer while the craftsperson has continued to remain unnamed and unknown. In the design world, practitioners and students are well aware of the moral issues and laws governing copying and design infringements. Design practitioners use all means to protect their designs and ideas as they are alert to their moral rights, economic benefits and future business potential. However, the same level of rigor does not seem to always apply when the designers deal with traditional craft communities. While marketing pundits eulogize brand identities and designer products are the current rage, charges of cheating and infringement of design are not infrequent in these circles and counter-charges grab headlines. However, amidst all this babble of newsprint and televised footage, there is a marked absence of any mention of copying associated with the many hundreds of indigenous crafts and textiles that exist in this country. Is this deafening silence because there is no copying of these hallowed traditions? Or is it because there is a widely accepted view that copying from traditional craftsperson’s and weavers is acceptable, and, in fact, even given tacit approval? We have all seen a Warli painting featured across the pallu of one famous designer’s sari, a Madhubani motif on a jacket of another; iconic block-prints that have been screen-printed, a handloom replicated on the power-loom. Craftspeople, artists and weavers who have sewn and embroidered, cast and molded, engraved and etched, printed and painted India’s millennia old cultural identity seem to have no place in popular conversations on ‘design’ and ‘brand’ and apparently, no perceived rights or ownership of their familial and community knowledge. Mainly located in rural¹ areas, the craft sector in India provides employment to many millions of people. An overwhelming majority of whom belong to the weaker, more vulnerable sections of society, being either Scheduled caste or tribe or belonging to minorities or to ‘other backward classes’. It is an accepted truth that craftspeople and their communities are the holders and bearers of tradition, of skills and techniques, craft ritual and folklore. These hereditary skills are acquired through an inter-generational oral transmission, sharpened by apprenticeship and long practice. This amalgam of knowledge on material and processes, artistic expression and ritual meaning has responded and evolved with changing ecologies and environs over the ages, continuing to be an intrinsic part of craft practice today. Designers and manufacturers are alert to the values inherent in craft products, differing as they do from other goods. Endowed with symbolic meanings that are often greater than their inherent usefulness, these products play a special role in peoples’ lives. The Moosaris of Kerala who cast the bell metal Charakku cooking utensils in diameters of up to 8 feet, the Sthapatis of Swamimalia who cast the bronze idols are only some such examples. These craft genres are clearly delineated brand identities that have been honed over decades –often centuries – of aesthetic development, technological fine tuning, and innovation. Yet there is a strong perception within traditional craft communities of an inequality in their status as craft practitioners. While ‘new’ design input into the craft is assumed to be exclusively in the domain of the designer, crafts people, whose tradition is being explored, are relegated to a biddable, subservient role. This taxing paradox of value constantly confronts craftspeople wherein a high valuation is placed on the product, while they, the makers and holders of traditional craft knowledge are relegated to obscurity and anonymity. The additional challenge faced by crafts people is the ubiquitous availability of replicated and fake craft products that are marketed in high street stores in India and across the globe under the name of the craft or weaving cluster. Factory printed Bandhini, the traditional tied and dyed textile of Rajasthan and Gujarat to the rubber reproductions of the Kolahpuri chappals of Maharashtra, the textiles and T-shirts printed with Madhubani and Warli motifs, the iconic block prints of Bagh, Bagru, Sanganer, and other centers available in cheap screen printed copies to the famed hand woven brocades of Banaras now replicated on the power loom, are only a few such examples. The all-pervading availability of these fakes and ‘borrowings’ has hit craftspeople hard, not just economically by depriving them of the benefits of their traditional community knowledge but also deepening the perception of inequality and unfairness. Crafts people are ill-equipped to tackle this onslaught and this furthers their feeling of vulnerability. How to protect the moral right and intellectual property of craft communities over their millennium old creation and the potential economic benefit arising from it has been the subject of international debate since at least the 1982 when an expert group was convened and a sui generis model for intellectual property type protection of traditional cultural expressions was developed. (WIPO- UNESCO model provision law for folklore). After nearly three decades, however, debate still continues without any conclusive legal protective measure enacted so far. In view of the slow progress of debate at international level, some of the countries have taken initiatives at the national level to respond to their particular context and needs. Panama is one of a few countries in the world to have enacted a sui generis law to protect traditional cultural expressions and related knowledge². Introduced in 2000, the law aims at protecting traditional dress, music, dance and major handicrafts. Just as in India, wide spread sale of cheap imitation of traditional handicrafts has been threatening the indigenous craftswomen of Panama, for whom the craft is often the sole means of income. A Label of Authenticity was introduced by the Government under the Law 20 to be attached to a numbers of indigenous crafts so as to guarantee their authenticity. Although the label of authenticity does not prevent the sales of cheap imitation, it allows people to differentiate authentic traditional products and encourages buyers to pay a fair price to the producers³. In New Zealand, where the Government has a clear policy to recognize Maori rights, the national Trade Marks Act 2002 is aimed, amongst others, “to address Maori concerns relating to the registration of trade marks that contain a Maori sign, including imagery and text”⁴. The Act foresees the appointment of Advisory Committee whose function is to “advise the Commissioner whether the proposed use or registration of a trade mark that is, or appears to be, derivative of a Maori sign, including text and imagery, is, or is likely to be, offensive to Maori”⁵. Besides, Maori is one example of a society that manages property law through customary rights (Ragavan S, 1999). In India, the enactment of Geographical Indication is expected to bring much needed legal protection of community knowledge. A family of Trade-Related Intellectual Properties Right, GI Act aims at identifying good as originating from a particular place, where a given quality, reputation or other characteristics of the good become essentially attributable to its geographical origin. GI is commonly given to natural, agricultural and manufactures goods. The GI tag enables producers to differentiate their products from competing products and is considered to be effective tool to protect those good associated with or deriving from local cultural traditions. Till July 2011, 153 goods have been registered under the Act out of which 99 belong to handicraft / folk art tradition including Chanderi weaving of Madhya Pradesh, Madhubani painting of Bihar and Pochampalli Ikat of Andhra Pradesh⁶. However it is still a new system. The number of registered GI is not yet sufficient to cover the wide range of traditional crafts of India⁷. Besides, the system is mean to certify the ‘place’ of origin of a product and not necessarily to recognize the specific group of ‘people’ who make it. Further, it is yet to be demonstrated how the registration system concretely benefit the craftspeople and protects their economic and cultural rights. A strong post-registration follow-up mechanism is necessary to effectively link GI recognition and the well-being of craft communities. We therefore continue to live and struggle in an imperfect world. In the meantime, examples of passing-off, misappropriation and borrowing of traditional designs continue to impede craftspeople and their communities. In the absence of appropriate institutional and legal protection for the time being, we need to explore alternatives to alleviate the situation. The Fair-trade movement, a global association with a growing membership and increasing awareness among consumers is a well-known example of ethical standard setting. Defining the relationship between producers and buyers, addressing issues ranging from fair wages, child labor to a healthy working environment its voluntary nature is an interesting example of changing dynamics. Then, why not establishing a similar ethical guideline between designers and artisans? This paper presents a case for change through the creation of a voluntary code of ethics governing design interaction. A self regulated mechanism that seeks to redress the basis of engagement between crafts people and designers, a moral binding, if we may, to create a fair and ethical sharing of benefits between designers and craftspeople. The guiding philosophy being encapsulated in the Co-creating Code of ethics for designers and others, based on an acknowledgment of the ownership of traditional cultural knowledge, creating parity and respecting the rights of craftspeople. The Co-creating Code, voluntarily signed up to by designers is in effect a moral bond that addresses the imbalances in the process of interaction and the benefits that accrue thereof. The Code serving as a practical guideline to the interactions and the issues that arise in the interface for a well-balanced and mutually beneficial relationship. The building blocks to the Co-creating Code are the recognition of the craftspeople as equal partner in the process of design development substantiated by parity in apportioning both credit and the economic benefits of design development. While the guiding values and standards need to be debated further, the Co-creating Code is a constructive move towards protection of the economic and moral interests of crafts people, who are vulnerable to powerful commercial interests. Creating the confidence that issues of misuse, borrowing and misappropriation of their traditional cultural knowledge is being addressed. The principals of the Co-creating Code work to ensure a level playing field between professional designers and traditional craftspeople, giving due acknowledgement to the craftsperson’s knowledge and skill, an equitable attribution, by naming and placing the craftsperson in the center of design development, recognizing their rights as holders of traditional knowledge. Craftspeople thereby receive fair credit and recognition on the one hand and just economic remuneration on the other. In the long run the principles of co-creating will prove to be a valuable business asset creating trust, mutual respect and economic gain in a balanced manner for both designer and crafts people. Re-defining the roles both in the sharing of economic benefit and in credit sharing. Developing in effect a broad strategic view wherein the rights of the craftspeople are balanced in an equitable way with the contribution of designers. This then is, we hope, the first step to a repositioning of the setting between craftspeople and designers, a recasting of their role where their knowledge systems can no longer be harnessed without acknowledging ownership or apportioning benefits to them. References Publications All Indian Artisans Craftworkers Welfare Association (AIACA), 2010, Policy Briefs, Geographical Indications of India, Socio-Economic and Development Issues Craft Revival Trust/Artesania de Colombia, 2005, Designer Meets Artisan, Delhi, India Government of New Zealand, Trade Marks Act 2002 Ragavan S., 1999, Protection of Traditional Knowledge, Center for Intellectual Property Rights Advocacy, National Law School of India University, Bangalore, India. Ranjan, Aditi and MP Ranjan (ED.), 2007, Handmade in India WIPO, (year unknown), Panama: Empowering Indigenous Women Through a Better Protection and Marketing of Handicrafts”

Websites Census of India: http/www.censusindia.gov.in Craft Revival Trust: http/www.craftrevival.org Geographical Indication Registry: http:/www.ipindia.nic.in/girindia/

Endnotes:

According to the 2001 census there are 6,38,365 villages spread across India
Law No. 20 (June 26, 2000) on a special intellectual property regime for the collective rights of indigenous communities, for the protection of their cultural identities and traditional knowledge.
This information on Panama is drawn from a document of WIPO– “Panama: Empowering Indigenous Women Through a Better Protection and Marketing of Handicrafts”.
Trade Marks Act 2002, New Zealand.
Ibid.
Geographical Indication Registry: http:/www.ipindia.nic.in/girindia/
Craft Revival Trust (http//www.craftrevival.org) documents more than 880 different craft forms while recently published “Handmade in India” identifies some 516 meta craft clusters across India.

The Coconut constitutes a plant that belongs to Palmae family and is widely grown in tropical regions as it needs proper living environment for its growth and production. Coconut is well-known as a multipurpose plant and has been utilized and developed in a manner that yields a high economic value. Even, for that part of the plant that could be considered as waste, such as its fiber which is utilized among other uses as active charcoal; while the shell is often processed to create remarkable art work.

Coconut shell or kotti in Konkani, has biological function as the protector of the main fruit. Located in the inner side of the coconut fiber with its thickness around 3-6 mm. Coconut shell can be categorized as hard wood, yet has higher lignin level and lower cellulose level, and water level about 6-9% (counted based on dry weight), and especially composed of lignin, cellulose, and hemi-cellulose. With above composition, thus art works from coconut shell have excellent quality, imperishable, and relatively easy to be formed. These features have resulted in the development of the modern coconut shell handicraft industry. Instead of being thrown away or used as firewood for cooking dry coconut shells are carved in different designs, varnished and colored. Coconut shell craftwork involves tremendous creativity and is used for the creation of utility and decorative items by artisans who use their creativity to create items from utility to artistic and decorative. The items produced include Table lamps, flowerpots, table clocks, different idols and decorative items. Carving Coconut shell is very difficult and only highly skilled craftsmen can make products out of it due to its hardness.

Traditionally, crafting objects out of coconut shell is to make household objects which was practiced by coconut farmers. They would scoop out the copra by making a neat hole at the top of the shell, and use the shell, which was the waste or by-product. It is believed that as a craft, coconut shell carving could have been experimented with by craftsmen from the Vishwakarma community in Kerala. Traditionally involved in sword making and carving wood and ivory, they may have tried out coconut wood and shell as well. Coconut shell craft has gained popularity only in the last few decades, and hence does not have a long history to boast off. However, a report mentions this craft being brought in from Iraq almost 900 years ago. It could be that the wood carving artisans from the Middle East and Persia were the first ones to try carving on coconut shell. While Coconut shell craft is practiced all over the world, the craft has evolved and is being highly used as means of creative employment in different places around the world such as Cambodia, Thailand, the Philippines, Java, Maldives and Sri Lanka. In India, coconut crafts have gained immense popularity and have become rather fashionable for their novelty and uniqueness. Tamil Nadu and other coastal states have abundance of skilled artisans for making coconut crafts.

Coconut shell craft is primarily prevalent in Kerala in and around Calicut, Trivandrum, Attingal, Neyyatinkara and Quilandy in Kozhikode district in north Kerala.Other states where this craft is practiced are Goa, Andaman and Nicobar islands, West Bengal, Pondicherry, Tamil Nadu and the tribal belt of Bastar. Here, intricately designed patterns in white metal are inlayed in the shell and cut to make bangles. Goa produces beautiful, decorative and utility items made out of coconut fiber. Apart from consuming the flesh of the coconut in the meals it has done wonders to earn livelihood for the local artists. Artists prepare decorative to utility items from the shells and its fiber. Brooms prepared from this material have a good life span and do not produce any dust out of it. Locals have been using spoons or davlo as locally called and other vessels made out of shells. These are safe to use. The success of Coconut craft is because it is eco-friendly, and available almost free of cost. It is easy to work with once it has been mastered; it is durable, beautiful and utilitarian; it is available in abundance. The craft makes use of non-exhaustible natural resources and makes available an option to the harmful effects of plastics The Process Raw Material Coconut shell is bought from coconut growers and from farmers who scoop out the coconut for sale in the market, also selling the dried shell. The coconut is scooped out by making a small neat hole. Shells are available in different shapes and sizes. Prices also vary. The coconut shells are obtained from various coconut farms located in Tiptur, Tumkur and Hasan. Raw material is normally available easily. However, coconut shell of a particular shape and size if required for an order takes a long time to collect.

Selecting the Right Shell While selecting the coconut shell, the following points need to be kept in mind: Shape of the shell: Select the shell of a required size, thickness and shade needed to complete the article. Irregularly shaped shells cannot be used to make symmetrical objects. Un-cracked shells: Check that the shell does not have cracks developed either due to direct sunlight or due to a wrong way of breaking. This can be tested by a sound-test. An iron nail, or any iron piece, is struck on the shell. A good, un-cracked shell will give a clear deep sound, whereas a cracked shell will give a distorted sound. One could also test a shell by dropping it on a cement ﬂoor, and judging by the sound-test. Very often, it is seen that the cracks are identiﬁed only when the shell is polished at the ﬁnal stage. This means the entire effort goes in vain. Oil-free shell: Selected shells should not have oil-marks on them. Often, very dry coconut, or copra, releases oil inside the shell itself. This is easily absorbed by the shell. This oil mark remains for a long period and spoils the look of the craft. Besides, it is noticed that such shells do not join ﬁrmly and there is a chance of the joints being separated. Tools needed:

Hand drill
Files : Rough ﬂat ﬁle
Round ﬁle
Half-round ﬁle
Triangular ﬁle
Smooth ﬁle
Carving chisels : Carving chisels are used for intricate designs and sculpting; cutting edges are many; such as gouge, skew, parting, straight, paring, and
V-groove.
Mortice chisel
Lock mortice chisel
Carving gouge
Saws –
- coping saw
- fret saw
- hack saw
Metal mould
Table vice

Process The process of coconut crafts involves sketching, cutting, sanding, and buffing to create the finished product. The craft production process for the shell craft is as follows:

Choosing the right shell for the product that has to be developed.
Scraping the inner surface of the shell with files to clean the husk on the shell, thus making it smooth.
The shell is cut open with a hack-saw, the cut determined by the shape and size of the product to be made. The inner part is smoothened with a chisel.
Smaller portions are cut from the hemispherical cut open shell with a hack-saw. The shape to be cut is drawn on the inside of the shell and the bow blade is inserted through a small hole. In case of a complicated design, for example if a piece of jewelry is to be made, a photocopied paper stencil is stuck on the inside surface of the shell and the design is curved out using a bow blade. If a circle is to be cut then a paper stencil is made. This is stuck on the inside surface of a cut portion of a shell, the bow blade is inserted and the circle curved out from the shell. Smaller elements are cut and stuck on to the main piece for ornamentation.
After a shape is cut out, the edges are made smooth by filing or by sanding with sand paper.
This process is followed repeatedly till the finish is satisfactory.
After the article is made small hooks are attached if required. This is done by drilling a small hole and sticking the metal hook using a strong adhesive such as Fevikwik.
In case of a bigger object such as an ice cream cup or a bowl, the whole shell is used by cutting it as per the required size. Various designs are engraved in the shell using a file.
After the object is made it is sanded with sand paper till it is smooth. First boot polish is applied and then a final coating of French polish is given for high class finishing. Alternatively, if a glossy finish is desired, it is given a coat of synthetic varnish. If the surface is to have a dark finish then it is painted before the varnish coat is applied. The inside of the object in this case is first rubbed with sand paper to get the desired smoothness and then it is buffed on the machine. No varnish or bees wax is applied on the inside if the object is to hold foodstuff.
The piece is dried in the sun.

Production of the Earings

Protecting the Shell Durability of the shell craft

Due to the uniqueness of the shell, and its content, articles made from coconut shell have a very long life. These articles can remain for over a hundred years. Termites and other insects do not attack them. But one should protect them from rats.
If the shell is dumped for a long period, it may catch fungus on the outer ﬁbre or the inner side. But the hard portion of the shell remains unaffected.
Shells should be protected from direct sunlight. Strong direct sunlight may lead the shell to develop cracks, which makes it useless to work with.

Products The multi utility nut is used to carve out gorgeous collectibles like sugar containers, boxes in different shapes and sizes, showpieces embellished with brass edgings that are sure to send you on a shopping spree. The brass embellishments are believed to have been the influence of Arabia and the remnants of their commercial enterprises in Kerala. The highly gifted artisans carve out magnificent handicrafts with edge tools designed for the purpose.

Basic jewelry such as ear rings, ear drops, pendants and necklaces.
Key rings, bowls, ice cream cups, spoons with a coconut wood handle.
Car seat covers, pen holders, coasters, place mats and buttons.

Bibliography

http:/xa.yimg.com/kq/groups/14872704/2065213887/name/coconutbook49withoutpics.pdf
http:/www.indianetzone.com/1/coconut_craft.htm
http/www.aiacaonline.org/pdf/coconut-craft-extended-documentation.pdf
http/www.vibrantnature.co.in/coconutshelldetails.htm
http/www.craftandartisans.com › Coconut
http/www.squidoo.com › So Crafty
http/goahandicrafts.com/coconut-shell-craft
http/www.indianetzone.com › ... › Types of Indian Crafts › Wood Craft
http:/www.goodlifer.com/2009/07/the-ethical-fashion-forum

Coconut trees grow all over Kerala, and the coconut is a fruit which is used in its entirety. Smaller coconut shell articles are also made in Trivandrum, Attingal and Neyyatinkara, while larger items are made in Quilandy in Kozhikode district in north. Every part of the ubiquitous coconut tree is effectively utilized in this region - the flesh of the coconut is eaten, its fiber spun into coir, graded and used for a huge variety of uses or burnt for fuel; the stem turned into tables, chairs, banisters, vases, incense stick holders; the husk into figures of monkeys and Buddha heads; the shell with its natural concave shape converted into a enormous number of items that include paperweights, lidded containers with brass handles, cups, bowls, ladles, spoons, snuff boxes, sugar basins, powder boxes, trays with compartments, soap dishes, hookahs etc. The tools used are the Patiyaram the steel saw and a variety of chisels. The process followed is relatively simple though skill and a sure hand are necessary. First the outer surface of the hard coconut shell is smoothened with steel wool while the inner is smoothened with the aid of small chisels and the resultant surface is sandpapered. The separate pieces to make the final product are attached with screws. The first coat of polish is boot polish, after which a final coat of French polish is given. Craftspeople ingeniously make shapes by maximizing the natural curvature of the material. Koyilandi in the district of Kozhikode is renowned for its brass bordered coconut shell hookah these were made for the Arabs who had commercial trade links with Malabar Coast with the trend continuing till today, with most of the coconut shell products being produced for export. Other production centers are in Alappuzha; VaikomIrumbuzhikara in Koftayam district; Cherai in Ernakulam district; Koyilandi and Kozhikode and Thiruvananthapuram, Attungal and Neyyattinkara Thiruvananthapuram district. The ubiquitous use of coir in Kerala which is crafted into coir yarn, mats of all varities from simple to colored, embellished, inlaid to handwoven coir rope mats, mottled mats of yarn and compressed fiber mats to matting, rugs and carpets. In addition to organic, green, natural - a complete eco friendly material, coir is also exceptionally durable, being mothproof and resistant to fungi; additionally it is flame-retardant and anti static. Given its sterling natural qualities graded coir yarn is additionally used for different purposes such as the stuffing of couches and pillows, making cordage including large sized cables, saddles, brushes, fishing nets, upholstery, hats and finally, the manufacture of rubberized coil, a blend of coir and latex, which is used to pad mattress and cushioning. The coir craft can be largely seen in Chertala in Alappuzha district. Using tools that include air compressors, smoking chambers, hardboard moulds, gluing machine, traditional spinning wheels/raft, dyes, corridor mat press steel rods and weights the coir is treated and crafted into products. First the coconut husk is retted in the lagoons for between six to ten months. The softened husk is then beaten with wooden mallets and spun into coir yarn on the spinning wheel. The coir yarn is then woven into floor coverings either by handloom or by powerloom with colored coir yarn creating the patterns. During the finishing stage, the surface of the mats are sheared and then manually cut using clipping scissors. As in other weaving processes designs and patterns are also created through post weaving embellishment techniques such as hand beveling where the craftsmen manually trims the pile to define raised forms and stenciling. The edges of the coir mats are hand knotted; the craftsmen wears a home made rubber gloves for protection and support while pulling and pushing the thick needle through the tightly woven coir mat. Gandhi ji's three Monkeys who 'See No Evil, Speak no Evil and Hear no Evil' have found many forms and in Tiruvanathapuram they find form in coconuts. Each carved from a single un-joined coconut these sculptures are a rather incredible artistic feat. And they've got a shelf life of over a hundred years as coconut is an extremely resilient organic material, resistant to damage by termites and other insects.

We were in conversation with Mr. Babu Raju at the Crafts Museum where he was displaying his skill and his wares. From S.P.S. Handicraft in Rajaji Nagar Tiruvanathapuram he was in Delhi with his master Mr. Prathap who was given the National award for an eagle he carved from single coconut husk piece in 1994.

Raw Materials, Process And Tools The process of making monkeys from coconut goes through five different stages of cutting, shaping & polishing. The first step is the selection of the coconut as not all coconuts are good for carving. They must be flawless and have no surface ruptures to be suited for image making.

After the initial carving of the surface is completed it is left in sun till its colour turns to a typical monkey brown. Then the edible portion of the coconut is removed. The hardest task is shaping the face as it need careful attention to give the monkey the desired expression. Though seemingly simple, there is great skill and attention required to carve the monkey to the right measurements because if the proportions get distorted the coconut must be discarded. There is no scope for rectification.

The entire process is done with a chisel, mallet, sickle and foreign cutting blades. The tools are prepared to the craftsman's own fashion & design. Sandpaper is used for the final touch. Ears and eyes and the foot are made from coconut nut shell. It is the hard wall protecting the edible portion which is tough to cut the determines the size of the monkey.

Product and Uses The objects made from coconuts are quirky curios, commonly used for decoration. Though the focus here is the monkey trio other items include flower vases, pen stands, wall hangings, elephants and coconut trees. But the possibilities are limitless for these skilled craftsmen who see endless objects in the innocuous coconut. As it is both time consuming and requires precise attention through the entire sculpting process, what is charged for the article is the workmanship. Coconut is a widely available raw material under no threat of extinction; it is not a precious mineral or metal. This crafts testifies to the fact that beauty lies not in the material but in the artistic realization of an innovative mind. And that though we bemoan the languishing crafts, we must also pay heed to the crafts that are thriving and through the introduction of new designs creating a market for themselves.

Manipur's coiled pottery is singular not only because the items are made without using a wheel or moulds, but also because Manipur is perhaps the only state in India where pottery is regarded as a woman's craft - the skill of making clay pots is said to be a divine gift bestowed on the women by their Goddess, Panthoibi. In Manipur, tribal Hindu women are traditionally considered to be 'potters', and are to be found in large numbers. Less than five per cent of the potters are men. The fact that basic forms are created without a wheel often permits greater flexibility and diversity in the forms worked out by the potters; equally, the burnished black surface, its starkness relieved only by carefully controlled detailing, is nothing short of stunning. The pottery includes clay objects, chiefly utilitarian pots, used for storing water, liquor and grain, as well as for cooking. Other objects like the hookah or dolls and toys are also made. The husband of Neelamani Devi, a national award winner, says that the first pot was made 1,400 years: the first clay object was a small mug which the king used for bathing. Mugs like that are still made today and used for drinking purposes, establishing a continuity that spans a millennium and a half of tradition, technique and artisanal activity.

LEGEND, MYTH & HISTORY Jyotindra Jain's book, Other Masters: Five Contemporary Folk and Tribal Artists of India, narrates how, in Manipur, the myth of origin in general is related closely to the myth of the origin of pottery. Water is considered to be the primal source of all origin in north-eastern India, and the myth of origin in Manipur follows this particular interpretation.

In the beginning there was no life in the world and nothing existed. Seven suns shone brightly, day and night, and there was water everywhere, surrounded by nine hillocks. It was then that Atiya Kuru Shidaba and Ima Leimaren Shidabi descended from the Heavens to create the world. They drained out the water with the help of a trident and settled in the valley. Soon, they wanted a son to carry on their work. Hearing a heavenly voice that told them to dig out some clay, make a pitcher, and place the pitcher in the centre of the house, facing towards the north, they did as required and offered prayers for seven days. After seven days of prayer they found a male child - golden in colour - whom they called Sanamahi.

Sanamahi shot down the extra suns with his bow and arrows and created various creatures dwelling in water, in the air and on earth. Finally he created a human being. Having completed their task Atiya Kuru Shidaba and Ima Leimaren Shidabi decided to leave. Ima Leimaren Shidabi took seven more incarnations to carry out seven different tasks: Panthoibi - who created the first earthen pot - was one of these seven incarnations. The skill of making pottery was, subsequently, lost by the women in the age of King Nongola Lairen Palchangba. The pots lost their original shape - and became misshapen and ugly. The king then gave the potters a small green fruit resembling a pomegranate and asked them to shape their pots like it. In this way the skill of making beautiful pots was restored to the potters of Manipur.

Materials, Techniques and Processes Materials, techniques and traditions have been - and continue to be - passed on orally from generation to generation. Apparently, the making of each kind of pot was traditionally accompanied by ritual and song. Many of these have now been discarded or forgotten. Yaomi Sasa, a national award winner, nostalgically remembers that his grandmother sang while making pottery; however, he no longer remembers these rituals and/or music. Today, Yaomi Sasa organises his pottery workshop along industrial lines, and hires over 15 workers. Neelamani Devi learnt pottery-making from her mother. She works within the norms of tradition, departing from it only in terms of personalised treatment of surface and form. Her husband, who supports her in her work, states that: 'Women do not know the kiln techniques. Bringing clay and firewood is a task traditionally done by the men.'

The clay mixture used for making this pottery is prepared using a black soft stone that is found locally (in limited areas), weathered rock, and mountain earth called salanali. The stone is ground into dry powder. The earth collected from the mountains and paddy fields is mixed with sand, and then the rock and clay mixture are combined is a 2:1 ratio. Water is then added to the mixture, which is pounded and allowed to stand, thus enabling the clay to mature. The consistency of the clay mixture is important in the shaping and stretching involved in creating coiled pottery. While working, Neelamani noted that the clay in Delhi was different from that in Manipur - it had less plasticity.

The clay is kneaded thoroughly before it can be used. A coil of well kneaded clay is shaped into a slab, and the slab is folded into a cylinder known as chapfu homba to which a base is attached. The pot is then shaped in any style by the hand. The bottom is completed first and then the sides of the pot. The beating process is used to strengthen the pot walls and to enlarge and refine its shape. The pot is allowed to dry until as hard as leather and then beaten into the desired shape, along with the required size and thickness. The potter holds a small stone anvil against the inside of the vessel with one hand while he/she rhythmically beats the outside wall with a wooden paddle/mallet, stretching the clay into the desired form. The paddle, a wooden bat is one of the most important tools used. By using the bat on the outside and a stone anvil on the inside, the potter expands the shape of the pot and thins its walls. Dextrous potters can sometimes make these walls paper-thin. The spatula-like bat varies according to the size of the object being made. The spatula-like bat is covered with a dense mesh of thin nylon ropes. Bamboo strips are used to smoothen the area being worked on.

The controlled pressure of finger(s) and thumb is critical to the making of the pots. Neelamani often places the unfinished pot on a stool to develop a shape further and goes around the pot, working on it, and in effect becoming the wheel. Rotations are made both clockwise and anti-clockwise. Neelamani wraps a soft wet cloth around the open rim of the cylinder and, gripping it tight with the palm, fingers and thumb of both hands, rotates it clockwise and anti-clock wise alternately. At the end of this process the rim or the collar of the pot is ready.

All in all, says Yoami Sasa's son (and apprentice), it takes approximately five days to create a piece with dimension of 2 feet x 1 foot x 1 foot. According to him, it takes two days to create the basic shape and form, a day to brush and smoothen the clay, and a day for the piece to dry, before being fired on the fifth day. He holds that the standard firing time is two hours. An open kiln is used to bake the pots. The black colour of this pottery is created, naturally, by the smoke, but also with the help of a leaf - Basania pachyphylla (locally called sahi kuhi) - that gives off a black colour on being rubbed on the pot. The lustrous polished look is imparted by rubbing a particular seed on the outer surface of the pot even before the fire and smoke.

Interestingly, broken pots are also used as tools. The pieces are used to lift freshly made pots and also to make the walls of the kilns. Baked clay bowls are used as moulds. Shards are used to etch designs. Although in terms of technique, Neelamani Devi - like most others practising this particular kind of pottery-making - works within the norms of tradition, she - again like most others - departs from it in terms of working on personalised treatment of surface and form. She manipulates the smoke impressions by strategically placing pieces of dried wood and cow dung and chips of wood at the desired spot. Both in term of form and design, as well as in terms of ornamentation, Manipur coiled potters is a highly personalised expression of the potter's craft.

Products and Markets This pottery is essentially utilitarian in that it continues to be used chiefly as vessels for cooking and storage by the local population. However, innovation has found a footing among the makers of coiled pottery and a variety of less traditional items are being created. One of the more interesting pieces was a water filter being made by Soami Sasa. (An essentially urban feature in India, water filters or purifiers are normally made of food-grade plastic or stainless steel.) The clay filter was identical in all respects to its plastic and steel counterparts. It had two chambers placed vertically, one atop another; the top is for unpurified water and the lower one for purified water. A water purifying candle had ingeniously been inserted to link the two in their functional aspect. As Soami Sasa stated proudly: 'This clay filter not only purifies the water but also keeps it cool', thus blending age-old traditions of using earthenware jars and pits to keep water cool, with modern needs and mechanisms of water purification.

Owing to the elegance of the forms and the finish, coiled pottery from Manipur is also ornamental pottery, though its visibility in the pan-India market and/or the export sector is virtually negligible. However, the basic function of this pottery remains utilitarian, and most of its market is comprised of local buyers - pots are sold from village to village or are sold to middlemen who sell them in Imphal, the capital of Manipur state. Despite its extraordinary technique and stylistic form, Manipur coiled pottery is increasingly being threatened by the fact that traditional potters are shifting to weaving and other more profitable occupations.

The dyeing and printing of fabric has been practiced on the Indian sub-continent since ancient times. Originally centred on Sind, part of Pakistan since Partition in 1947, the province is referred to as suvasa (‘the maker of good cloth’) in the Rig-Veda Samitha, written in the second millennium BC. The Romans were familiar with the Sindi cloths and, in the first century AD, cloth imported from the East was known as cendatus, or ‘Sindi cloth’. The earliest surviving examples of patterned cottons from the sub-continent were retrieved from Fostat, the harbour of Old Cairo. The provenance of the ‘Fostat’ textiles is Gujarat and they have recently been carbon dated to 1275 m (z75). Sind, Gujarat and neighboring Rajasthan, are centres for printing and dyeing cloth to this day. The business is dominated by the Khatri caste, who are predominantly Muslims in Sind and Gujarat, and Hindus in Rajasthan, One of the areas with the greatest, concentration of Khatri dyers and printers, is the desert region of Kachchh District in Gujarat.

THE KHATRIS OF KUTCH

The Khatris of Kachchh are renowned for block-printing and tie-dyeing, locally known as bandhani. They originally came from ‘Sind at the behest of the Maharao, the ruler of the District. One of the most prominent members of the Khatri community is National Crafts Award winner, Mohammad Siddik of Dhamadka village in E. Kachcbh, who tells the story thus:

‘In Sind we were Hindus. At the invitation of the King of Kachchh, Rao Bharmalji (1586-1632), we moved to this village [Dhamadka] 300 years ago. We selected this village because it had a live river: we needed the water to wash the cloth. The King gave us all the facilities and he didn’t take any taxes. If there were problems with selling, he helped us and also gave us pee land to stay in Kachchh. After three generations in Kachchh, we converted to Islam under the influence of a Muslim saint [possibly the Sufi, Shah Murad of Bokhara]: this was at the time of Maharao Rayadhanji (1666-1698).’

TRADITIONAL TRADE

Under the auspices of the Rao, a regular trade was established with the maldharis (pastoralists) of Kachchh: Muslim clans such as Mutwa, Jat and Node, who are herders of cattle and buffaloes in the Banni region of N. Kachchh; and Hindu shepherds and camel-breeders like the Rabaris. One of the cloths for which the Khatris became famous is ajrakh, printed on both sides and coloured with indigo and madder. The name is derived from azrak meaning ‘blue’ in Arabic and Persian. Considered an essential item of cultural identity by the Muslim maldharis, they wear it as a turban or as a lunghi, like a sarong: ‘Before electricity, if you got dressed in the dark, you might put your lunghi on the wrong way round and make people laugh.’

Dyed and printed with vegetable and mineral colours, the properties of the cloth exceed the merely aesthetic, as Ismail, Mohammad Siddik’s son, explains ‘the colours of the ajrakh are such that in the heat they are cooling and in the cold, warming. That’s why they are popular in the desert.’

Similarly, the Rabaris value their rumal (turbans) which were originally tie-dyed but latterly have been replaced by a cloth that is block-printed to look like tie-dye.

In the past Khatri families would practice both block-printing and tie-dyeing but as markets have developed and changed, practitioners have specialised in one or the other skill. This distinction has occurred within living memory. Mohammad Siddik, who won his National Crafts Award for block-printing and vegetable dyeing, describes the relentless tying of his early career: ‘I didn’t have anything. At that time the maximum you could make was six rupees for 1000 kadi (equivalent to 4000 dots as the fabric is tied folded in four) per day. I used to tie those things day and night but could only manage 500 kadi, three rupees worth of work. It was difficult to do 4000 dots in a day. ’

His business started to take off with Rabaris, as his son Ismail explains: ‘He was poor and had no money to do blocks and block-printing of ajrakhs for the Banni people. He knew how to do it but just couldn’t afford to. For the Rabaris all he needed was two ceramic pots, he made plain red cloth, he just used to do this colour work and sell it. For ajrakh or printed cloth, he needed at least four blocks which were 150 rupees each then. During the month [of Janmashtami], he made money from the Rabaris and slowly, slowly, he used to make the blocks at night. Once the Rabari season was over, he would prepare ajrakh and other maldhari cloths, take them to Banni and sell them. He has walked all over Banni.’

New markets While royal patronage and good natural resources launched the craft of block-printing and vegetable dyeing in Dhamadka, it has been sustained by certain resilience on the part of the Khatris. They have also had the foresight to respond to new opportunities and develop these as old markets dwindle. Mohammad Siddik and his family have been particularly active in resurrecting -the practice of vegetable dyeing as interest, especially from overseas, has grown. Natural dyes are now used in tandem with aniline dyes: ‘In the past we made only vegetable colours but in 1950 synthetic colours came. Our production became faster and the colours were very good, so our customers accepted them immediately, and those colours are still going today … In 1975, we started vegetable colours again which the foreign customers preferred. In 1973, the government of Gujarat started Gurjari [state handicrafts emporium] and with the help of some designers from the National Institute of Design, they developed designs with Dhamadka. This proved very successful. Today 75% of our production is sold in foreign markets. ’

Innovations Overseas business has been a catalyst in revitalising a traditional practice. Ismail identifies the transformation of old designs into new products for the export market as an important factor in the success of his family’s business: ‘The patterns traditionally associated with these peoples have been re-adapted and mired together to make new designs for bedcovers, sheets and dress materials. ’

Awareness has grown of the need for quality control and this has prompted a number of innovations in the process of applying colour to fabric, although the constituents remain unchanged: ‘We have to use new ideas, quality is important for the foreign market. For example in the past, boiled pomegranate was wiped on the cloth and the colour was uneven. This was not considered a problem as the piece was multi-coloured and the locals accepted it. This kind of unevenness would not be accepted by foreigners, so the cloth is-placed on the sand and the colour is sprayed on.’

The natural resource that made Ismail’s forebears select Dhamadka, the river, has now dried-up. The rapid descent of the water table in Kachchh has alarmed craftspeople, pastoralists, and farmers alike. To overcome this problem for the time being, the family has sunk a well and installed an electric pump at their farm, a kilometre outside the village proper. Here they can still wash the cloths in flowing water, as tradition demands.

A secure future Ismail and his brothers, Razzak and Jabbal, are the ninth generation of Khatris in Dhamadka. They al1 work in the family business and are now instructing their own sons in the art of block-printing and dyeing. Outside of the sphere of Kachchh, there is a growing demand at national and international level, for these master dyers to demonstrate their skills. Modest of the family’s international acclaim, Ismail attributes their continued success to faith in God: ‘I am making cloth, people are wearing it and it makes them happy, brings them joy. If everyone had this philosophy, then everyone would be shanti (‘at peace’). In the world, god makes a border: inside that border everyone is happy, working and eating halal (‘pure’); outside that border, all is loss and sorrow. When a man is eating halal, his mind works well… if he is eating haram (‘impure’) then he is like a beggar, begging for food at everyone’s house and with no intention of doing an honest day’s business.’

First Published: Textiles Magazine, Issue 2, 1998

These numbers should suffice to give policy makers a moment of pause - 135 lakh people, 70%, 6, 38,365 villages, 1000 clusters, 5000 years. In order they are, the hugh base of craftsperson’s and weavers, trained in skills that are learned outside the mainstream of the current educational system; over 70% of whom belong to the socially and economically deprived sections of our society; self employed and working across lakhs of villages, the second largest sector after agriculture in terms of employment; With over 1000 handloom and handicraft production centres spread throughout India; the sectors civilizational links that go back 5 millennia to ancient multi- cultural traditions and its continuing contemporary contribution not only as the wellspring of Indian creativity, but equally to rural economic development. Yet in reports, statements, conversations on policy and development this sector is notable for its absence. It is time now to come out of the shadow to build a path to development, equity and growth for this sector. The focus of this paper is on a particular thought - the pushing the frontiers of mainstream education to include the methodologies of creativity and technical hand-skills - mainstreaming the traditional knowledge systems of Indian craft, inculcating it into the curriculum, equitably combining the intellectual with the hand-skills. The Indian craftsperson and weaver has till now belied all doomsday expectation, working persistently against difficult odds, combining entrepreneurial abilities, with technical virtuosity rooted in an in-depth understanding of materials and processes they continue to pursue their trade and create products that have marked our civilization and continue to do so till today. Across villages, hamlets, tribal swathes and urban fringes, in the most unlikely places indigenous and ancient technologies are preserved, orally handed down till today. The excavations at the Harrapan sites in the Indus Valley and at Mohenjodaro are evidence that the seeding of craft and weaving traditions had already developed root. This base then formed the blueprint of the start of a 5000 year journey that continues till today. Developing ways of thinking and seeing, distinguished by syncretism, marked by multi-cultural pluralism and oral instruction, craftspersons have managed to preserve traditions while continuously absorbing and assimilating new systems, ideas and trends. Over the millennia waves of migrating peoples, successions of rulers and empires; explorers and merchants, traders and priests moulded the craftsperson’s vision and helped define their enormous vocabulary of form, material and design, echoing and amalgamating ideas, customs and cultures. Further with the development of trade routes both maritime and over-land influencing the development of skills and creation of product offerings, styles and colours the Indian craftsperson manufactured products for a spectrum of consumers - from those located close to home as well as extending far flung to markets across the world. Crafts¹ and craftspersons² across India today, continue this journey. Their oral knowledge systems extend across a wide continuum of learning - from the extremely complex with an understanding of the principles of mathematics, physics, chemistry and engineering to those that are based on usage and observation of the surrounding eco-system and ecology, all centred around the fundamental principles of community knowledge systems developed over generations of study and practice. From the building of ocean going ships in Beypore in Kerala to the casting of the largest metal cauldrons in the world, from the making of paper frf theom waste cotton in Jaipur and Pondicherry to the creation of dyes, colours and pigments from vegetaf theble and organic material, from enamelling metal in Varanasi to the fusing of metal on to glass in Pratapgarh, the precise tying and dyeing of yarn and its subsequent calligraphic weaving of on the loom in Orissa to the making of metal yarns for embroidery in Lucknow are only a few examples as the variety of techniques and processes is enormous. The craftsperson’s mastery over their tools, using them in creative, inspired ways to change raw materials into three dimensional products. Tools usually locally produced, useing eco-friendly raw materials with a low wastage content, employing indigenous technological processes that include, to mention a few, smelting, weaving, beating, shaping, moulding, tempering, turning, varnishing, lacquering, twisting, welding, throwing forging, binding, dyeing, casting, tying, staining, soldering, embellishing, filigreeing, knotting, spinning, carving, plaiting, sculpting, painting etc. Working with a profound knowledge of these processes on materials as diverse as metal, wood, clay, stone, lac, wax, paper, glass, a range of grasses and fibres, bone and shell, leather, and textiles, each with enormous regional and individual variations within every group of specialization. The exhaustive understanding of material is based on usage and context, influenced by geography, historic traditions and cultural influences that are approached through a multitude of methodologies and processes. Skills and techniques, craft ritual and folklore are handed down through oral instruction and rigorous on-the job training, within and across generations. Taught through alternate knowledge transmission systems that do not form part of mainstream educational systems prevalent today, with no brick and mortar buildings, no text books or ink these specialized crafts and handlooms are hereditary specialties passed on from generation to generation within communities and families. The women of the Lambani community who embroider and quilt, the Prajapati community of Molela who mould clay plaques, the Moosaris of Kerala who cast the bell metal Charakku cooking utensils in diameters of up to 8 feet, the Patola yarn resist saris woven by members of the Salvi family in Patan characterised by mathematical precision in the multiple tying, dying and weaving, the Sthapatis of Swamimalia who cast the bronze idols, the Paneka community who weave the Pata sari, the Meghwals who turn wood and decorate it with lac are only some such examples. Mainly located in rural³ areas, the craft sector provides employment to many millions⁴ of people, an overwhelming majority of whom belong to the weaker, more vulnerable sections of society, being either Scheduled caste or tribe or belonging to minorities or to other backward classes. Craft production is widely dispersed across the length and breadth of the country, with the parallel coexistence of isolated individual family units, craft clusters, home/cottage industries, and small-scale and medium-scale enterprises. From rural hamlets outside the city of Banaras where brocade weaving is a home based activity involving family members to Bagh in Madhya Pradesh where the iconic block prints are produced in karkhanas with over a hundred persons employed, the lace makers of located in clusters in Warangal, the Kauna Phak reed mats weavers in the East district of Imphal to the painters of glass in Thanjavur, the carved and painted wood work of Gangtok, the tribal weavers of the Kotpad textile in Koraput, the community of Patachitra painters of Puri to Pethapur on the outskirts of Ahmedabad where seven families continue to treat the wood and carve the intricate blocks that form the basis of the hand block printed textile trade. The continuing encounters of the traditional crafts with the demands of modern, urban living have resulted in a juxtaposition of ancient technologies that are catering to a globalised world. These immense numbers of self-employed, self-organised, skilled craftspersons are the bearers of India’s traditional knowledge, the source of our creativity and keepers of our national cultural identity. Over the last few decades shifting dynamics have led to an erosion of livelihoods in the craft sector. The crisis in crafts has been ascribed to many reasons, not least being the disappearance of traditional markets with a dramatic shift in consumer choice from hand-crafted, woven goods to factory-made products. The customer base has shifted, with rural consumers accessing mill made products and high end urban customers being wooed by branded products. The economies of scale inherent to the factory sector result in the mass production of goods of uniform quality at prices unmatchable by craft people. Simultaneously, the availability of replicated and fake craft products that are marketed as handcrafted, hand-woven and traditional at far lower prices than the original has hit crafts people hard. Industrialisation has changed forever the social systems that controlled caste and community linkages to specific occupations. Likewise, globalization and urbanisation has made alternative career options accessible. With an educational system de-linked from traditional knowledge systems this sector has experienced a systematic dwindling of its skills and accomplishments and a devaluation of their learning that constituted the repositories of the craft knowledge systems. Crafting of objects and their associated technologies are often determined by geographical location to raw material. Materials were a local resource with skills evolving gradually and being handed down by families and communities. Economic growth has broken the link between sources of raw material and local communities, for instance cotton is no longer processed and woven in the areas in which is grown as it was in the past. Compounding the crisis is the lack of interest in the younger generation of craft families in continuing in craft practice due to perceived prejudices and inequalities of status. The underlying belief that information garnered from text books is superior to received oral knowledge has added to the problem. Globalization has brought in new influences and technologies, and increasingly rapid social transformations, the familial system of apprenticeship faces cracks and fissures without a suitable replacement in place. Urgent thought needs to be given to alternative formats for learning and training as we face a future of surging urban migration, issues of deskilling and unemployment. To meet the challenges of the 21st century any developmental initiative while seeking meaningful formats to work in will have to grapple with these baseline issues and a sustainable growth trajectory cannot be isolated from this larger context. It is hardly surprising that there are any number of debates around the appropriate path to development, equity and sustainability. This paper presents for discussion a particular focus – the deconstruction, codification and mainstreaming of the multi-dimensional oral traditional knowledge systems of craft practice into mainstream education, as an underlying premise for creating an enabling environment for the craft sector in India. What is critical at this point is to explore the issues that confront the process as it exists right now, and to evolve methods of thinking and ideating that make the process viable and meaningful. This knowledge based intervention though poised as a value-added and productive process is distinctly complicated by the fact that most craftsperson’s and weavers are located outside the ambit of conventional notions of what constitutes mainstream education – this disassociation has been inimical to all. The question arises as to where does one go from this point to a future where this creative, productive and high rural employment domain be brought equitably into the mainstream, by creating an even handedness between these repositories of creativity and the mainstream It is time to remedy the relative neglect of this aspect at a time when – despite the value of crafts being recognised world-wide –innumerable factors continue to endanger their very experience. The comtemperorary relevance of this focus is for five distinct reasons First. At the outset, it is well-documented and proven that free and open access to information creates an environment that empowers individuals and societies; it is an instrument of constructive change a catalyst for introducing systematic and significant windows of opportunity. This could un-cage a sector where the range of learning and oral instruction covers areas as diverse as Thanka painting to Warli art, from the metal casting of temple gods to the creation of Dhokra work, from mask making to hand spinning, wood and stone carving, papier mache to glass blowing, the list is endless, all these practitioners would benefit from inclusion in the mainstream of knowledge as would the rest, equally if not in greater measure. Second, an accessible framework of institutions, training and research material is a necessary prerequisite for growth. For this knowledge to be effectively used it needs to be understood in all its forms and to be presented in a manner that is relevant to student. It must stimulate ideas and allow for new creative connections to be made. Connections that could provoke innovation and innovative uses of these Indigenous technologies that demonstrated inspired ways of morphing materials into products. The tools used in conjunction with these technologies, all locally manufactured, need to be reassessed and re-evaluated and for the knowledge to be effectively used both in the laboratory, as a teaching instrument and in a manner that is relevant to its appropriate use; for this we need additionally to develop programs to upgrade and improve the tools. The availability of an infrastructure of this kind works an effective mechanism for development, essentially as a means of removing bottlenecks to growth. Given the scale and potential of the sector, the absence of systematic training curriculum’s, and institutions that research, and provide the training, have been a major lacunae across the board and a considerable factor in why the sector has not taken its rightful place considering its considerable contribution to the economy in terms of employment but also its immense cultural significance. A third reason for this approach is that at a time when the rest of India is going through a phase of resurgence facilitated by the growth of the general economy, the effects of economic reform and benefits of the rapid spread of information technology all these have largely bypassed the craftsperson, creating a new form of deprivation and impoverishment for those with no access. Although techniques and skills are abundant they need to be understood in all their forms. Craftsperson’s themselves often remain isolated owing to their inability to access information and training. While we have this vast skill pool on the one hand, the flip side of the coin is the glaring lack of formal mainstream training and educational institutions available to nurture and grow these skills while simultaneously building a cadre of young professionals. This fissure in the system thus curtails the ability of craft communities to respond effectively within the contemporary matrix, in effect crippling those who suffer from the twin drawback of information deprivation and poor outreach. Fourth. There is an urgent need to research, analyse, categorise, and document craft traditions and developments as there is a very real danger of technologies and processes, motifs, designs and traditions dying out due to change, under use, or even the death of a specialised artisan or craft family/group. Moulding, shaping, weaving, forging, shaping are only some of the processes that India’s craftspersons have mastery over. Some seemingly simple yet classic, forming the backbone of technology to the interconnected and complex. Across the globe when we examine the seed source of modern manufacturing and technology you see the hands of a craftsperson – using the springboard of ancient technologies adapting and transforming them in innovative ways.The fact that many craft traditions are oral makes research and codification even more critical. In its absence of any documentation, oral traditions, once lost, can never be revived. It is a permanent loss. This cannot be overemphasised. The fifth reason for the use of knowledge-based interventions is that India’s education system has been touted as one of the critical factors in its economic rise. Juxtaposed alongside is the passing of the momentous Right to Education Bill in Parliament in 2009. With 50% of India’s population below the age of 25 and the projection that by 2020 the average age in India will be 29 it is critical that the system be prepared to meet the hugh demand for education. It is time now to inculcate craft know-how and training into the curricula with an equal emphasis on the intellectual, cerebral, the technical and the hand skills. To take a leaf from other countries – Japan supports rigorous training in over 200 traditional crafts; France has a Master Of Arts, Sweden runs National Folk craft institutions while Korea invest heavily in training the next generation. The United Kingdom incorporated the arts and crafts movement into the mainstream curriculum in the mid 19th Century to further power their Industrial Revolution. Though craft has moved ahead, not static or fossilised in time, all those who work in the area are aware that though change is constant its sheer speed and rapidity is resulting in fragmentation and disorientation of these long established synergies. The challenge ahead lies in designing frameworks that are sensitive to the sheer complexity of the sector. What is critical at this juncture is to explore the process and to evolve methodologies that contribute to making it a significant exercise. It would be necessary to start with a baseline documenting of community knowledge, traditionally transmitted orally, studying the process, its workings and its most notable features and then placing it in its mainstream curriculum context. Collating the information on the raw materials and their processing, colours and motifs used the ritual or symbolic significance, techniques employed, values ascribed, the associated norms, perceptions and beliefs are some of these. Presenting not only the skills and techniques involved but the specific meanings of the form of expression, meanings derived from the local context in which the craftspersons operate and the purpose for which they produce. By analysing the pros and cons and key features with its qualities and characteristics including degrees of process accuracy we take the first steps in building and amalgamating its scientific principles. A small step in this direction has already been taken by the Craft Revival Trust to create an accessible knowledge infrastructure for the crafts. Making information available on craftspersons and on a wide variety of craft subjects. The process involves all the constituents while rooting the work in a development framework with the craftsperson at the centre of the exercise. The next step would be to build a theoretical framework that ‘legitimises’ and amalgamates the principles and concepts of oral, and local community knowledge of these eco-technologies of craft practice within the commonly accepted scientific and technological infrastructure. In effect researching the science that underlies the craftsperson’s arts. This knowledge, an intrinsic part of craft practice developed over the ages has responded and evolved to changing ecologies and environs. For instance the understanding of plant material by craftsperson’s to weave baskets, thatch homes, make furniture, build bridges, make music, create colour and a myriad other uses is only one such example. We need to apply scientific rigour to the study of processing of materials and techniques of craft production whether it be plant or metal, leather or clay, stone or wood by uncovering and studying the underlying principles at the heart of the technicalities of craft. Studying the parameters, creating benchmarks and applications, retaining the creative, while removing the subjective approach through a process of standardisation. This collaboration among scientists, technologists and the bearers of oral craft knowledge through application of stringent scientific principles to traditional hereditary knowledge to document concepts, principles, applications and practices could lead to a uniquely Indian knowledge system, creating networks and linkages both within and outside the sector giving India a global edge. Concurrently we need the introduction of craft technology study in the curricula of schools and colleges, recognising that the current lack of awareness is a form of deprivation for everyone of us. Re-recognizing indigenous technologies is a vital part of this process. This need has become even more immediate with the passing by Parliament in July 2009 of the Right to Education bill and the push to universalise access to education at the secondary level. Simultaneously, there has to be a move towards greater equity, a removal of barriers within academia and scientific and technological laboratories, which are weighted against the bearers of traditional craft knowledge for a more equitable, even-handed inclusive education. Moving beyond tokenism to create substantive change through institutional development, formation of indigenous technology laboratories, the endowment of Chairs in Universities to bearers of traditional knowledge to the awarding of honorary doctorates, as for instance in 2003 De’MontFort University, Leicester, UK recognised the master Ajrak hand block printer and natural dye revivalist, Ismail Khatri by awarding him an Honorary Doctorate. Thereby creating a movement and an environment that stimulates ideas that allow for new creative constructs to be built and make connections that could provoke the use of appropriate technologies in manufacturing. With steady economic development and a 9% rate of growth has come increased prosperity, but we as a nation cannot forge ahead unless we push the boundaries of education policy in an equitable and inclusive way. It will require a concerted and sustained effort to ensure that this essential part of our cultural fabric and these keepers of our traditional knowledge are nurtured and take their rightful place for the next millennia. The future depends on how we tackle this massive skilled human resource whether we build to our advantage or let it all be frittered away.

Response received from Ashni Lukose on "Coming Out of the Shadow: Deconstructing and Codifying Traditional Indigenous Knowledge of Craft Practice into Mainstream Education" Education for Revival This article has been inspired by the thought-provoking and well researched essay titled 'Coming out of the Shadow...' by Ritu Sethi (Chairperson, Craft Revival Trust). The essay talks about the imminent need for 'deconstructing and codifying traditional indigenous knowledge of craft practice into mainstream education'. The purpose of this short note is to add to the above article and suggest a possible solution framework with the liberty of a dreamer. Though a Craft enthusiast associated with Indian handicrafts for over a couple of years and an ardent admirer of beautiful handmade products, I have not had the chance to work closely with any craftsman, to watch how (s)he transforms ordinary materials to icons of beauty. This makes me an 'outsider', one who may be ill-equipped to comment on such complex issues. The ignorance of the complexities associated with the craftsmen lives and the challenges of implementing artisan development programs may make this hypothesis weak; however I shall be bold enough to present this for criticism. The proposed framework has several elements that need to work together and complement each other's functions.

Mandated high school education in all crafts villages. All crafts villages or clusters of them should be provided – if not already present - with schools equipped to teach until the 12th grade. From middle or high school level, these schools should dedicate a part of their time for formally providing craft education by the local master craftsman. This provision for craft education within the formal school infrastructure might add more legitimacy to the process and encourage the young to embrace their traditional skills with more passion. The knowledge gained through the regular education, the ability to read/write and connect to the rest of the world through the use of latest technologies, will empower these young craftsmen to nurture their craft in the backdrop of changing economic and cultural demands.The chief issues, as suggested by Ms. Ritu Sethi in her paper - the lack of access to information for these craftsmen and their exemption from economic growth – might be partly addressed by this provision.
State of the Art Centres for “Craft Degrees” and ResearchLike the esteemed 'Kalakshetras', 'Kalamandalams' and Schools of Music, we need to have well equipped state of the art centres for imparting a formal graduate course in Arts and Crafts culminating in the award of a 'Bachelor of Arts in (Traditional) Craft Design' degree . The centres should have prominent artists, designers and the social workers/guides from the craft community as the mentors. Traditional craftsmen should be part of their teaching faculty along with professors from the mainstream Design and Fashion institutes.These centres should be provided wih Research departments that can concentrate on studying, documenting and providing scientific legitimisation for traditional crafts. Their study should pave the way for modernizing the traditional techniques and evolving them for modern challenges and needs.Another option maybe to coach and guide the bright students from the rural crafts community to continue their education in the established centres for design – NID, NIFT etc. These centres could probably be encouraged to allot part of their reserved quota for the traditional craftsmen community in courses pertaining to crafts and accessory design. This kind of formalisation of Traditional Crafts as a viable career path with job opportunities in the academic field and industry should encourage rural artisan communities to keep their priceless tradition alive. On the other hand, it should also encourage passionate students from the urban areas to embrace our rich tradition and keep it alive in the modern context.
Industry intervention and guidance for Craft Research centresThe success of degrees specialising in Craft and the research centres lies in its ability to work closely with the industry and global trends. Having experienced artists, designers and experts from the Craft field as mentors, visiting faculty and academic reviewers would help in this context. Experts from the academic field – experienced professors from institutes like NID and NIFT - must be brought in to establish such centres and give them the necessary focus and direction.

As a start, we probably need to identify and adopt couple of rural crafts communities. We should first encourage few of their young craftsmen to complete their school education and later coach and equip them to continue a formal course in crafts design. It would be interesting and informative to watch and assess how education, access to information and awareness of global economic trends will enable these young artists to think and create in a new space...It is not going to be an easy path, but if we are committed enough to observe the results and correct our course where required, we would soon hit the path of change – a change towards revival of indian crafts and craftsmen.

Footnote Reference

The term ‘craft’ has been used in a generic manner to include the hand crafted and hand woven, inclusive of pre and post loom work and pre and post craft work.
The term craftsperson has been used generically to cover weavers, artisans, pre and post loom work and pre and post craft work.
According to the 2001 census there are 6,38,365 villages spread across India
Official government statistics estimate that over 135 lakh people are engaged in this sector – 65.51 lakh in handlooms and 70 lakh persons in handicrafts.

Authors: Wendy Quarry & Ricardo Ramirez Books for Change/Zed Books, Rs300 In a media-blitzed environment, the ‘development communication’ label is often applied (or misapplied, as this book reveals) to achieving planning objectives through communication expertise. Since the mid-80s, the substitute acronym IEC (Information, Communication, Education) has been attached to ‘software’ budgets intended to support the ‘hardware’ of service delivery --- hardware that most decision-makers continue to regard as the guts of development. The authors of this remarkable little book believe differently, their belief captured in the sub-title: ‘Listening Before Telling’. Their understanding is of communication processes, techniques and media that help people toward a fuller awareness of their situation and of options available for change. Using cases from three continents, they demonstrate how communication of this kind can help resolve conflicts, build consensus, and empower people with knowledge and skills needed to improve their condition as well as their institutions. Listening is revealed as the democratic alternative to top-down dominance, by offering the sharing of power, authority and experience and as the essence of “communication for another development”. Quarry and Ramirez are communicators seasoned in the grind of the development industry. In this timely, practical and simple book, they offer perhaps the first serious effort at helping activists to understand the difference between communication as media use and communication acknowledged as a social process that should empower those whom development should serve. Tragically, few development efforts invest in listening as the start of a communication process. ‘Telling’ seems so much quicker and easier to fit into project frameworks and numerical targets demanded by planners. The silver bullet of a media blitz is most often preferred, yielding numbers that appear as ‘bang for the buck’ over the more complex task of understanding attitudes and behaviors in real life. Such haste has led to enormous waste, evident in India from mass campaigns that seldom deliver anything beyond annual counts of expenditure and of materials produced. Over one million Indian children die each year of diarrheal diseases (and many millions more suffer) because the simple practice of hand-washing is too seldom observed, despite 60 years of telling. The HIV-AIDS virus continues its relentless spread despite huge mass-media campaigns when the greatest need is one-to-one counseling. Latrines of official design store goats and firewood and serve every purpose other than the one originally intended. Tobacco continues to kill although information on the risk is widespread, and Indian roads are the most dangerous in the world despite years of Traffic Safety Weeks. For this failure of media messages to deliver lasting change, Quarry and Ramirez provide a simple reason that has proved amazingly difficult to absorb: the need to listen before telling. They offer examples of why communication as a problem-solving process continues to elude so many efforts for change ---- by apex ministries as well as by grass-root activists and donors. Drawing on experiences they have lived in Asia, Africa and Latin America, the authors reveal how for most development managers communication remains limited to the creation of media products. Posters, videos and ads masquerade as IEC or its more recent avatar, ‘BCC’ (behavior change communication). On the ground, behaviors continue unchanged: open defecation, smoking, unwashed hands leading to contaminated water, seat belts left dangling. If waste is finally to end, managers need to turn to communication cycles that begin, conclude and begin again with listening. It is then that communication can reveal what those most in need of change understand and want change to mean, and can help make such change possible. While latrines properly used will certainly improve health, messages about bacteria transmission can be difficult to absorb. Listening reveals other more immediate opportunities for moving toward health, indirectly at first: latrines marketed for privacy, safety and dignity rather than as health messages handed down as instructions, or as products pushed by media. Quarry and Ramirez document why communication fails as well as of communication that powers change. Examples include the Fogo experiment in Newfoundland that the legendary communicator Don Snowden used to empower indigenous communities to take charge of their lives and environments. There are other experiences: natural resource management in the Kenyan highlands, fisheries in Columbia, rural efforts in Nepal and the Philippines, life-skills linked to fighting HIV-AIDS in Tanzania and Kenya, the internet used for speeding change in Canada’s remote north-west, and registering births in Nicaragua. Indian examples include Fr Gaston Roberge’s Chitrabani in Calcutta transforming slum-dwellers into powerful communicators through camera skills and SEWA’s pioneering efforts in community video for securing justice in Ahmedabad. The authors believe that while efforts at change demand the stamina to persist in difficult “grey areas” of development, real change requires champions capable of using communication to achieve the final benchmark of empowerment. Achievements of such champions are recalled: the late Jim Grant who transformed Unicef during his stewardship, Manuel Calvello-Rios in Peru whose video-based training for farmers was founded on what they already knew, and Gaston Roberge in Calcutta. Such champions, they suggest, have the right-brain ability to listen while planners can be restricted by a left-brain tendency to tell. If communication is to hasten another development ---- one that is more just, equitable and sustainable for this planet --- the search for such champions is urgent. It might be hastened by this useful and affordable book, told with a light touch of wit and self-deprecation. There is one critical gap in the authors’ analysis: they do not tell us what changes their experience demands in the ‘development communication’ education and training being doled out in hundreds of institutions across the globe, preoccupied with so-called mass communication rather than with localised telling. Yet this book may itself emerge as a major pedagogical tool. Could India take a lead? Its own great communicator devoted himself to listening, transforming what he heard into his ultimate weapon for freedom: “My life is my message”.

Summary Cartwright Hall Art Gallery, Bradford has a small but growing collection of historical and contemporary Fine and Decorative Art relating to the Indian subcontinent. The collection includes textiles, exquisite collection of wedding jewelry, glass and metalware as well as works by modern artists. It also has an important collection of Victorian and Edwardian art as well as an extensive collection of contemporary European prints. The creative challenge is how to approach a body of art that reflects not only a shared 500 year history between the Indian subcontinent and Britain but also a significant sub-continental presence in Britain today.

Connect: People, Place & Imagination is a pioneering multi-million pound project involving the revisioning and reinterpreting of the permanent collections of Cartwright Hall which is a cross-cultural, cross-media and across chronologies. Using the intellectual framework of three themes; People, Place and Imagination, the displays will be able to, for the first time, establish a dialogue across cultures that forces us to look at the objects afresh and to think again. Nima's talked on how a transcultural collection is being made into an integral part of British history and contemporary reality.

Issue #10, 2023 ISSN: 2581- 9410

The people: Every summer, the sheep herders of the Bhotiya and Shauka communities travel to the upper reaches in Harsil, Niti, Mana, Malari and other upper grasslands of Uttarakhand grazing their livestock and other upper grasslands of Uttarakhand grazing their livestock. These communities are engaged in sheering of wool and other ancillary activities like, cleaning, carding, spinning, weaving and knitting with this wool. During winters, these people descend to the towns at lower altitudes and bring with them the wool of their sheep. Towns like Dhunda in the Garhwal region, have thus become prominent centres where trade and processing of this indigenous wool takes place.

The Craft: Hand woven floor coverings and a variety of hand-woven blankets are traditional woven products made of local sheep wools. The sheep herders prefer to wear garments woven from local wool, as the heavy wool keeps them warm during the freezing temperatures.

[caption id="attachment_197839" align="aligncenter" width="640"]

Shepherds of Rudraprayag, Uttarakhand. Image: Harendra Khoyal[/caption] [caption id="attachment_197842" align="aligncenter" width="640"]

Sheep at Rudraprayag, Uttarakhand. Image: Harendra Khoyal[/caption] The sheep: Bharal, Gharia and the Muzzafarnagri are the names of the native sheep varieties of Uttarakhand. Over decades, due to various government interventions and also of their own accord, the herders have cross bred local breeds with merino and Rambouillet sheep brought in from Australia and New Zealand. The locals of Pithoragarh region refer to this cross breed as the Khunnu sheep. The locals however feel that these cross bred sheep are much weaker compared to the indigenous breeds. Himalayan wool: Wool is the material growing on the skin of a sheep; its characteristics depend on factors like genetic composition, diet, and agro climatic conditions that prevail in the region. The indigenised and cross-bred sheep in the Himalayas are known to produce relatively softer and larger quantity of wool in comparison to their cousins in the Deccan and the semi-arid western India. Yet, this wool is considerably coarse due to its short staple length and due to the lack of wool grading at the sheering source. When compared with Merino and Acylic, the local wool feels rough, but is warmer. The Bhotiya and Shauka communities continue to weave woolen textiles like Kaleen, Chutka and Thulma but these are mainly for personal consumption. The rest of the hand-knitted produce sold in local outlets – some for the locals and some for the tourists, is made of acrylic and other manmade fibres. [caption id="attachment_197840" align="aligncenter" width="640"]

Thulma Weaving of Chandkana, Pithoragarh, Uttarakhand
The woven fabric is moistened and brushed to raise the fibres. A fire is lit near the fabric so as to smoke the raised fibres to felt them into a dense fabric for more warmth. Images: Shipra Srivastava and Aarti Lagvankar[/caption] [caption id="attachment_197841" align="aligncenter" width="640"]

The traditional thulma blankets with slight modifications using hand embroidery, make for stylish throws for the contemporary homes in the international market. Image: Peoli[/caption] The present condition: With the advent of polymers, cheaper machine-made goods have flooded the local markets – acrylic yarn being the predominant substitute for wool. Only 2% of the product range in these markets is made of wool. Across the country indigenous wool is declining due to rise in raw wool imports, easy access to cheaper acrylic products, consumer preference changes. While the Indian wool is suitable for the thriving carpet industry, it still favours imported wool.

The influx of these artificial fibres have replaced the indigenously produced items which would otherwise have sustained the local economy. It is a common practice now for sheep herders in the region to discard their wool often at the place where it has been sheered. All these changes are beginning to break the long-term socio-economic ties which have long held pastoral and artisanal communities together through exchanges based on sheep wool use.[1] Lack of intervention in shearing, de-hairing, carding, roving and spinning technologies has led to huge amounts of wool being discarded by the herders. This is combined with a reducing livestock numbers as well as herders among the communities due to shrinking pastures, migration to cities and other more lucrative means of income owing to the tourism boom in the region.

India produces 40 million kg of wool out of which approximately 32 million kg is discarded. Yet India imports 80 million kg of wool.² In such a scenario, there is a huge scope to reverse this cycle and find ways for us to utilize our indigenous fibre for the following reasons:

Protecting the value chain – socio-economic chain and the craft skills that have thrived for centuries. Creating economic viability for their work is essential for this.
Restoring some dignity to the treacherous lives of pastoral communities so that they continue their ways and lives. Many of these live in very high altitudes preserving grasslands necessary for the survival of glaciers. As we are fighting the adverse effects of climate change, this is extremely crucial.
Using sustainable fibres with a low carbon footprint has become imperative in today’s times.
Indigenous wool varieties are much stronger and warmer in comparison to the imported varieties of wool.

Our organization: Peoli is a design studio based in Almora located at the southern edge of the Kumaon Hills of the Himalayan Range in Uttarakhand, North India – an initiative revisiting the vernacular craft of hand knitting in Almora, using hand spun indigenous wool and locally sourced dyestuffs to design handcrafted garments. Built with a vision to demonstrate an alternative model of slow fashion by bringing together design, craft skills and mindful production practices, Peoli produces handcrafted knitwear showcased all across the world. [caption id="attachment_197846" align="aligncenter" width="640"]

Dyestuffs like fallen Rhododendron flowers, the outer covering of walnut shells and the seed coverings of Kamala or Mallotus Philippensis are used for Natural Dyeing.[/caption] At Peoli, women artisans are engaged in the research, archival and development of local craft traditions using eco-friendly methods like solar heating, rain water harvesting and increased dependence on manual skills over machine. Natural fibres like locally sourced Himalayan hemp and Nettle, Harsil and Angora wool from Uttarakhand, Kala cotton (organic old-world rain-fed cotton from Kutch), Eri silk from Assam. [caption id="attachment_197847" align="aligncenter" width="640"]

Carded Harsil wool being prepared for spinning at the Peoli studio, Almora[/caption] Design interventions with Himalayan wool: One of our major endeavors has been to revive the local sheep wool value chain through design interventions to make products relevant to the emerging market for handcrafted clothing. Products made entirely of Harsil wool products have been part of our catalogue over the years. Keeping in mind its coarse nature, we have tried to use it in products like knitted footwear, cushion covers and woven sleeveless capes. However, we have observed that these products face stiff competition from our own softer merino wool products. So, we have tried to make design interventions wherein this property of the fibre and its contrast to softer materials is celebrated. We have attempted this by introducing innovations at various levels:

Blending the fibre with softer wools at the spinning stage
Blending the various wools while knitting
Using the wool in the woven form (when its feel is less rough) and combining it with knitted merino wool in places where it touches the skin.

We have developed a range of capes wherein merino wool is knitted onto fabric woven with the indigenous wool so that the parts touching the body are less coarse. This innovative blend of hand-knitting and weaving, while being aesthetically unique, reduces the production time – hand-knitting being far more laborious and time consuming than weaving. Also, the technique adds a functional value to the rectangular shawls which in their conventional format are not very convenient to wear for working individuals. The sleeves and pockets make the garment more wearable and useful in today’s times. [caption id="attachment_197853" align="aligncenter" width="640"]

The innovative technique of combining knit with weave, developed at Peoli.[/caption] Another one of our garments - The Fair Isle Shepherds’ Overcoat overcoat is a contemporary adaptation of the thick woolen coats – the traditional attire of the nomadic shepherd tribes of the Jaunsar-Bawar valley of Uttarakhand. Hand- woven Harsil wool fabric which is slightly coarse, has been lined with cotton and hand embroidered into the coat. The panels are assembled together through hand sewn joining techniques. [caption id="attachment_197843" align="aligncenter" width="640"]

The detail of the carded Harsil wool fibre. The staple length of the wool of Uttarakhandi breeds is said to be slightly longer in comparison to other Indian varieties making it relatively softer to feel.[/caption] [caption id="attachment_197848" align="aligncenter" width="640"]

Accessories made of Harsil wool - handwoven and hand knitted by the artisans at Peoli, Almora[/caption] The sleeves made from hand spun merino wool are a rich combination of various hues of natural dyes, hand-knit using the Fair-isle patterning, forming the main highlight of the overcoat. The various design elements which have all been used as functional as well as aesthetic elements lend a special character to the garment - such that the indigenous wool becomes an intrinsic feature of the garment. [caption id="attachment_197851" align="aligncenter" width="640"]

Certain knit structures by alternating the coarse Harsil wool with a low-twist Merino yarn creates surfaces where the softer merino wool touches the skin and the coarser Harsil wool remains away from the skin.[/caption] [caption id="attachment_197852" align="aligncenter" width="640"]

Mufflers hand knitted with a combination of soft merino and Harsil in various proportions so that the alternating bands of materials help in maintaining a soft feel when the muffler is wrapped around the neck.[/caption] The way ahead: In spite of the rapidly decreasing pastures, Pastoralists and their wool, there is ample scope and a critical need to find a relevant market for the sustenance of the local wool fibre and traditions. The Harsil wool fibre with its special texture and character has great potential to be brought back into market through various approaches. Our approach being just one of the many - wherein its coarseness isn’t seen as a disadvantage but as a feature which is celebrated through design - many more characteristics of the wool can be focused on in a similar way. [caption id="attachment_197854" align="aligncenter" width="640"]

Various hand knit and hand-woven structures created at Peoli, using handspun Harsil wool yarn.[/caption] [caption id="attachment_197850" align="aligncenter" width="640"]

Indigenous wool plied with natural dyed merino wool on the Bageshwari Charkha. This blended yarn is softer on the skin. The mélange effect lends an interesting texture to the surface upon knitting, as seen in the men’s pullover above.[/caption] While challenges still exist, of the uncertainties in the consistent availability of raw material, and the competition from softer imported wools – there is great scope, a growing market for sustainable alternatives and an urgent need to protect the native sheep breeds for the protection of the environment and the communities rearing them. [1] CFP Report 2022: Assessment of the State of Value Chains for Indigenous Raw Wool in India

Uttranchal – an opportunity Issues of conservation that affect hill stations and hill areas take on particular significance in Uttranchal. The creation of this new state was founded on a struggle for equity in the ownership and use of natural resources. Local wisdom here has always recognized that human progress and protection of the environment are complementary, not competitive, concepts. It is this wisdom that inspired the Chipko movement, making these hills an international symbol. The later campaigns against mining havoc in Mussoorie as well as to ‘Save the Doon’ led to judgments and legislation of national significance. With this legacy, Uttranchal might be expected to innovate development models distinct from those created on the plains below for over fifty years. Of these there is yet little sign. Indeed, pollution and chaos seem to be accelerating, and even the controversial Tehri Dam experience has not inspired alternative paradigms for hill development. A few days ago, a group of visitors to Dhanaulti and the temple of Surkunda Devi, prime tourism destinations on the road to Tehri, stopped at a dhaba along the way. They joined a handful of residents taking tea in the morning sun, and asked what difference the flow of visitors was making to their lives? Were income opportunities improving for them, and job prospects for the children now chanting their lessons in the nearby schoolhouse? Yes, there were advantages. A market for local produce and some employment were the most obvious. But the price the locality was paying was high. Most supplies were brought in, as were job-takers. Tourism was making inroads on scarce land needed for cultivation and pasture, and on precious water resources being depleted by those with power and influence. Farmers were being tempted by sums that quickly disappeared, leaving them jobless migrants to the city. Women were no longer secure as they worked in the hills: ‘eve-teasing’ by young tourists was a threat. There was fear of rape: women no longer sang as they worked outdoors. It was safer to be silent and inconspicuous. Tourism was an activity under the control of ‘outsiders’, not of local citizens who lacked essential skills and resources. A sense of insecurity was heightened by crucial choices that had somehow slipped away from local authority. And yes, there was the plastic trash cascading down every mountainside, and climbing up the path to the Goddess and her temple overlooking the snows. But then whose responsibility was that, anyway? Definitions One of the major challenges of the conservation/development debate is the confusion that continues to attend the language employed. Development and sustainability are words often used without understanding. What do we really mean by development? The Workshop announcement speaks of “development control” and of “development v/s carrying capacity”. The implication is that development is a destructive process unless restrained. Yet is anyone willing to suggest that widespread “development” is not essential to reducing the appalling poverty of those who live in these hills? The Human Development Reports of the United Nations define development as a process of enlarging people’s choices as well as their ability to fulfill the choices they make. That should be a welcome definition, with its implications of genuine empowerment through democratic processes. The Workshop title suggests a possible distinction between heritage and environment. Perhaps at the outset, consensus is needed that conservation is as much about human and cultural issues as it is about conserving nature, and that both the natural and cultural ecologies of hill areas are extraordinarily delicate. Similarly, hill stations and hill areas are not distinct entities. The concern must be about integrated planning of areas in which urban settlements are essential to local needs, as well as to those of visitors. India’s hill stations began as well tended resorts for limited and transient numbers of colonial elite. They have become the home of expanding and permanent urban populations, state and business capitals, as well as tourism destinations for predominantly middle-class holidaymakers. Inhabited hill areas, of which hill stations are one part, require urgent development opportunities for their people. It is these opportunities that must move them away from the devastating effects of the money-order economy that has prevailed all these years. Development is therefore not a choice. The choice must be between options for development, options that demand research and articulation. “Sustainability” is another word impossible to define with precision. Rather like a peak clouded in mist, sustainability is a valid goal even if we do not fully understand it. That goal could perhaps be described as a good life. But a “good life” understood as what, and for whom? What is the good life that stakeholders in these hills want for themselves, and for their children and grandchildren? Does their view of a good life respect the natural systems that embrace and support these generations? Are aspirations equitable, both within and among stakeholders, and between present and future generations? Is there a way of understanding the Big Picture of Uttranchal’s society and environment, and of translating that understanding into decisions and actions at national, regional and local levels? Can local citizens be at the centre of such decision-making and implementation? An Experiment Global experience (and most particularly, experience since the Rio Earth Summit of 1992 offered Agenda 21 as a consensus on “sustainable development”) suggests the critical importance now of moving away from the so-called trade-off between economic development and conservation. There is a need instead to help ensure that the well-being of both humankind and nature progress together, simultaneously, toward the misty mountaintop of “sustainability”. To achieve such a movement requires that those most affected by conservation and development are in full control of these processes. That this is possible to do is clear from important demonstrations and experiments. One of these experiments has been under the auspices of the IUCN (World Conservation Union, Geneva) and IDRC (Canada). India has been among the test locations selected in Asia, Africa and the Americas. An intensive demonstration was conducted in Tumkur District (Karnataka). A training workshop with Dehra Dun institutions a few years ago tested the application of this methodology to the Aglar Valley of the Mussoorie hills, an area which brings together many of the challenges of such regions. Most recently, in 2001, the methodology has been applied at the global level, with a country-by-country index of quality of life and of environment for 180 nations. Its philosophy and integrated approach offers a particularly useful resource for future planning and action in hill areas. Sustainability Assessment The key concepts demonstrated through these experiments have been (a) the understanding of human well-being as a condition in which all members of society are able to determine and to meet their needs through choices and opportunities and (b) of ecosystem well-being as a condition in which natural systems maintain their diversity and quality, as well as their potential for change. The IUCN/IDRC methodology is described as “Sustainability Assessment”. It is a process of data collection (monitoring), analysis and evaluation that can make hypotheses explicit, help to test them, shape practical goals by increasing understanding through information and reflection, encourage the knowledge and wisdom that can improve goals and decisions, and provide tools to measure progress. The process is recommended not an isolated activity, but rather as a continuous cycle of reflection and action. The methodology recognizes that we still know little about what sustainable development means or how to achieve it. Yet assessment can help us to understand what people want, what makes ecosystems resilient and supportive, and what combinations of human and ecosystem well-being can be equitable and “sustainable”. It suggests how daily decision-making can translate idea of sustainability into practical action. Because constituencies are often divided and small (as in these hills), the process also focuses on building consensus, and on expanding the constituencies of decision-making. Instead of local, national and global efforts remaining isolated from each other, the methodology helps link these levels of action, and to improve the efficiency of projects and organizations. This process of “Sustainability Assessment” is still evolving with new partners and experiences, some located here in Uttranchal and elsewhere in India. Its principle features are the equal treatment of people and their ecosystems, the creation of an analytical hierarchy of elements and objectives from such study (to assist in selecting priorities and for decision-making), development of robust indicators to communicate and manage performance, and visual tools that all stakeholders can use, ranging from village communities to ministers. Whether at the level of a village or district (as in Tumkur) or at the level of countries and regions, the assessment process seeks answers to three questions:

How well are people?
How well is the ecosystem?
How are people and the ecosystem affecting each other?

The Relevance for Uttranchal By exploring and measuring these questions together, societies can learn what combinations of human and ecosystem wellbeing are sustainable. They can then make their own decisions about how to achieve them. Such an understanding of the “good life” clearly goes well beyond traditional measurements of economic growth. It is this extension that makes the approach particularly relevant to an area such as Uttranchal, where needs and aspirations cannot be captured by systems of accounts such as GDP. These systems, useful as they are for measuring the output of a market economy, do not address many other aspects of the real economy. These include the money-order phenomenon, the burden on women and children and on productivity when husbands and fathers are away, the accelerating loss of natural resources, as well as non-monetary factors such as health, education, equity, family life, or the fear of crime. Traditional accounts ignore the state of ecosystems, and largely omit environmental and social costs (such as pollution, resource depletion, health and crime) unless money transactions are involved. There is therefore an urgent need for hill areas to move to planning and implementation systems that reflect their real needs. Their importance is underlined even if we look at the one development sector that public imagination most associates with hill areas: tourism. The definition of tourism carrying capacity is “the number of visitors and the degree of development that can take place without detracting from the tourist image or the quality of life of resident communities”. Such ‘development’ and ‘quality’ requires the shared well-being of human systems and ecosystems, moving together toward ‘sustainability’. And toward women singing once again among the hills. References: An Approach to Assessing Progress Toward Sustainability--Tools & Training Series. IUCN, May 1997 Tumkur: An Indian Experience, IUCN, September 1998 IUCN Resource Kit for Sustainability Assessment, May 2001 The Wellbeing of Nations, Robert Prescott-Allen. Island Press/IDRC, 2001

Monghiben Rabari is attending an exhibition and sale in Mumbai. Her traditional embroidery has taken her from Vandh, her village of mud huts and camels on the seacoast of Kutch to India’s most cosmopolitan urban metropolis. She is thrilled by the glittering bustle, and by the customers’ enthusiastic response. She deals directly with them, as a professional artisan. And not only do the customers buy; one woman is so impressed that she wants to learn embroidery. She engages Monghi as a teacher during the afternoon lulls of the exhibition. Surely, we have succeeded in the transition from tradition to profession. Crafts have become viable both economically and culturally. Women are earning fair wages for their art, and also respect. I ask Monghi how she likes being a teacher. “Sometimes it seems like all we DO is embroidery!” she exclaims in exasperation. Thus Monghi provokes me to examine whether embroidery today is viable, economically or culturally, to the Rabaris who execute it? Rabari Traditions Traditionally, Rabari women practiced embroidery as an integrated part of their nomadic existence. Embroidery was an affordable aesthetic expression of community, sub-community and status within that community. Embroidery was portable, created wealth. A woman adorned herself and her household with her own efforts, utilizing time between more essential chores. The glittering pieces that a girl embroidered for her dowry were considered a contribution to the marriage exchange. Women worked as artists, without thought of time, concentrating on making the most beautiful contributions they could, knowing that their work would be appreciated by community members who shared their aesthetics and values. Not only would Rabaris not think of dowry pieces and personal adornment in terms of commercial value; they feared showing them lest outsiders would try to purchase them. The Advent of Commerce In the last four decades many changes have impacted traditional embroideries and women embroiderers of Kutch. During this time Kutch, like most of India, has seen increasing population, increasing cultivation and deforestation. With less grazing land, it is difficult to maintain large herds. Rabaris have adapted by relying more on sheep and goats than the original camels, and herding in nuclear rather than joint family units. Among the Dhebarias and Vagadias, the majority of whom continue to transmigrate, finding adequate pasture has become difficult, and these subgroups have become increasingly marginalized. Kachhi Rabaris, in contrast, have adjusted by decreasing the size of herds and grazing them locally. Supplementing their income from the sale of milk with minor jobs and sometimes dry farming (one crop yearly, depending solely on rain), they have managed to avoid long migration. Since the 1960’s Kachhis, particularly those residing near the Kutch District headquarters Bhuj, have begun to settle. Periodic droughts and spiraling inflation forced rural communities to seek supplements to their meager earnings. One income was no longer adequate. By the mid 1980s farming communities gained access to irrigation and could grow cash crops. They began to employ women laborers in the fields. Economics leveraged culture, and Rabaris started to work for wages. Simultaneously, embroidered embellishment came into fashion in India and abroad, and has since enjoyed a remarkably long popularity. Commercialization of an art that was meant for the home held mutual appeal. Artisans could earn without disturbing the social order. Women could work at home, on their own schedule as independent contractors. At first, Rabari women worked in the unorganized sector. They did embroidery for shopkeepers or local middlemen. In rare instances, women also went out, picking up enough work for a group of women. They worked on “labor” embroidery, whatever was given to them, regardless of material and style. But neither artisans nor customer were satisfied. Pay was extremely low, even when more was promised. Even when artisans did their best work, the client criticized them; it wasn’t the style expected. While studying embroidery traditions of Kutch, I perceived that most commercial ventures were economically exploitive and culturally destructive. When this perception was corroborated by the artisans whom I was studying, and they asked me to help them, we established Kala Raksha/ Preservation of Traditional Arts. Kala Raksha was conceived as an applied anthropology project. Driven by artisan initiation and based on artisan participation in design, pricing and marketing of their crafts, the project intends to enable artisans to utilize their existing traditions to earn the income they want and need. Money, Art and Viability Nonetheless, professionalization of a tradition produces conceptual bifurcation. Where women have chosen to embroider for a living, they clearly distinguish between commercial craft and traditional art. The two are different entities, and do not directly overlap. Rules and standards for each are distinct. Both commercial and traditional embroidery comprise elements of effort, value and satisfaction- of economic and cultural viability. As viability ultimately determines longevity, we may examine these factors from the perspective of the artisan to question the economic and cultural viability of either embroidery. Is either likely to survive? What contribution will either make to the development of the community to which it belongs? Embroidery as a Strategy for Income Generation In commercial embroidery the focus is unquestionably on economic viability, the ratio of effort to value. For Rabaris, who are less culturally restricted than many other communities of Kutch, commercial embroidery initially was deemed “expensive.” They explored their options and found more lucrative seasonal work as agricultural laborers, in government drought relief projects, or even in construction. For them, there was little difference between embroidering for wages or doing farm labor. They enjoyed having options and utilized them to bargain for maximum rates. Over time the embroidery business became more organized. Rates improved, but even when women are allowed to set their own wages, as they do in Kala Raksha, they rarely earn as much as they can by other means of manual labor. The accepted perceived value for handwork, within the artisan community as well as the market, is still low. Relativity to possibility has most probably kept the wage for handwork down. Women of many communities are not allowed outside the village and have little choice but to earn by embroidering at whatever rate is offered. Asked if she could earn as much embroidering as doing drought relief work, Monghi, who works with Kala Raksha, calculated and replied, “if we get up early and don’t wash our hair that day.” Even when rates are similar, women may prefer manual labor. Embroidery is tedious, Rabaris say, and physically demanding. Reliability raises the economic viability of commercial embroidery. Other sources of income, though higher, are seasonal and not always predictable. As families who worked with Kala Raksha realized that they could depend on this income, they began to regard earnings and earners with more respect. Small adjustments in domestic patterns enabled women to devote more time to embroidering for cash, thus increasing income. Redoubled by the Earthquake The massive earthquake that devastated Kutch in January 2001 precipitated unimagined changes in the economics of handwork. Nascent social changes accelerated exponentially. In Kala Raksha, we initiated a program of distributing rehabilitation funds in the form of matching grants against wages. The incentive of earning double, meant to encourage women to participate in their own rehabilitation, in addition unequivocally illustrated the importance of good wages in productivity. Women worked more. Their production capacity doubled! They also worked better. No longer feeling they needed to increase the distance between stitches by a hairsbreadth, or eliminate one of ten mirrors, they produced embroidery of excellent quality. The small domestic adjustments went public. Family members gladly helped with cooking, cleaning and child care to enable women to maximize their embroidering time, now doubly valued. Women used their matching grants to improve their families’ nutrition, repair homes, plant fields, seek timely medical attention, implement time saving and income generating activities, and pay off loans. Clearly, women know what to do with their income. The fact that they do not usually spend on better food or invest does not mean that they do not know how to use money, but simply that they do not have enough to use. The earthquake provided these women with the opportunity to experience their ability to significantly improve their standard of living. Time will tell if they value these changes enough to continue the trend even when wages are no longer double. As the women of Kala Raksha began to value their work more seriously, embroiderers all over Kutch realized that they had to. Sadly, the enormous need for reconstruction in post earthquake Kutch and the astounding outpouring of funding for that purpose were coupled with greed. Instead of offering day labor jobs to local villagers who critically needed the income, construction coordinators brought in cheap adivasi labor. Suddenly, unskilled earning options for both men and women of Kutch closed. Artisans know it is likely that this new low-rung labor force will resettle in Kutch and take up the agriculture, drought relief and construction jobs of which they and their husbands once availed. Cultural Viability of Commercial Work The ratio of effort to satisfaction plays a less critical role in deciding the means by which a woman will earn. Originally those women who were needed at home to care for family members chose to embroider for income, as it enabled them to work flexible hours. Over time, as others have determined that the reliable income and comforts of working at home compensate for relatively low wages, they have realized cultural viability. Nomadic Rabari women no longer have to migrate. “Because we can rely on earning through our embroidery,” they say, “we no longer have to toughen our hands and blacken our skin in the harsh desert sun.” While in the embroidery workplace, the economic viability of embroidery has increased a woman’s sense of worth as a member of society, her sense of herself as an artisan may have diminished. Commercial work is not creative, and often is only marginally related to artisans’ traditions. Artisans embroider as dictated, rather than work from their own sense of aesthetics. When presented with a set of four alien colored threads, Rabari women balked. “If we use these, it won’t be Rabari,” they said. In traditional work, there is no distinct separation of colour, stitch, pattern and motif; these work together in units. Design intervention separates these elements and juxtaposes them in new ways. It separates design, or art, and craft, or labor. The result often disempowers artisans. When design is reserved for a professional designer and craft is relegated to the artisan, the artisan is reduced to a laborer. In effect, she is correct in her assessment that there is no difference between construction work and commercial embroidery. Finally, commercial embroidery does not enhance social status. In India, social status is largely independent of income, and the status of any hand work or labor is low. Most professional artisans dream of white collar jobs for their children, regardless of income, simply because they are regarded with higher status. For village women, who rarely have access to options other than labor, most commercial embroidery simply reinforces the status quo. The exception is for a few motivated individuals in organizations which give women access to management such as Kala Raksha, SEWA or KMVS. The Impact on Traditional Art Economic Viability Whatever means of earning they have pursued, Rabari women now have limited time for traditional embroidery. Rabaris cannot afford to be sentimental. If we look at traditional work, it brings us genuine pleasure, they say. But it earns nothing. And money is sweet. “Expensive” is the term they use for traditional work. Ever practical, they predict that only if a girl’s father is well off can she afford to do her own embroidery. Otherwise, in their assessment, the need to earn will ultimately ruin and end traditional embroidery. Their prediction is borne out in the case of the Dhebaria Rabari subgroup. In 1995, in response to the pressures of social changes, the Dhebaria nath, or group of elders who determine laws within the community, banned the making and wearing of embroidery. Ostensibly, the rationale for this extreme step was that embroidery was becoming too expensive in terms of time and monetary cost.[1] The ban was thus decreed to stop this trend. It is absolute, with an enforced fine of RS 5,000 (the monthly pay of a high level government servant) for infraction. Cultural Demand Yet, the cultural demand for embellished textiles as wealth, status, and identity marker is intact, and even increasing. Coping successfully with the contemporary commercial world does not preclude maintaining a tradition. Among Kachhi Rabaris, a girl is now expected to bring forty to sixty embroidered kaanchali (blouses) as part of her dowry. It is the young engaged and newly married Kachhi women themselves who have increased the requirements. When a bride arrives at her in-laws’, contemporaries ask aloud how many kaanchali (blouses) she brought? The new bride makes a point to wear a new kaanchali each day and everyone inspects and reports on it with excruciating detail. Bonding with peers is essential; thus fashion becomes critical. And natal families criticize girls for not completing their embroidery in time. Negotiating a Solution: Viability and Tradition Women now have to balance multiple demands on limited time, and time is suddenly a critical issue. The concept of time has brought a consciousness of labor to the home as well. Embroidery is art, and it is also labor. These aspects, once integrated like the elements of colour, stitch, pattern and motif, are today delineated. Now, the focus is on the labor aspect of embroidery. In their traditional work, women look for ways to minimize effort. The essence of the nomadic Rabari culture, and the embroidery that expresses it, is adaptability. The conclusion of my historical research on Rabari embroidery was that each Rabari subgroup had retained some elements of previous styles critical to expressing identity. Viability was the important factor. Which elements were maintained was not important. It is the fact of maintaining tradition that is critical to the Rabari sense of identity.[2] In the last three decades, embroideries of the Rabaris of Kutch have adapted and evolved at an exponentially increasing rate, commensurate with the rapid social changes of the late 20th century. The changes in traditional style exemplify attempts to make traditions culturally and economically viable. Among the Kachhis, three significant trends emerge: changes in the naming of motifs, changes in portrayal, and changes in production.[3] Over time, many early Kachhi Rabari motifs were updated to current styles. In some cases, however, a traditional motif was not only updated but also given a contemporary meaning. Haathi (elephant), a historical motif no longer culturally relevant, for example, became kabaat (a cupboard), symbol of settlement and prosperity. Paaniyaari (the water bearer) became less relevant with the advent of tube wells and taps. The symbol then became the legendary Shraavan, who carried his parents on his shoulders, indicating increased participation in mainstream Hinduism. More recently, new motifs with names such as minni (cat),and saikal (bicycle) further indicate that settling is entering the Rabari mindset. Two essential differences in the portrayal of contemporary motifs articulate concurrent changing attitudes. Motifs have become more abstract and decorative than narrative, and more subject to different interpretations, reflecting that life is becoming more abstract and complex for Rabaris, and more ambiguous. Motifs also tend to be isolated and elaborated, rather than stitched in tableau, illustrating the break up of time in Rabari consciousness. No longer do women want to commit to long extended periods of time to embroider. Rabari women do have less time, between working for wages and household demands. At the same time, these working women have cash to spend. Earlier, this situation resulted in Kachhi women employing other Rabari s who are confined to their homes by family situation (such as small children or elders who need constant attention) to hand embroider for them. This trend began to alter the conception and role of embroidery within the society. More recently, Kachhi Rabari women opt to have embroideries professionally stitched at least in part by machine, and to add ready-made elements such as rick-rack. This trend has significantly altered the production of Rabari embroidery. As Kachhis increasingly employ machine stitching to outline their embroidery, motifs are to some extent determined by the few people with sewing machines and become homogenized. The use of machine stitching thus offers another explanation of why abstract motifs are subject to interpretation. Retaining cultural viability, the new methods of production increase economic viability. The use of time savers such as machine embroidery and ready made elements stand as a metaphor for tradition and adaptation. The outlines of motifs are done by machine; then women fill in the areas by hand with their choice from the limited repertoire of patterns. The same concept in fact is used in traditional hand work. Women outline their patterns first, then fill in the details with accent stitches and colors. Tradition, as Rabaris comprehend it, is personal innovation (the detailing) within the patterns shared by the group (the outlining). The new motifs are created using the same proportions and types of shapes and lines as traditional motifs. Machine embroidery is unquestionably a departure. But it follows the essence of tradition and does not radically change the aesthetic. It simply saves time. Dhebaria Rabaris, prohibited from hand embroidery, devised an equally viable substitute. Of all subgroups in Kutch, these Rabaris had the most developed sense of decoration. Their embroidery was characterized by highly skilled labor intensive work, which typically covered the fabric surface, and by attention to detailing with fine accent stitches, beads, buttons and, later, trims. Today, Dhebarias piece together with different colored synthetic fabrics their kaanchari (blouses), children’s garments, theli (bags), toran and chaakla (doorway and wall hangings), and decorate these with elaborate layering of ready made rick rack, ribbons and trims. The seams of blouses are embellished with bakhiya, the fine back stitching previously used, which is still allowed. In addition, a fine line of jeek, hand satin stitching in variegated colors, and a line of striped piping elaborate the seams. The look is consistent with the earlier Dhebaria aesthetic. The trims are placed where embroidery was: on the seams and borders of garments. Ribbons are used to make traditionally embroidered bold figures on bags, hangings and quilts. The series of sparkling and finely detailed ribbons echoes the bands of mirrored embroidery previously used and creates a similar elaborate textured effect. And the attention to detailing is maintained by allowable hand stitched accents such as fine bakhiya and jeek. Economically, the new Dhebaria style is also viable. Women have to purchase the trims, and either purchase a sewing machine or pay someone to tailor their pieces. But hand embroidery was expensive mainly in terms of time. An embroidered blouse took weeks to months of leisure time to prepare, whereas a ribbon trimmed blouse takes two days to stitch. In terms of money, trims and cloth cost slightly more than embroidery threads (about RS 60 vs. RS 40, which is the range of a daily wage). If a woman has to pay for stitching a blouse, charges are RS 80 to 100, about two days’ wages. The trade of money for labor assumes that women and their families have options to earn, but it is fair. In both contemporary examples, viability directed adaptation. For Rabari artisans, the decision to use machine work and ready-made elements or labor intensive hand embroidery per se is not as critical as whether the result is viable in terms of expressing the current aesthetic and enabling a woman to satisfactorily meet the increasing demands on her limited time. From Viability to Vitality Successfully negotiating solutions to the problems of economic viability, Rabaris have paradoxically increased the cultural viability of their embroidery traditions. The very pressure of balancing two types of embroidery has actually forced artisans to take creative leaps in their own work, to find ways to eliminate tedium and focus on the art of craft. In both Kachhi and Dhebaria Rabaris, what we find vital is the essence of embroidery: the creative impulse, the compulsion to decorate. The fact that the form is a newly evolved response to current constraints is testimony that the tradition lives. In minimizing labor, women have shifted the focus of creativity. Different skills have become important in new traditions: choosing from the array of available materials, conceptualizing patterns and, in many cases, sewing (in addition to embroidering). The new styles in fact allow women to focus on design rather than execution. While the current innovations sacrifice the timeless sense of art, they facilitate an acceptably similar result. From the artisan’s perspective, what an excellent trade: labor for creativity. New traditional work is an increasingly important means of expressing identity. Even in the extreme case of the Dhebaria Rabaris, the devastating ban on hand embroidery did not incapacitate their ability to express their identity by elements of their dress. Dhebaria women assessed the sudden adversity and adapted creatively. They changed their style radically by innovating on their existing aesthetic, and their identity remained intact. New traditions are also vital in expressing status within the community. The minimization of labor has allowed entry of new elements to traditional art, as well as enabled more rapid execution. Fashion has entered the new tradition. With this, the sense of the individual has emerged. Monghi loves the design aspect of the new traditions. Working with intense concentration on her dowry, she has a sudden inspiration: she will embroider a whole border for her ludi/veil, rather than the two patches in the corners that are current fashion. She chooses a bold diagonal pattern, and adds holography sequins instead of mirrors, to lighten the weight and dazzle the eye. As a flourish in a raga, her idea elicits a spontaneous “wah!” among her peers. Everyone is impressed, and Monghi has the great satisfaction that she has started a fashion trend that will be attributed to her. The two borders take time, but labor per se is not the only issue. Here, the ratio of time to result is culturally cost effective. Commercial Craft Re-Visited Why, then is Monghi ambivalent about embroidery? For young Rabaris of Kutch today embroidery has multiple dimensions. It is a means of earning a livelihood, increasingly important for the family, it is an increasing social obligation, and it is an expression of creativity. Perhaps Monghi is right: embroidery is all she does. While traditional embroidery is viable, from Monghi’s perspective, professional embroidery is only partially so. Women have more status in their societies because they are earning. But they also have more responsibility and much less time. The wages for commercial work are less than desirable; the work is not creative. In fact, women are investing in commercial work the labor that they are eschewing in their own embroidery. Monghi knows there are other options. Awareness of options is one of the goals of empowering women through income generation. Dissatisfaction and struggling are a part of understanding choice. As it is today, hand embroidery as income generation would seem to have a limited life span. Commercial work is a departure from tradition externally imposed. In this workplace, artisans are seen as technically skillful. But they have more creative potential, as demonstrated by the solutions they have found to questions of economic viability identified within their own traditions. From their perspective, artisans perceive questions of economic viability in their commercial work. Can we look to their own solutions to the problems of the ratio of effort to income as a solution? Perhaps a better strategy would be to let artisans themselves decide. Artisans would be truly encouraged to be creative if they could be presented with the problem of the market and assisted in finding the solutions. Selected Bibliography Frater, Judy, “Traditional Art in the Eye of the Artisan: Changing Concepts of Art, Craft and Self in Kutch,” Seminar (forthcoming) “This is Ours:’ Rabari Tradition and Identity in a Changing World,” Nomadic Peoples (forthcoming) “Rabari Embroidery: Chronicle of Tradition and Identity in a Changing World,” Crafts Council of India publication (forthcoming) “When Parrots Transform to Bikes: Social Change Reflected in Rabari Embroidery Motifs,” Nomadic Peoples (1999) Vol. 3, issue 1. Threads of Identity: Embroidery and Adornment of the Nomadic Rabaris. Ahmedabad: Mapin, 1995. “Rabari Dress: Adornment that Tells of Tradition.” in Mud, Mirror and Thread: Folk Traditions of Rural India, ed. by Nora Fisher. Ahmedabad: Mapin, 1993. "Rabari Embroidery: In the Artisans' Hands," The India Magazine (September 1991). Littrell, Mary A., and Marsha A. Dickson. Social Responsibility in the Global Market: Fair Trade of Cultural Products. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1999. Morris, Walter F, Jr. Handmade Money: Latin American Artisans in the Marketplace. Organization of American States Bookshop, 1996. “Craft, Crap and Art.” CONTEMPORARY EMBROIDERIES OF RABARIS OF KUTCH: ECONOMIC AND CULTURAL VIABILITY Judy Frater ABSTRACT Embroidery has become a means of income generation for nomadic Rabari artisans. But it is also a vital traditional art. Ambivalence of artisans toward their craft provokes us to explore the economic and cultural viability of what they perceive as two separate entities. Embroidery as income generation is at best equal to other means of earning by labor. Following the earthquake of 2001, experiences of Kala Raksha Trust demonstrate that wages are critical to productivity and economic viability. Further, dependence on embroidery for income may have to increase. In traditional embroidery, questions of viability have driven adaptation. With the need to balance earning and maintaining the home, time and labor have become critical issues in traditional work. Two subgroups of Rabaris have each found creative solutions focused on economic viability. Kachhi women have employed time saving devices of machine embroidery and ready made trims. Dhebaria women, who had their traditional work banned in 1995 by the elders, satisfy their need to decorate with elaborate application of allowed ready-made trims. The new traditions minimize the tedium of labor intensive hand embroidery and shift the focus of creativity from execution to design. Thus, the cultural viability of traditions is revitalized as well. When artisans have demonstrated their ability to identify and solve issues of viability in their own traditions, can we look to them to insure that commercial work remains viable as well? [1] Embroidery had become a means of leverage for increasing the value of exchange and delaying final transfer of brides to their in-laws’ homes. (for details, see Judy Frater, “When Parrots Transform to Bikes: Social Change Reflected in Rabari Embroidery Motifs,” Nomadic Peoples (1999, Vol. 3, issue 1). [2] Judy Frater, Threads of Identity: Embroidery and Adornment of the Nomadic Rabaris (Ahmedabad: Mapin, 1995). [3] Frater, 1999.

"Contrast city" is a rubber recycling program in Marrakesh-Morocco. The project aims at sustainable development. This is an initiative of LCCE (La Compagnie du Commerce Equitable), a French fair trade importer. LCCE wondered what could be done with rubber waste, polluting and poisonous when used as a source of energy. I have worked in this program as a designer, specialized in handicraft, working around Africa for a decade and settled in Marrakech. The whole process was covered from organizing supply to standard production, including product design.

Few questions that were to be carefully dealt were;

How to cleverly collect waste mixed up until now with household garbage and dumped?
How then prepare this disgusting and ill-assorted material to make it usable?
Finally, how transform this new raw material, through local craft, in repeatable, qualitative, graceful, useful, agreeable and saleable artefacts?

In order to soften the appearance of the rubber and to enlarge its recycling capacities, a local natural raw material like wool or wood was added. This combination creates a strong contrast, both visual and tactile. Products shapes were kept simple to emphasize on the material. The program was named as Marrakech specific contrasts: from donkey cart to fashionable racing car! For the realization of the project various groups were connected.

Financial support for development was provided by a French organisation Smiley world association. Marrakech subsidiary of international Pizzorno Environment group collects rubber waste, on a voluntary basis, with the blessing of the municipality.

Different types of producers make the transformation, from low skill home based women artisans to export Craft Companies. Weavers combine local natural raw material with the rubber wastes before sewers finish the products.

The quality of product thus reached is so high, that people mostly mistake old rubber with rubber. The commercialization of the first range, home textile accessories, was launched in France, in Altermundi fair trade shops. To follow this, a range of furniture was also introduced. The whole range was presented in June in a lecture during a Green Business Forum organized in Pointe-Noire (Congo) to assess the real green business opportunities in Central Africa.

The lack of literacy, exposure and finance has great effect on the women’s of society. They have walls of brick and cement but don't have fresh air to breath. Usually they spend their days on terrace but it also fails when temperature changes. Apart from doing household things and other duties they are helping out their husband or son in zari business.

Apart from urban facts the regular schedule of a craftsman is very difficult and if we observe it properly then we can't say we are developing in a right way. Every craftsman used to wake up early in the morning, which is a part of city culture then they start their business by 8 am with the breakfast of chai (tea) and basi roti (or whatever food left over at night). Then they prolong to work for 12 hour with the bend backbone and continue eye pressure. They cannot afford lunch so just for change they used to eat gutka (tobacco) which cost 50 paisa, so comparative to Rs.50 lunch they have 50 paisa tobacco and according to them they save these rupees in one way and they can't afford lunch in other way. So if we think or calculate what kind of labor is this even working for 12 hours with so much body effort, one can't think about a proper meal. The people are not getting the sufficient nutrition which comes under nutrition law, so accordingly the whole basti is under nutrition or starving because of imbalance economy pattern and development in ignorance.

These craftsman work out for their whole life but at the end they don't have savings neither they are left eligible for any other industry and this "end period" is not 70 or 80 years of life but this is only 40 or 50 years or max 60 . The reason is their forced lifestyle only. working for so much hours with eye pressure they lost their eyesight or get high power glasses, bend backbone gives them nervous system disease and if they can't afford for a meal how they can afford for a proper medical treatment, the other way destruction is chewing tobacco which reduce their lifetime so easily . Above all many youngsters are ill and suffering major problems due to under nutrition plus loaded with hard work.

The major default is this business is middle men profit making system which is ruining this artwork along with craftsman’s life. People are hardly aware about the amount of labor and effort putted behind the picture, they only see glamorous and sparkling products on which they use to bargain like usual trend. as a result workers never get appreciation for their work and buyers never understand the real beauty of product , it's just some exchange of money for them.

The products like one banarsi sari with normal zari work cost for 25 k in market, which craftsmen prepare in one week for 1500 -2000 excluding material cost. So if calculate whole investment it will come around max 5-8 k. Hence the difference of 16 k goes to a midman which is unacceptable in relation to craftsmen payment

The government should build some hub and policies for their direct exposure and involvement in market, so that they will also come to know about the demand and supply relation, their creativity cost and the latest market pattern. This in all way can enhance their lives and their circumstances.

The credibility and appreciation is source of energy to any art men, so this will work as boon for the survival of zari work with a considerable quality.

The concern issue is pattern of settlement, craftsmen are born in this society, they have lived their childhood in these street and the neighborhood essence has strong impact on their mind so as this reflect in their thought process or their approach towards life. They will not likely to go large open spaces or green parks, they themselves form their gathering spaces which with the time get converts into a nodal point, supported by tea and tobacco stalls. The other important factor is these spaces are only dominated by men, there are no women interacting or activity spaces hence they are losing their social life and knowledge too. There should be some provision like backyard gardens, janan parks, youth centers or activity center which support and build their moral and social strength. The workspaces or the proposed residence should be according to their mind types because they are not professional like engineers or doctors they have critical and particular mindset which is reason of their creativity.

So some concepts like Conurbation or hub only for Zari craftsmen need to apply because not only Varanasi weavers but people form downtowns like Ramnagar, Chandauli etc are migrating for better payments. A hub should be developed without the midmen profit which should include following

Workshops
Export block
Gallery or art block
Recreational space for craftsmen
Temporary exhibition areas for special occasions or thematic representations
Library on craft and also for craftsmen
Artist village or better we say guest house for artisans who are migrating from other villages or towns. So that they can live, complete their task and then they can move back. These apartments should have variations in designs according to bachelors, family and long and short tasks. A small example of such development can be like in given layout.

Benefits of this layout are multiple. this layout have street oriented eyes which will not make it dead as workspaces are facing streets , which is just like their hometowns. They have courtyards which will please their eyes and will be climatologically helpful. Some having stairs have access to terrace and future extension possibilities. Most important thing is layout around the

circle is making it a nodal point which will come as their meeting point. The backyard spaces covered by green and shaded by houses will be useful for women's and girls.

8: Workspaces should promote craftsmen and customer interactions.

There are many weaver communities in Varanasi which we call "basti” in urban terms, because they are not develop like colonies. The problem like low finance, economy, in supply of infrastructure, middlemen involvement, low exposure of craftsman and no credibility and several other problems will turn these areas into slum by a decade. The most important loss due to economy is "education ", due to low finance they cannot

educate their next generation properly. Hence they are giving us a collective group of illiterate people and one can imagine what will be the dangerous result of this. This illiteracy is not only depleting environmental quality and lifestyle but simultaneously generating criminals, beggars and handicap skills human with proper body parts.

Hence development is not only to build physical infrastructure but to also develop the social and cultural aspects of city according to city demand in relation with future needs. The Varanasi city has endless beauty description but if we look into core we will find the ugliness in the beauty , the rhyming urban infrastructure is so conflicting with people issues, the simplicity has other

face of poverty, the richness of tradition is not just by rich class, the major contributors are the core people who has kept their traditions alive like the "bunkers or weavers". The Ganga river will no more pleasing if there will be no boatman with "malhar" song. The Ghats will become dead if there will be no "chat and golgappe wala", the image of city will vanish if there will be no "pandas' on the Ghats in orange color dress and garland in hand. So the city is rich not only by IT centers, buildings, malls or the		concrete jungle. The city has some character due to its residents who love being a part of city and their culture, a city is known for its richness due to the passion of people for their work, the city is heritage because of people preserving and valuing their ethics and heredity. Hence Craftsman or in local terms “karigars” are generally taken as low grade people and often neglected. But craftsman are very important in representing culture and craft value, of not the city only but the whole nation. Their upliftment is equally important as of other field. Their contribution is immoral & their art is treasure for the country. We have to resolve the definition of development.









Double heighted, semi covered area for temporary exhibition
References ww///windian-embroidery.com. [Online] [Cited: 10.10.2012.] http:/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varanasi. [Online] [Cited: 10.10.2012.] Gupta, Divya. Heritage development plan for Varanasi by INTACH. Architectural Heritage Division. Varanasi : INTACH, 2011. Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission. Varanasi : s.n., 2010. Singh, amrita and Naik, Shailaja D. Status of Banaras weavers: A profile. Department of Textiles and Apparel Designing, College of Rural Home Science, University of Agricultural Sciences, Karnataka : s.n., 2008. Ltd., Planner India. Detailed Project Report for the Proposed Development of navigationin river Varuna at varanasi 2010.

https://youtu.be/8_3ee0_k0qs

What is at stake?

The issues require definition. As a civilization, and as an emerging global power, India’s future may depend on its ability to conserve, strengthen and build Indian resources of identity and creativity in a world in which progress is often mistaken as mimicry of the most powerful. This is reinforced by current debates within the country and worldwide on the need for a holistic approach to what constitutes human development (away from mere statistics), to the growing irrelevance of consumerism to the future of the planet, and to resolving the ‘million mutinies’ of those afraid of their identity being crushed and of being further dispossessed of their culture and resources. The stakes are huge, involving millions of lives and the very identity of ourselves as Indians. To address this issue demands a joint response of sensitivity and action across many stakeholders. The cultural and creative resources that can address this challenge do not fit neatly into sectors of development planning. The issues represent a ‘sector of sectors’. They call for shared understanding, sensitivity and action across a range of current roles, responsibilities and programmes. It is for this reason that a Coordination Committee is being suggested so as to bring together experience, knowledge and wisdom that can influence the future of planned growth. The issues are cultural (a strong Indian identity that brings traditional wisdom and contemporary knowledge to bear on the movement toward modernity), social (empowering citizens with a sense of self-confident identity that is humanist, embraces diversity and that is open to the world), economic (assuring sustainable livelihoods for millions as well as the creativity and innovation provides a cutting edge for success in national and international trade), political (returning to millions of citizens their sense of self-worth and participation within a vibrant democracy), and environmental (ensuring far better harmony between human society and nature so as to protect this and future generations). It is for this reason that the proposed Coordination Committee reflects such a wide range of backgrounds and activities. To ensure cohesion in what this Committee can contribute, there is therefore the need articulate the cross-cutting issues before attempting to work on particular elements. None of this should be new to Indians. These attitudes and perceptions were forces within the movement for Freedom, and the foundations of thought articulated by the Mahatma, Gurudev and other founding fathers. They attracted world attention then, and again now as great changes have encouraged the world to seek alternatives. It looks once again to Indian wisdom for creative solutions to development paradigms now challenged as unsustainable. The challenge to India is therefore to demonstrate alternatives, and to do so on a scale commensurate with both national and global need. Alternatives need to demonstrate that human and natural wellbeing can progress together, on the same trajectory, rather than at the cost of one another --- and that progress on these terms reinforces democracy, diversity and sustainability. This is clearly a task of influencing attitudes and generating an ability to strengthen and coordinate the fragile resources for our cultural, social and political integrity. The intangible heritage is one part of this. Yet the term needs understanding in a local context of strengthening an Indian ability to resolve today’s problems in a manner that is harmonious with tomorrow’s needs. This task demands creative and innovative thinking and action. While it certainly has a global dimension, the task at home needs to be given first priority before we can place before the world ‘the strength and excellence of India’s Intangible Cultural Heritage’. There has never been any dearth of global respect for India’s heritage. The problem is that at home there are those who doubt the relevance of this heritage to current aspirations of growth and power. Indeed, aspects of our heritage such as craft are dismissed as ‘sunset activity’ while others (such as Japan, Korea, Italy and Scandinavia) protect and encourage artisans as their most important resource for creativity and innovation in fiercely competitive markets, while agencies in the European Common Market declare that “The future is handmade” (Prince Claus Fund, The Netherlands). A major reason for this dichotomy is that the contribution to growth by so-called creative and cultural industries can be difficult to measure with conventional instruments. Perceptions of the ‘unorganized sector’ fail to comprehend traditional patterns of organization. Thus for example, the contribution of crafts industries (acknowledged as the largest source of Indian employment after agriculture) to the national economy remains relatively unknown. Cultural industries extend well beyond crafts. Recent efforts have helped highlight the large variety of living, skilled-based traditions as well as the expanding design and media industries, suggesting a huge work force and an incredibly diverse demographic. Some 800 million Indians still remain poor and vulnerable. The organized sector can absorb only a fraction of them. Unless a more reliable data-base can be generated to reflect the contribution of ‘cultural and creative industries’ to the economy, it is likely that their contribution to India’s social, political and environmental integrity will continue to go by default. The risk of this to India’s future stability is therefore enormous. The growing field of cultural economics is testimony to the fact that the limitations of policy-making based purely on economic theory are being acknowledged. International agencies (including the World Bank, UNDP, UNCTAD, WTO and UNESCO) are encouraging greater understanding and research in this area through parameters including those set out by UNESCO. Important and useful as these are, the need for India is to establish its own integrated view and to demonstrate this in national planning. In doing so, India can enhance relevant international Conventions to which it is a signatory, while enriching these with fresh understanding and evidence of culture and heritage as forces for development that is human and genuinely sustainable.

Charming copper-coated iron bells, from Kutch in Gujarat, evoke a world of sound and tonal memories entrenched deeply in the subcontinent's cultural landscape. As Mohammad Adham, a bell-maker, runs his fingers through a row of bells he has strung up for display, a series of enchanting notes gently filter into the surrounding area. Seeing my obvious delight, Mohammad Adham dangles a jhumar - a series of bells attached, at various points in a pre-determined sequence, on a metal frame - before me. On discovering that I am there not only to purchase these copper bells, but also to seek and document information about the craft of making copper bells, he settles down to explain with alacrity the tradition, processes and techniques of what is, for him, a livelihood and profession as much as it is a craft activity. According to Mohammad Adham, copper bells were made, traditionally, in Sindh (now in Pakistan after the partition of the Indian subcontinent into India and Pakistan in 1947). His memory dates back to three generations ago: to his grandfather, who instructed his father, who, in turn, instructed Mohammad Adham. Currently, most of the bell-making work is done in two villages - Nirona and Zura, in Gujarat by the Lohars of the Muslim community. The entire family is often involved in process, though women and children are involved in the less technical aspects. Only the men perform the critical tasks of shaping the bells and setting the sound on it.

Locally, these bells are used at entrances to homesand are also hung around the necks of grazing animals like cows and goats. They are even used as decorative musical items, somewhat likes chimes, all the more since their tonal quality is meticulously crafted. Mohammad Adham does not recall any particular myths linked with these bells and their use, though he thinks that these copper-coated iron bells are the local expression of an enduring pan-Indian tradition of bell-making and use.

According to Mohammad Adham, copper bells were made, traditionally, in Sindh (now in Pakistan after the partition of the Indian subcontinent into India and Pakistan in 1947). His memory dates back to three generations ago: to his grandfather, who instructed his father, who, in turn, instructed Mohammad Adham. Currently, most of the bell-making work is done in two villages - Nirona and Zura, in Gujarat by the Lohars of the Muslim community. The entire family is often involved in process, though women and children are involved in the less technical aspects. Only the men perform the critical tasks of shaping the bells and setting the sound on it

Materials, Processes and Techniques Five elements are used to create copper-coated iron bells: loha (iron), tamba (copper), peetal (brass), kapas (cotton), and wood. The body of a bell is made by shaping rectangular strips of iron plates into a cylindrical hollow (Step 1). The length and width of the iron strip being used depend on the size of the bell to be crafted. (The bells can be made in 14 sizes, varying in height from about 2 cm to over 30 cm.)

The cylindrical body is topped with a semi-circular shaped, half-moon hollow crown which is created from a small iron strip with an instrument that Adham Mohammed calls a paroni (Step 2). The dome-like top looks like the inside of a bowl and is welded perfectly with the cylindrical body of the bell.

Finally, the clasp loop at the top of the bell (through which is passed the rope or twine from which the bells hangs) is attached (Step 3). A very narrow iron strip is shaped like a horse shoe; both its ends are then pushed in through the bell top to the inside of the bell. Inside the bell, both the ends are twisted together and locked, creating a thin circular or oval loop of which half is atop the bell, and the other half inside the bell.

The textured and burnished copper coating - ranging from a tan-yellow gold to a red-brown gold - is created through several stages, each involving a distinct process. The uncoated iron bell is first dipped in a solution of mitti (earth) and water, after which a mix of powdered brass and powdered copper is applied on the bell. These metallic powders stick to the bell which has been wet with the earth-water solution. Bits of cotton are then soaked in the earth-water solution, after which they are stretched into dense

pancake-like shapes. The bell, with brass and copper powder clinging to it, is wrapped in the cotton pancake and baked in a bhatti. The length of time that the bell is kept in a bhatti depends on the size of the bell, with the smallest size being baked for half an hour and the largest for a little over an hour. After is has been baked, the cotton wrapping is peeled off, and the excess mud sticking to the bell is rubbed off. The metal-coated outside is buffed to create a lustrous polished tone.

Finally, a shaped piece of wood, usually sheesham wood (Dalbergia Sissoo) - both dense and hard - is hung in the cylindrical part of the bell structure converting the bell hollow into a musical piece. The solid wood piece is attached to the bell's dome roof with the help of a thin iron hoop that is pierced through the wood at one end (Step 4).

Sound and Tonal Settings The sound that emanates from each bell depends - crucially - on three factors: the shape and size of the body of the bell; the size, thickness and shape of the wooden strip hanging within the bell; and the shape and curvature of the bottom rim of the bell. Mohammad Adham emphasises the fact that the sound(s) that emanate from the bell(s) are actually set by the bell-maker with the help of an instrument known as ekalavai. The bells can range from sizes 1 to 14, with Size 1 being the smallest and Size 14 being the largest. Old timers often refer to the bells by their original names such as chota paila, paila, dingla, do dingla rather than their sizes. These names are the local currency equivalents for which the bells could be bought at that time. Within each size, the shape of the bells can vary, and the rims can be - and are - designed differently. Some are straight-edged, while others are worked in an

undulating pattern, and even in multiple rows of undulating lines. Sometimes the rims are reinforced or made heavier by adding thin strips of metal to create a new sound variation. To illustrate his point about setting the sound, Mohammad Adham strikes different bells to create different musical notes. Even to an untrained ear, different tones in the classical sargam (sa.. re.. ga.. maa.. paa.. dha.. nee.. sa) can be heard distinctly. He aligns eight bells in a horizontal row and strikes them in succession to coax from them the complete sargam, each bell being set on a particular note in the sequence. Mohammad Adham is as delighted as I am, and states that though the process of setting the sound takes a lot of skill and infinite patience (along with a still and silent space!), yet he is continues to feel thrilled each time he succeeds in coaxing the desired sound.

In sizes 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10, the Kutch bell-makers have been experimenting with a shape remarkably different from traditional bell forms. In this innovation, the bell is widest in diameter at its crown, and the diameter keeps decreasing downwards, thus creating a bell that is top-heavy in shape. However, Mohammad Adham states that it is quite difficult to coax appropriate notes and tones from bells created in this shape; he does not plan to make too many of these.

Products And Markets Individual bells, of various sizes, are sold locally for use at entrances, and for grazing animals, as well as, increasingly, as musical decorative items in urban areas. A combination of bells in a particular frame, known as jhumar, is also popular. In a jhumar, several bells are arranged in a linear sequence (usually along a copper-coated iron rod). Each individual sequence is either vertical or horizontal, but jhumars combining both kinds of sequences are a standard product in this craft field. For a combination jhumar to be made, individual sequences are set in parallel, adjacent or tangential (essential geometrical) frames, by linking the rods on which each linear sequence is arranged. The smallest jhumar made by Mohammad Adham comprised five bells, while the largest had 13. The bell-makers have definite numerical combinations in which they create jhumars. Usually small bells are used to create a jhumar. Mohammad Adham explains that, on no account, can different sized bells be combined in a single sequence or jhumar. This is owing to the fact that mixing different sized bells would lead to conflict in tonal settings, and thus create a cacophony. The need for tonal harmony also means that the rims of all bells in a jhumar are shaped identical to each other. A well-crafted jhumar is, thus, a collection of bells that are as similar - if not identical - in shape, size and tonal setting(s) as it is manually possible to create.

Currently Mohammad Adham has between 15 and 20 workmen, all of whom work on different parts of the process - the description is almost akin to an assembly-line operation. He wares are sold locally, as well as in different parts of India by participating in exhibitions and fairs. However, maximum income is procured through orders - from state- and national-level handicraft corporations; from retailers of handicrafts items; and from orders for export. Mohammad Adham states that he has been making these bells and jhumars for export for over two decades. Originating in the north-western fringes of the subcontinent, these copper-coated iron bells have slowly become visible in the urban milieu in north India, especially in large cities, where they are used as decorative items. Containing as they do, the sounds of a cultural landscape increasingly inaccessible in urban India, these bells are more than aesthetically beautiful decorative items; they are integral to memories that merge craft with tradition and history.

The cotton fibres (Pl. 1) belong to the genus Gossypium of family Malvaceae. About 39 species are known worldwide, native to the tropics and warm temperate region (http./www.cottonsjourney.com). Some scholars have discussed cotton varieties in detail (Watt 1966: 575-589). Among all, only four popular varieties have been used for domestication. These are Gossypium arboreum, Gossypium herbaceum, Gossypium hirsutum and Gossypium barbadense. First two varieties belong to old World and are usually known as desi cotton, while other two are of new World. (Cotton committee report, 1963:1)

Some scholars are of the opinion that Gossypium herbaceum is a wild ancestor to old World cottons, which is endemic to South Africa (Phillips 1976: 196), whether this is a place of origin for all old World cottons is contested (Santhanam and Hutchinson 1974: 90). Few other scholars think that Gossypium arboreum is a domestic form of cotton, which is widely cultivated in Indian sub-continent region from very early period (Possehl 1999: 249). Physical characteristic of the Gossypium herbaceumcotton is generally much longer in staple. On the other hand Gossypium arboreum variety of cotton is predominantly coarse short stapled; though a few among them are medium to long stapled and fairly fine. Some scientists feel there are weedy, ‘feral’ varieties of Gosssypium arboreum available in the fields of India and Pakistan. These have a range of variations, but it cannot be shown that, are truly wild progenitors of desi cotton of the region today. At present wild species of cotton in Pakistan called Gossypium stocksii yields short, useful fibres. G. Willcox is of the opinion that this could have been the cotton used during the Indus period (Willcox 199293). Traditional cotton growing areas are located in Saurashtra especially the region of Sindh and Gujarat (Hutchinson 1976:136). ARCHAEOLOGICAL EVIDENCES FROM PRE-HISTORIC AND PROTO-HISTORIC PERIOD Antiquity of cotton can be traced from early Chalcolithic period (ca.5,500-4,300 B.C.) from the entire Indian sub-continent region. There are some direct and indirect sources, which establish the fact that cotton is the biggest contribution of India to the world. Discovery of cotton seeds from excavated sites of early Chalcolithic period, early to mature Harappan culture (ca. 2600-2500 B.C.) and late Harappan culture (ca. 2000-1200 B.C.) is the most noteworthy find. Traces of cotton fibres and textile fragments provide evidences of production of cotton textiles from early Harappan period onwards. Apart from these direct evidences, there are some indirect references of textile such as impressions on potsherd, which have been found from sites of Harappan, late Harappan, Chalcolithic, Iron Age and Sunga- Kushan periods. Earliest Indian historical cotton textiles have been found from Fustat, Quseir-al-Qadim and Qasr Ibrim and Gebel Adda in Nubia, Egypt (Guy 1998: 39). These thousands of fragmentary pieces are dated from ninth century A.D. to seventeenth century A.D., which are housed in different collections of the World. Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art, Oxford had done the analysis of these objects with radiocarbon dating (Guy 1998: 186). Find of actual cotton fragment from ninth century A.D., examples of cotton seed and weave impression on pottery from Chalcolithic period onwards indicate towards few important points like production of cotton, loom weaving, production for domestic market etc. References of cotton fibres and cotton garments in Greek indicate that cotton was probably exported to Greece from India during that period. The microscopic and scientific examination of few textile fragments and its impression on potsherd reveals that the people of the Harrapan and the Late Harappan periods had knowledge of ‘plain weave technique’, which is considered the foremost weaving technique. Later on several complex and advance weaving technique were developed. Cotton seems to have been the most preferred material used during that period and still remains so.

EVIDENCES OF COTTON SEEDS

Charred cotton seeds have been found from three sites belonging to the early Chalcolithic and mature Harappan periods. The earliest evidence of several hundred charred cotton seeds, which were associated with a fireplace in one of the compartmented buildings, was found from Mehargarh, an early Chalcolithic site in Pakistan (Possehl 1999: 251; Jarrige, Meadow and Quirron 1995: 248). The next important finding of cotton seeds is from an inter-phase period between early and mature Harappan (ca. 2600-2500 B.C) site of Kunal (Hissar, Harayana). This site provides two types of cotton seeds; two carbonized cotton seeds (Gossypium arboreum L/ herbaceum L) (Saraswat 2003: 112) and two seeds of semal (Bombax Ceiba L) (Saraswat 2003: 119). Some cotton seeds were also found from Hulas (Uttar Pradesh), a site dated in the mature phase of Harappan culture (ca. 2,000-1,200 B.C) (IAR 1986-87: 132). FIBRES AND FRAGMENTS Several cotton threads, fibres and textile fragments have been found at Mohenjodaro and Harappa (now in Pakistan) from Harappan period (c.2700-2000 B.C), at Sringaverapur (District Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh) from levels corresponding to Iron Age (c.1050-1000 B.C), and at Narhan (District-Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh) from Sunga-Kushan period (ca.200 B.C- 400 A.D). Most of these evidences are in the form of thread found around the handle of copper mirror, razor, knife, rod and blade. These articles were found wrapped with the cotton fabric probably with the idea of preserving their edges from accidental damage. Similar kind of practice is prevalent even today, when not only are weapons covered with cloth sheath but also silver ornaments and metal zari (where metal thread is twisted and winded on silken thread) brocade sarees are wrapped into white muslin cloth to prevent tarnishing. Among variety of cotton fibres evidences, only four such examples have been scientifically examined so for. Two of them are from Mohenjodaro and one each from Sringaverapur and Narhan. Mohenjodaro specimens have been found adhering to various copper objects and the later two evidences are found from pottery pieces. Mohenjodaro fibres were preserved by the metallic salts, which were created by contact of metal with alkalis in the damp soil of the Mohenjodaro site. Amarnath Gulati of Cotton Technological Laboratory, Bombay examined these samples and their summary reports have been published by Mackey (Mackay 1998: 591-594), the extracts of which are noted below:

Copper broken knife (DK 83761) reveals four bits of string adhering to one side and on other side seventeen grooves in the patina possibly present the position of string that has disappeared. Microscopic examination of the fibres revealed, ‘the convoluted structure charactenrstic of cotton. The ribbon-width commonly varied between 15 and 20. The string appeared to be four fold; the count value of each strand would correspondingly be 8s”.
The blade of copper razor (DK 11985) appears to have been wrapped up in a coarse fabric. ‘The fabric could be distinguished in a few places only and appeared as an impression of fabric elsewhere or was hidden under a coating of clay. The weave of this fabric was plain, i.e. with an almost equal number of picks and ends per unit length. They were also counted with the help of a micro-linen tester. The mean of these observations gives 44 picks and 43 ends per inch. The diameter of yarn varies between 1/50″ and 1/80″ of an inch. It has already been shown that with ordinary twists and counts lying between 20’s and 40’s, the diameter of yarn (d) and its counts (c) are connected by the formula d=l/c Applying this formula, we find that the counts of the yarns used in the manufacture of the fabric under examination lie between 13’s and 17’s. Taking 15’s as the average value. The weight of the fabric would be 4ozs. per square yard. Few small pieces of yarn were scraped off and microscopic examination was also done The majority appeared as transparent crystalline needles, but a single fibre was ultimately found which was definitely convoluted. None of the other fibres examined exhibited the characteristics of fibres of flax. hemp etc, It is, therefore, to be concluded that the material used in the manufacture of this fabric was cotton”

Cotton fibres from a small pit of pottery piece have been found from Sringaverapura (c.l050-1000 B.C) (Saraswat 81: 79-81). Under a steriobinocular it was revealed that, ‘these are light to deep brown coloured fibres and coarse in nature. They were attached to the small pieces of carbonised seed coat. The long and short fibres on seed coat surface and the flat, long fibres with convolutions are the diagnostic features for the identification of true cottons of commerce i.e. the cultivated specimen of Gossypium suitable for spinning and twisting into yam (Carpenter and Leney 1952; Purseglone 1974). The ancient cotton fibres from Sringaverapura reveal all the features of cultivated cotton, quite suitable for the textiles and it falls under the category of old World cottons and has been placed under Gossppium herbaceum-arboreum ”.

Last specimen in this group is a potsherd with an impression of textile and a few pieces of fibre, found at Narhan, a site dated in the Sunga-Kushan period (ca. 300 B.C-400 A.D) (Saraswat etal. 1994. 319). On microscopic analysis of mud from selected areas of impression of textile on potsherd, a few pieces of fibre were found. These fibres were exceedingly tender, flat, having a wide lumen and convolutions throughout their length. In the light of these diagnostic features, the fibre has been identified as one of cultivated species of cotton (Gossypium), suitable for spinning and turning into yam. The cotton from Narhan may safely be refered to the category of Gossypium arboreum or Gossypium herbaceum.
Two silver vases, one somewhat larger than the other and closed with its lid of the same material have been found from Mohenjodaro. Both the vases were wrapped in cotton cloth.

These direct references of cotton fibres and its variety reflects two important facts; occurrence of cultivated cotton variety from the Harappan period onwards and secondly, after scientific examination, it becomes clear that spin thread was used, which proves the development of technology. Finding of spinning tools (will be discussed further) from a number of Harappan sites also support the view that from the Harappan period onwards spinning was practiced. However spinning tools were found from various sites of the Neolithic period of northern Indian region.

WOVEN IMPRESSION ON ARTIFACTS

Apart from these fibre and fragment examples, several woven fabric impressions on faience potsherd and pottery have been found from most of the Harappan, late Harappan, Chalcolithic, Iron Age, Sunga, Kushan and later historical sites of India. Few important evidences are:

From Lothal, Gujarat (ca. 2,200-1,700 B.C), around 65 terracotta sealings were recovered from warehouse, which have the impressions of Indus seals on obverse, and some impressions of packing materials such as bamboo matting, reed, woven cloth and cord on the reverse (Ghosh1989: 259).
Impressions of cloth fragments on potsherds have been found from the inter phase of between early and mature Harappan (ca. 2600-2500 B.C) site of Kunal, Hissar, Haryana (Saraswat 2002-2003:105)

Recent excavations at Harappa, have revealed numerous examples of textile impression on the interior of faience vessels and inadvertently pressed onto pottery containers. The uniform thickness of threads in a single piece of fabric and the tight weave reflected by these impressions indicate the use of spinning wheels. Hand spun thread usually is quite irregular; spinning wheels allow more uniform tension and twisting, which results in standardized threads (Kenoyer 1998:159).

From Harappa, there are several traces of the woven materials and threads- presumably of cotton with which cores of sand were secured for moulding on the faience vases (Vats 1997: 466).
A temple ornament bears an impression of cloth on its underside, while imprints of woven materials are found on two bricks (Vats 1997: 466).
A pottery fragment of Harappa and Bara Culture having textile impression has been found from Alamgirpur, Uttar Pradesh. The clear depiction of warp and weft on the fragment indicate fine example of ‘Plain weave’ (Tandon 1967-68:54-60 Ghosh 1989: 12).

A copper vase has been found from Rakhigarhi (Hissar, Haryana) site belonging to the mature Harappan period. This vase, sealed by a miniature pot buried under a mud floor, contained a hoard of jewellery and a bunch of rings clustered together, bearing cloth impression. This vase is displayed in the Harappan gallery of the National Museum, New Delhi.
Although no direct evidence for the cultivation of cotton is available from Megalithic culture sites (c.700 to 300 B.C), however, its use for cloth may be inferred from the traces of cloth found on some bronze objects at Adichanulllar and in the Nilgiri hills (Thapar 1985: 111).

One specimen of potsherd of burnished black and red ware from T. Narasipur showed a cloth impression on the interor of the base. This specimen belongs to an early stage of the South Indian Iron Age dated c 750 B.C. Another such impression on a sherd from Piklihal showed a cloth impression on the interior of the base of the bowl. This specimen is slightly late; it belongs to the final centuries of the Iron Age, or opening of the subsequent early historic period, probably of third century B.C. Miss G M. Crowfoot has examined both these specimens. She reports that the, ‘T. Narasipur specimen has an area of c 2.3 x 3.5 cm. The impression is on the inner surface of the sherd and is clearest near the wall of the pot, where presumably pressure would have been greatest. It is a textile impression. The fabric must have been a plain (tabby) weave, count 20/10 threads per cm the latter are clearly 5 on 5mm. The impression is not deep enough to show spinning direction. The Piklihal specimen has an area of c. 5.0 x 3.0 cm .It is a similar impression of a cloth with plain (tabby) weave, with as far as can be seen in the better preserved parts, a similar cotton or flax fabric in the Karnataka region during the Iron Age (Allchin 1997:428-29)
Cotton impression was also found on pottery piece at Ropar (c.500 B.C) in Punjab (Ghosh 1989: 377).
A potsherd with textile impression has been found from excavation at Narhan. This piece showed a good example of ‘plain weave technique’, which belongs to the Kushan period (c. 300-400 A.D) (Saraswat etal.1994: 319, Pl.1)

On the basis of above evidences and references of textiles from Pre-Harappan period to Kushan period the continuity of cotton weaving in Indian sub-continent is conclusively proved. Process/ Technique These indirect woven impressions also reveal one of the most important facts about the textile technology that technique of ‘plain weaving’ was consistently prevalent from Harppan period onwards. Practically for any kind of weaving, three basic things are required; yarn of two kinds (warp and weft), loom and the technique of weaving. So far as the first is concerned, cotton yarns have been found from some of the excavated sites. The loom was made of wood from ancient times till date. Since wood is perishable, it is impossible to get traces of wooden loom from any excavated site. However, after analyzing the excavated fabric, it has been already established that these fabrics are made with plain weaving technique for which looms are required. Moreover, excavation finding of loom weight, bobbin and point also support the view of use of loom during the Harappan period. Third is the weaving technique, which was practiced by the Harappan people. From cultivation of cotton, cleaning, combing, ginning, carding, twisting, silvering, preparation of warp and weft yarn to weaving and making of the final product is a lengthy process. Some of the processes are done just by hand, while some are done with implements. Entire process can broadly be divided into following categories;

Pre-spinning: Fibre to yarn includes cleaning, combing, ginning, carding and silvering.
Spinning implements: spindle and spinning wheel.
Pre-loom preparation includes yarn reeling, warp preparation, making of weft
Loom weaving: Yarn to fabric is done on different type of looms and with various weaving techniques.
Ornamentation of fabric through three types;Pre-loom (Colour dyeing of yarn)Loom (Needle and Points)Post-loom (Dyeing, painting, printing, embroidery, and applique).

Pre-spinning: Fibre to yarn The main process of obtaining cotton starts right from the cultivation of cotton balls, which are hand picked. The cotton is generally spread out in the sun for three to four hours. Once it is dry, some of the impurities are removed. The cotton fleece is combed with the ‘fish jaw’ manually; so that fibres on the seeds are made parallel as well as weaker fibres are removed. The ‘fish jaw’ is tied to a stick so that it can conveniently comb the cotton, which is done at least four to five times to remove some impurity. Generally it has been observed that yarns, which are processed in this way, remain stronger. Tradition of combing the cotton fibres with jaw of the Valugu fish (Pl. 2) is still practiced in Ponduru village of Andhra Pradesh, South India (Menon 2003: 4).

Once preliminary cleaning of cotton (Pl.3) fibres is done, comes the stage of ginning, in which ‘cotton is separated am cotton seeds’ with the help of ginning implement. Like most of the Asian countries, in India also, process of ginning is done with two type of implements known as; ‘board and roller’ (Prattipita Dukka & Gunupu in Telegu; Salai patri in Hindi) and ‘cotton-gin’ (Chakri in Hindi) (Alam 1990: 94). Both these basic implements have ancient origin and their tradition is still continuing. The ‘board and roller’ ginning implement was present in nearly all the ancient civilizations. The earliest example of this implement is evident from Ajanta frescoes titled, as Mahajanka Jataka (Mid sixth century A.D), which portrayed ‘three women at work’ (Yazdani 1930-55: 17). It depicts one of the ladies busy in ginning the cotton with roller and board type of implement. Similar method is well represented in fifteenth century manuscript (Steingass 1981: 403) These early examples are clear depiction of ginning implement and its process of using it. However, what material had been used for making this basic implement is not clear from these early examples. In later period such implements were made of wood, iron or other material. One such example is presently housed in National Gandhi Museum of New Delhi. This twentieth century implement ‘board’ is made of wood and its ‘roller’ stick is of aluminium. This type of traditional ginning implement is still practiced by Pattushali, Sali and Devangi communities of Ponduru town, Srikakulam, Andhra Pradesh, South India. (Pl 4)

While examining the archaeological material one interesting reference has been noticed from Bara (District Rupnagar, formerly in district Ambala, Ropar) of Harappan culture as described by Y.D. Sharma. It is an unidentified terracotta object, 10 cm square from the base and 17.5 cm high and has tapering outline, with two bifurcated curved upper ends; it has three-finger depression on the front and back. Such objects are reported from Sanghol and Chandigarh (Sharma 1989: 52) also. These could be used as ‘board and roller’ implement of ginning implement. Method of using the implement The ‘board and roller’ or ‘salai patri’ implement consists of a slanting wooden plank having horizontal grooves in it and a wooden or metal stick. The combed cotton with seeds is spread on the wooden plank, pressed and rolled with the metal rod towards forward motion with the help of slight pressure of palms. In this process the seeds are separated from the fibres. This sounds like a simple process but it calls for a skilled hand (Rao 1982: 12). ‘Cotton-gin’ or ‘Charkhi’ is another variety of ginning implement, which was also prevalent probably from mid-sixth century A.D. The earliest evidence of charkhiimplement is depicted in one of the fresco paintings of Ajanta, titled, ‘Dancing Girls’, which depicts three women at work (Yazdani 1930-55: 17). One of these women is shown working with charkhi, with its characteristic rectangular frame. She is feeding cotton between two rollers and probably moving the rollers with the other hand. The charkhi in the painting clearly shows both the upper rollers although these are cylindrical in shape. Here the charkhi is without crank-handle, which appears to be a later attachment to the instrument. It is not certain when the charkhi obtained its crank-handle. Bahar-1-Ajam (1740) manuscript talks about the weaving and its technique, but it does not speak about how it was used. There is a mid-18 century miniature painting of Kangra, Himachal Pradesh housed in the collection of National Museum, New Delhi, which shows the use of implement by the people. This painting titled, ‘migration of villagers from Gokula to Vrindavan’ belongs to Bhagavata Purana series (Randhawa 1973: 50). It shows one lady carrying charkhi, the ginning implement, and another one carrying the charkha. Both the implements appear to be made of wood. Charkhi in this painting has two rollers and crank-handle, which is fixed in ‘T’ shaped frame. Cotton ginning and spinning appears to be cottage craft till eighteenth century, mainly done by women only, as in this painting also both these implements are carried by ladies only. Three similar kinds of charkhries are housed in Himalyan Art Museum, Mandi, Himachal Pradesh, Dogra Musuem, Jammu and National Gandhi Museum, New Delhi, which belongs to last century. All three charkhis are made of wood and iron and have rollers, crank-handle, which are fixed in a frame. In Himalayan Art museum charkhi has twisted grooved angular rod in between the rollers, so that seeds may pass smoothly. Although no such ginning implement has been found from any Harappan site, but if excavated materials were examined in the light of shape of charkhi and its parts, it may be possible that some missing link can be traced from unidentified objects reported by archaeologist from all the excavated sites. While going through the reports of Lothal, Gujarat, one such object attracted attention. One bronze drill of the auger type with twisted grooves has been found from period B of Lothal of mature Harappan period (Ghosh 1989: 258). This could be a part of ginning implement in which iron twisted grooves rod is used for separating the seed from the seeded cotton, It is quite similar to twisted angular rod of charkhi of Himalayan museum. Moreover it was found from the area which provided accommodation for craftsmen-coppersmith, goldsmith and other crafts.

METHOD OF GINNING AND CHARKI IMPLEMENT

Charkhi implement is generally made of wood or bamboo. It consists of two vertical wooden posts, fixed to a flat piece of wood and the rollers are geared to move in opposite direction. Later on, sometimes iron auger type rod is also used in between the rollers to expedite the ginning process. The operator sets the rollers in motion by means of a crank attached to the end of one of the rollers, moving the crank with one hand and feeding cotton in the machine with the other. Once the seeds are removed from the cotton, it is cleaned further and sun dried. Carding is the next stage of processing the cotton fleece, in which fibres need to be separated by two methods; ‘scotching’ with wooden stick and with carding implement known as ‘bowstring device’ (Alam 1990:101). Scotching with stick is one of the most primitive methods of removing dirt and dust from cotton. However, this is a simple method and has quick results, but fibres break easily and become weak and not remain good for spinning. The bowstring device is simpler and more popular and prevalent till last century. Basically it is a kind of small bow consisting of a bamboo stick to which a cane string is attached and can be used by the mallet. The bowstring device is quite ancient. The two Sanskrit dictionaries of 11 and 12 centuries give textual references of bowstring device (Chandra 1973: 126). One Persian manuscript named Miftah-ul-Fuzala of fifteenth century depicts the illustration of bowstring device. Two such implements are also housed in the National Gandhi Museum, New Delhi. These implements are named as ‘Majhlapinjan’ and ‘Yudha pinjan’. Both of these were made of wood, bamboo and jute string and were in use till the start of this century.

Spinning implements

Spinning is the next most important process prior to weaving. This stage requires the maximum amount of skill as fine weaving depends on good quality of spun yarn. Spinning is done with most simple implement, which has not changed much as known so far. ‘Spindle whorl is basic instrument used for spinning, which is in two parts; spindle and whorl (PI.5). Spindle is a kind of stick fixed in the centre of whorl, which is circular in shape. Basically spindle’s weight and size of whorl facilitates the spinning process and acts both as weight and flywheel helping in the motion of the spindle. Other end of the spike has a notch for the purpose of holding the thread. Thus the ‘drop spindle’ is spun with the right hand and the cotton piece is held in the left hand. The strand of cotton, being spun, passes from the left hand to the spindle. The yarn thus produced is wound round the wooden or spike from time to time and thus works as bobbin.

The earliest evidence of terracotta spindle whorl has been found from Late Mesolithic phase. It was found lying with burial of Phase II of Bagor, Bhilwara, Rajasthan (Misra 2002: 120). However, some archaeologists are of the opinion that though it is a late Mesolithic site, some of the material found from here belongs to early Chalcolithic phase, with whom these habitants might have had contacts. The stone and pottery spindle whorls of Late Neolithic period have been found from Gufkral, Kashmir, (Sharma, 1982:23). Several terracotta spindle whorls have been found from Harappan period sites namely Mohenjodaro (Mackey 1973:470), Lothal (Ghosh 259), Amra (IAR; 1955-56), Bagasra (Sonawane 2003:21-50), Dhatwa (Mehta and Chaudhary 1975), Kanewal (Mehta, Momin and Shah 1980), Kanmer (L4R 1985-86), Lakhabawal (IAR 1955-56), Nageshwar (Bhan and Kenoyer 1984:115-120), Nesdi/Valabi (Mehta 1984: 243-251), Padri (Shinde 1992: 79-86), Pithad/Jaidak (IAR 1992-92), Vagad (Sonawane and Mehta 1985: 38-44), Valabhipur (Anderson and Afonso 1990) and Rakhigarhi (Nath 1999: 41) sites. Spindle whorls of different size, design and various materials such as shell, faience and pottery were also found from Mohenjodaro. The pottery whorls are of three types: (i) With a single hole in the middle. (ii) With two holes in the middle. (iii) With three holes in the middle. The shell spindle whorls are somewhat rare. They range in size from 1.5 inches in diameter and the single hole in the centre averages 0.8 inch in diameter, which suggests that a metal and not a wooden spindle whorl are all slightly protruding out owing to the curvature of the shell. Spindle whorls of faience have been found from D.K. and SD area of Mohenjodaro. Such spindle whorls are rare and smaller in size. Spindle whorls having a very small size hole suggest that they were fixed to a metal rod. Metal rods were also used in Sumer, as reported on the ‘A’ cemetery at Kish (Mackey 1973: 469). The medium size spindle whorls having holes have been found from Gufkral (Sharma 1982: 24). The Khairadih (Ballia, Uttar Pradesh) site have rich repertoire of iron objects of the Sunga-Kushan level (2-1“ century B.C to 1-2 century A.D) and from this site also spindle whorl has been found (Tripathi 2001: 143). During exploration of Mahanad, District Hoogly, West Bengal, some very important terracotta weaving implements have been found. These belong to 5-6′ century A.D. (Majumdar 1934-35: 43). One spinning implement made of wood and iron is housed in National Gandhi Museum, New Delhi. Once the cotton is processed from all these stages it becomes ready for weaving, which is done on loom.

Pre-Loom preparation includes reeling, warping, reed preparation and heddle.
Loom weaving: Yarn to fabric with different types of looms, various weaving techniques and implements

The archaeologists and the textile technologists have analyzed the pre-Harappan excavated cotton fabric and fragments, and opine that the Harrappan people were very familiar with the ‘plain’ or the ‘tabby’ weaving technique. In the plain weaving technique warp and weft threads are almost equal in thickness and closeness and pass over and under each other alternately. Basically the warps are set evenly on the frame and the shuttle carrying crosswise weft goes over one warp and then under. This process is continued until a pattern is woven (Barve 1976: 137). Such a fabric would appear to allow only slight ornamentation, but actually many patterns are possible even with this simple weave, just by reducing or increasing the thickness of the yarn. The headband in the stone image of bearded priest from Mohenjodaro is a very good example of use of narrow strips of fabric or ribbon, which was prevalent during the Harappan period apart form headgear or cap. Such strips of fabric can be made either through weaving on ‘back strap loom’ or by ‘knotting’ and ‘knitting’ with hands. Cotton fragment woven with tabby weave have been reported from Chalcolithic phase of Harappan period, which signifies the use of loom and the looms are made of wood. Harappan’s familiarity with timber yielding plants and other types of plants such as ‘rosewood’, ‘deodar’, ‘bamboo’, ‘neem’, ‘pipal’ etc. cannot be ignored (Bhardwaj 1990: 5; Saraswat 2002-2003: 114). Even today most of the looms were made of these woods, as discussed by the weavers of Varanasi and Ahmadabad region. Terracotta and stone loom weight were found from Mohenjodaro (1973: 461; Mackey 1998.601) and Harappa (Vats 1997:388). Three bobbins made of steatite (two) and terracotta (one) were found from Harappa (Vats 1997: LXXII, 15, Mackey 1998: 420) (PL6).

Terracotta balls, variously described as marbles, pellets, sling balls have been found from most of the sites of Harappan culture as well as sites of early historical periods. They are solid, handmade, well rounded and baked mostly in oxidizing condition with red colour. Such terracotta balls have been found from Vagad (Sonawane and Mehta 1985:38-44), Zekhda (IAR 1977-78), Lakhabawal (IAR 1955-56), Bokhira (Gaur 2006:33-39), Bagasra/ Gola Dhora (Sonawane 2003: 21-50) Amra (IAR 1955-56), Taxila (Ghosh 1948: 78), Rajghat (Narain 1972: 65) and Narhan, from circa. 800 B. C to 600 B.C to circa 300 A.D to 600 A.D (Singh 1994: 209), Vaisali (Sinha and Roy 1969: 202, pl.XCII) and from Andhra levels at Brahmagiri (Wheeler, No. 4: 270, pl.CXXII). Identical pieces have been reported from Nipania (district Bhairhwa) and Kadzahawa (district Taulihawal) in the Nepalese Terai. Archaeologists feel that such terracotta balls have been described as net sinkers or loom weights (Mitra 1972, Pl. CXXXII 5 & CXXXVI.4). In later period sand bags were also used as loom weight.

Ornamentation of fabric

Pre-loom ornamentation of fabric deals with the dyeing of yarns. Dyeing of yam is done first and with later dyed yarns are woven in geometric, floral and figurative patterns. This technique is known as patola in Gujarat and internationally ikat. The term ikat is a Malay word, which means tie and dye. Loom ornamentation is done by needle, which doesn’t have a hole. Basically while weaving, warp has to go through needle and weft has to interlace in it. The first material used for needles was bone as evident from Gufkral site of Kashmir from Neolithic period. Later on needles made of other materials were also found from early Chalocolithic, Harappan, and Iron Age sites. (Pl 7)

Post-loom decoration is fabric dyeing, painting, embroidery and applique work for which various types of implements are required. For dyeing fabric bronze vessel is an essential tool in which dyes are prepared. Needle with a hole is essential for thread embroidery and applique work, however, in later period wooden frame also became necessary for zari -embroidery. Ornamentation techniques/tools Starching Starching the yarn as well as fabric is an important stage, which is considered to be apart of ornamentation as it provides extra luster and improves the texture of ‘fabric.

Dye and Dyeing

Evidences of madder dyed cotton fabric, dyeing bath and ochre from Harappan period and seed of Indigo from early Harppan phase at Kunal, Haryana, provides important aspect of colour knowledge and aesthetic sense of Harppan people. However, the concept of colour and its use with proper contrast is evident from the Mesolithic period onwards. Some of the examples are as follows: From Mohenjodaro the madder dye cotton fabric has been found. The cotton resembles the coarser varieties of present-day Indian cottons, and was produced from a plant closely related to Gossypium arboreum or one of its varieties (Maity and Maity 1996:288).

Twelve carbonized seeds of Indigo (Indigo fera L) have been found from Early Harappan site of Kunal, Hissar, Haryana. Ten seeds are from early Harappan (ca. 2850-2600 B.C) phase, while two are from the inter phase between the early and mature Harappan phase (ca. 2600-2500 B.C.) (Saraswat 2002-2003:115). Dyeing bath from Harappa depicts the so-called circular working platform area and workmen’s quarters are seen in the mid-ground. New excavations of a circular working platform were begun in 1998 and continue in 1999. Initial results suggest that the platforms were not used for processing of grain, but were more likely associated with processing something using water. One possibility is the preparation of indigo dye or dyeing (www/.harappancivilization.com). Two cakes of red ochre were found from the Great Granary Area of the Harappa site (Vats 1997:258). Finding of dyeing courtyard from Early Harappan phase of Rakhigarhi, Harayana, depicts the huge burnt brickbat floor sloping southwest. There were four circular pits cut in the floor, two of bigger size were aligned north-south, while the other two of smaller diameter were aligned east-west. There were few postholes around these pits. The sharp gradient in the floor towards the public drain suggests its possible use as textile dyeing courtyard. The circular pits in the floor were specially cut to the size of open mouth receptacles containing dyeing solution. An equally wide veranda was noticed on the northern side of the courtyard, which possibly served the purpose of stacking textile (Nath 1999:47). All these evidences of red ochre colours, dyeing bath and red madder dyed cotton cloth fragment provide the testimony that dyeing was prevalent from Harappan period onwards.

Block printing and Stamping

The earliest Indian block printed cotton textiles have been found from 11 -12 century A.D from Foustat, housed in museums of France and Germany. These examples establish the fact that tradition of block printing existed in the eleventh century (PI.9). Here it would not be out of context to draw attention towards the findings of the excavations, which the archaeologists had identified as ‘Potter Stamp’, ‘Moulds’ or ‘Dyes’ found in most of the archaeological sites as early as early as first few centuries of the Christian era. Although these terracotta stamps were used for stamping the pottery, one cannot deny the familiarity of ‘concept of stamping’ among the Harappans.

Such terracotta stamps were reported from several historical sites. At Kumrahar such antiquity has been described as a ‘mould or ‘die’ for stamping, which is dated to Period III (circa.100 A.D – 300 A.D) (Altekar and Mishra 1959: 129). From Kaus ambi such antiquities have been found from S.P. VII level datable to circa 200 A.D. The designs comprise radiating lines with horizontal/transverse incision within concentric rings and have beautifully made handles (Singh 1994:191). Such stamps were also found from Rajghat and Hastinapur.

Needle

Apart from dyeing work, there are references of stitching, embroidery, knitting, knotting and weaving activity also, for which the basic implement required is the needle. This needle could be with or without hole. Needle having hole is used for stitching and embroidery and without hole is used for knitting and weaving. Several stone, bone, iron and gold needles have been found from Neolithic, Early Chalcolithic, Harappan and Chalcolithic culture and Iron Age sites. Needles without hole are of two size; large and small. The earliest bone needles are found from Neolithic period of Gufkral site, Kashmir (Sharma 1982: 21). These needles are of different varieties; with and without eyes. Finds from late Neolithic phase include small fine sized bone needles, indicating refineness in making of this tool. Tradition of the use of bone needle continued in Neolithic Culture of Mid-eastern region. The copper and bone needles, very roughly made and not completely round, with polished tip have been found from Mohenjodaro (now in Pakistan). Copper needles are of 1.95 inches and 1.81 inches long and diameters of 0.5 inches (Mackay 1973; 470).

Few copper or bronze needles have been found from Harappa. One is made of rectangular bar, but its pointed end retains a vestige of the needles. Eye is round in the cross section. The eye being at the point, the stitching was presumably done with two threads. Another is made of a round bar, and shows more of the eye, which is near the point. Metal needles were found Rom Rakhigarhi (Haryana) (Nath 1999:48), faience needles from Dholavira (Gujarat) and gold needles from Mohenjodaro and also Dholavira.

Late Harappan and Painted Gray Ware period of overlap phase revealed bone needles from Bhagwanpura. From Painted Gray Ware Culture (from the beginning to 7-6 century B.C) iron needles have been found from Atranjikera (Uttar Pradesh) and Takalghat-Khapa and Naikund (Tripathi 2001:175).

Awl

Awl is another kind of implement used for embroidery, apart from needle. Awl is an important tool for embroidery even today, especially in Kashmir and Gujarat area, where embroidery is done with awl tool and this work is known as mochiembroidery. The earliest example of awl, which is made of copper, has been found from advance Neolithic period from phase II of Bagor (Rajasthan) and from Adamgarh (Madhya Pradesh). Few copper or bronze awls have also been found from Harappan sites, some have slight inward cut near the point, perhaps for putting the thread. Sometime it appears that it has handle also (Vats 1997: 390). From Mohenjodaro four awls were reported; two each awl is of copper / bronze and bone. One copper awl has a blue point at one end and a graduate one at the other. Bone awls have a long round in section with one side is slightly thick and good polished point at one end. The roughness of the other end of the bone awl suggests its insertion in a wooden handle (Mackey 1973: 470). Copper or bronze short, broad and straight edged knife, curved knife, razors were also found from Harappa (Vats .:1997 388). One of the possible function of such curved knifes are at the time of carpet weaving. So it may be inferred that the carpet weaving was in practice during the Harappan period. Bone awl has been found from the Megalithic period of Gufkral, Kashmir. (Sharma 2000:110) Conclusion Find of cotton seed, cotton fragment, dyed fabric fragment supported by spinning, weaving and ornamenting tools like spindle and spindle whorl, bobbin, terracotta balls, sling balls, weight, needle, awl, terracotta and copper vessel etc from archaeological excavations provides a clear picture of cotton production and existence of cotton weaving tradition during the Harappan civilization. The bearded priest wearing trefoil patterned shawl, mother goddess decorated with ornamental head dress, male wearing conical caps and a seal depicting seven females wearing tunic are few significant examples found from different sites of Harappan period. All these examples give glimpses of different type of textiles manufactured and used by the people of the Harappan era. Their knowledge from production to weaver and their taste for adorning themselves in a befitting manner clearly show that people of the Harrappan era were very skilled and had artistic taste. In the end we would like to say that since this paper is the first attempt for interpretation of excavated materials particularly from the published reports of the important sites, it may bring forth many stimulating and welcome discussions. 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Do you remember the fairy tale of the emperor’s new clothes?: Long long ago there was once a country that made the best cloth in the world, in vast quantities, enough of it to clothe everyone in the country, with enough left over to send to many other countries. The other countries paid for that cloth in gold and silver, making the weaving country one of the richest in the world. The kings of that country wore fancy versions of that cloth, the poor people of that country wore plain versions of the same. All the people, the milkmaids and shepherds, the merchants and governors, the farmers and townsmen, all wore versions of the cloth specially made for them. One day some clever swindlers came to that country and sought an audience with the emperor. Your majesty, they said, the clothes you wear are not good enough for you. How can you wear the same as what the fishermen and farmers of your country wear? Not only that, there are so many different kinds of cloth made in your country that it is confusing. The cloth made in your country lasts for too long, it is too soft and too comfortable. Don’t you know that the world is changing and now things made by machine are the fashion. Cloth made by machine wears out much sooner, it is not as soft, mass produced cloth is the same everywhere, so everyone looks alike, it may be boring, but this is modernity. The fantastic thing about this new way of making cloth, they said, is that it is highly profitable for the owners of the machines. It’s silly to make cloth on simple wooden looms in your villages, from a bewildering variety of cottons; our expensive and complicated machines that mass produce cloth in factories and need one and only one kind of cotton are a much better bet. This advantage can be seen only by intelligent people like us, to all others it is invisible, they said. The emperor fell for this story and shelled out sacksful of gold and shipfuls of silver for the machines and for the cloth made from them. The conmen dressed the emperor in their machine made cloth, all the time telling him how wonderful the new clothes were and how he now looked like a real emperor. And for the next two hundred years the people of that country waited for someone to say: That cloth is rubbish. The cloth we made was much much better. They are still waiting. That fairy tale is the story of cotton cloth in India. As in the fairy tale, India made enough cotton cloth to clothe rich and poor in the whole subcontinent, with so much left over for export that it was said to ‘clothe the world’. The world paid for this cloth in gold and silver, which poured into India, not just into the pockets of the Adanis and Ambanis but into the hands of the millions of farmers who grew the cotton, the women who spun the yarn, and the weavers who wove the cloth. India grew rich from its export, so rich that Europeans flocked to India to make money for themselves, to ‘shake the pagoda tree’ as it was said. Today I’m going to remind you of the many advantages of weaving on the handloom. I want to suggest to you that we should look at the handloom not as an outmoded relic of the past but as a low-carbon production technology for the energy-stressed future. In my talk I’ll tell you about the grim reality of cotton yarn spinning in India today, and what a dreadful fate awaits it. I will also point out a possible brighter future – a possible, affordable and rational future in which we safeguard the Indian cotton textile industry and our rural livelihoods. For much of my life I’ve been fascinated by the story of cotton and cotton cloth making in India. I’ve spent the last 24 years working in this field. I’m part of a small group of people who have been puzzling over the strange trajectory of the indigenous cotton textile industry of India, during more than 20 years of research combined with active involvement with handlooms. And I find that the reality is as unbelievable as a fairy tale. I’ll tell the story of the different bits of this industry by jumping from country to country and century to century, backwards and forwards, because that’s the way the story makes sense. In between we’ll hear some voices from history. I’ll end with a possible roadmap for the future and I hope you’ll have lots of comments to add. Simply put, India today is actively decimating a sensible, energy-efficient low-carbon way of weaving cotton cloth on the handloom, in favour of capital and energy intensive mechanized weaving which only survives on subsidized electricity and exploited workers. That’s the power-loom weaving. And the yarn spinning industry too is in terrible shape. But it is always the woes of the handloom and handloom weavers we hear about, while the much larger woes of mechanized weaving and spinning in India seem to be hidden, or ignored. To understand the strength of the handloom, we need also to look into the dismal situation of the mainstream cotton textile industry today. The past, present and future of cotton cloth making in India is fascinating. The distant past is extraordinary: the Indian subcontinent clothed the world in cotton cloth for thousands of years. The present is a mess, a real horror story. The future depends on the choices we make. I believe the Indian cotton textile industry has the potential to be a huge factor in India’s social and economic well-being, if we take the right direction and recognize the power of the handloom. Making cotton cloth was the largest and most important industry of the subcontinent for at least 2000 years, from the time of Jesus Christ upto about the middle of the 19^th century. Actually, we all know that. But do you also know that Today, over 50 million[i] people in India grow cotton, gin cotton, bale and unable cotton, spin cotton yarn, weave cotton cloth, sell cotton cloth, make clothes from cotton, export cotton, yarn or clothes, or make oil and oilcake from cotton seed, and we’re not even talking of the toolmakers, or including Pakistan and Bangladesh! But as if by magic, as if it’s a fairy tale, this massive industry has become invisible! Questions need to be asked, and the first one is: How did the vibrant past turn into the grim present? The answer seems obvious: mechanization in the 19^th century made craft production unviable. But it wasn’t as simple as that. There’s a crucial point here –The mechanization was not just a matter of turning a hand process into a mechanical one. It was a shift of fundamentals, of principles. It changed a flexible technology into a rigid one. It changed a dispersed industry made up of millions of small, scattered production centres into a centralized one, concentrated in ‘industrial areas’ where the profits went into only a few pockets. [The Tatas, the Ruias, the Sarabhais, the Ambanis all made their first millions in textile mills]. Mechanization need not have been like that. It could have been quite different. You could have had mechanization that was both flexible and decentralized, as hand processing had been. And by the way the change didn’t happen automatically and smoothly, as many of you are aware. It was made to happen all through the nineteenth century through unfair trade practices by the English East India Company. A fascinating part of the textile story: Imagine yourself living in India in the year 1820. You will remember from your history lessons what was going on in India at that time. The last Mughal emperor was weak. The Maratthas were defeated. Names familiar to us played prominent roles on the Indian stage: Ranjit Singh of the Punjab, Baji Rao Peshwa of the Maratthas, Wajid Ali Shah of Avadh. All of whom wielded enormous power. But the most powerful ruler of them all was - the British East India Company. What was the Company? It was merely a large corporate entity, like Walmart is today. But, backed by the government of Britain, it starts to rule over large parts of India. The Company maintains an army, levies taxes and makes laws. Nick Robins in his book The Corporation that Changed the World points out:“At its height, the Company ruled over one-fifth of the world’s people, generated a revenue greater than the whole of Britain and commanded a private army a quarter of a million strong.” . Can you imagine a corporation like Walmart having its own army, levying taxes and making laws! a corporate entity whose sole purpose is to make a profit for its shareholders! The trade of the Company, the ‘Honourable Company’, as it was known, had an effect not just on the economies but also on the societies of both England and India, an effect that is ‘hard to over-emphasize’ as a scholar of the subject puts it. Beginning in the early 1600s the Company imports cotton cloth from India into England, where it becomes extremely popular because it’s so washable: people prefer it to the locally woven cloth made from wool, linen and mixed fibres; so much so that it destroys the English textile industry and ruins the lives of English handloom weavers – while it makes English traders and merchants rich (remember Napoleon 200 years later called them ‘a nation of shopkeepers’!). Cotton is the hinge on which artisanal cloth making turns to mass-production. The first machines of the Industrial Revolution are machines for spinning cotton yarn, machines that can be run by water or steam. This new industrial cotton textile production needs to be fed cotton at an industrial rate, so cotton begins to be grown in the newly colonized American continent, to be imported into England from America, cotton that is grown and picked and ginned by African slaves and the children of those slaves. “Indeed, so closely tied were cotton and slavery that the price of a slave directly correlated to the price of cotton” says a 2011 article in the New York Times, headed ‘When cotton was king’.

“Slave produced cotton” is imported into England to be mechanically turned into cotton yarn, the first product of mass-production. And where is all that yarn to be sold? In India, of course, the biggest cotton cloth weaver in the world. The Company carries the machine made yarn to India, selling it cheap, undercutting locally made handspun yarn, and destroying the hand-spinning industry of India.

..here is the first of two voices from history –a short extract from ‘Representation from a suffering spinner’ a letter printed in the Bengali newspaper ‘Samachar Darpan’, in 1828:

“I am a spinner. [the letter says]. After having suffered a great deal, I am writing this letter …The weavers used to visit our houses and buy the charkha yarn at three tolas per rupee…

Now for 3 years we two women, mother-in-law and I, are in want of food. The weavers do not call at the house for buying yarn. Not only this, if the yarn is sent to market, it is not sold even at one-fourth the old prices. …They say that bilati/imported yarn is being largely imported... I heard that its price is Rs 3 or Rs 4 per seer. I beat my brow and said, ‘Oh God, there are sisters more distressed even than I. I had thought that all men of Bilat were rich, but now I see that there are women there who are poorer than I'…They have sent the product of so much toil out here because they could not sell it there. But it has brought our ruin only. Men cannot use the cloth out of this yarn even for two months; it rots away. I therefore entreat the spinners over there … to judge whether it is fair to send yarn here or not.” The devastation of hand-spinning was one part of the destruction of the Indian cotton textile industry by the East India Company. There was more. There were the taxes. Listen to Francis Carnac Brown on the subject of taxes in 1862. Francis is a British cotton planter in India, on the Malabar coast.

“The story of cotton in India is not half told, (he says), how it was systematically depressed from the ..date that American cotton came into competition with it about …1786, how …one half of the crop was taken in kind as revenue, the other half by the sovereign merchant at a price much below the market price of the day …how the cotton farmer's plough and bullocks were taxed, the Churkha taxed, the bow taxed and the loom taxed; …how it paid export duty both in a raw state and in every shape of yarn, of thread, cloth or handkerchief, ..how the dyer was taxed and the dyed cloth taxed, …how Indian piece goods were loaded in England with a prohibitory duty and English piece goods were imported into India at a duty of 2 1/2 percent. (He goes on to say): It is my firm conviction that the same treatment would long since have converted any of the finest countries in Europe into wilderness. ...”

That was the 19^th century. Now we’ll take a jump backwards in time, the period that lasted from the time of Jesus Christ upto the early 19^th c. This was the period, lasting almost 2000 years, in which India clothed the world. And it has its relevance to today. There is an impression that the greatest achievement of ancient Indian cotton cloth weaving was – as you must have heard- Dhaka muslins. Cotton cloth woven so fine that that it had names like Woven wind, Evening dew, Flowing water; So fine that when the Mughal emperor Shahjahan chides his daughter the Princess Jahanara for being immodestly dressed, she retorts that she has on seven layers of the stuff. Yes of course this was a fantastic achievement… But in my opinion the greater achievement was something else which I want you to pay close attention to, because I believe that it is this that holds the key to the future: ‘Fustat textiles’ are pieces of Indian cloth found in Egypt, carbon dated 9^th to 14^th century. They are thick, ordinary, coarse cloth. Ruth Barnes, the Textile scholar says these textiles “cannot claim fame as good examples of outstanding craftsmanship”… but the significance for me is exactly that, that it is coarse cloth, obviously for the common man. India was unique in producing ordinary cotton cloth for ordinary people on a vast scale as a market-oriented activity from which millions of people derived their living. Making and selling cotton yarn and cloth were economic activities which gave people an income. While cloth for the elites was made in the ‘karkhana/workshop’ system, where yarn was given to weavers by a ‘master-weaver’ who marketed the finished product, cotton yarn and cloth was sold through local markets to ordinary people, and both these kinds of cloth were exported. According to my understanding making ordinary coarse cloth for aam admi/ordinary people was India’s real strength: Ordinary cloth made in vast quantities by ordinary weavers for ordinary people at affordable prices. No other region could do this. In China as in our Northeast today cotton cloth was made as a household occupation. It was only in the Indian subcontinent that it was a massive, market-oriented economic activity. So viable, so embedded in society that it has sustained for 5000 years. This is not just as a matter of historic interest, but also is a vital clue to the future. About scale: Enough cotton cloth was made in India to clothe India’s own rich and poor and for export both eastwards and to the west. In the first century after Christ the Roman historian Pliny complains that India is draining Rome of her gold - partly for spices, but mostly for cotton cloth. In 1610 Pyrard de Laval says about Indian cotton cloth “wherewith everyone from Cape of Good Hope to China, man and woman, is clothed from head to foot”. It was the largest variety of cloth the world had ever seen. "Every year ships arrive from Gujarat on India's West coast… from Cambay a ship put into port worth seventy to eighty thousand cruzados, carrying cloths of thirty different sorts" says Tome Pires in 1515. [A cruzado was a Portugese gold coin]. And you find the names of some varieties of these cloths in the Anglo-Indian dictionary known as ‘Hobson Jobson’: Albelli, alrochs, cossai, baftas, bejutas, corahs, doreas, dosooties, chhint, ginghams, jamdanis, morees, mulmuls, mushroos, nainsooks, nillaees, palempores, punjams, susi.. and so on.. But export was the smaller part. A huge part of the indigenous cotton textile industry also went into local loops: cotton grown, spun, woven and sold locally, through local markets. There is an account of a local weekly market at Jamoorghatta, in a report dated 1867, by Harry Rivett-Carnac, Cotton Commissioner for the Central Provinces, in which out of about 1400 stalls, 572 relate to cotton, yarn and cloth and 350 of the cloth sellers are non-weaver castes ‘Dhers, selling coarse cloth of their own manufacture’ It’s amazing how little research has been done on this part of Indian textile making. All the textile scholarship seems to be about export. No research on clothing for the entire Indian population (250 million people in 1830)? That’s part of the cloak of invisibility this industry wears! It’s not just for historic interest that we need to look into this, but more important, to understand what were our particular strengths and advantages that will be of use in the future, that we can use today to make a viable, ecological and democratic cotton textile industry, not one that just puts more money into rich industrialists’ pockets. Now let’s go back to the 19^th century let’s see how the intervention of the EIC affected the growing of cotton in India: Cotton has been grown in India for 5000 years by smallholder farmers – as it still is. Different varieties were grown in different parts of the country. They were rain-fed and grown mixed with food crops of various lentils. Growing it with other crops, did 2 things, it kept off pests and it replenished the soil. These 2 things made it possible to grow cotton in the same spot over millennia. But different varieties did not suit mass-production, and Indian cottons did not suit the new yarn spinning machinery that began to be invented in England in the early 1800s. This new way of spinning yarn was not in small scattered locations using wooden equipment. it was concentrated in a few places and using huge machinery made of rigid steel. And what effect did this change in spinning have on Indian cotton farms and farmer families? An earth-shaking effect. Now cotton had to be aggregated, collected together, so it had to be all of one kind, and that kind had to be one that could stand up to the harsh action of these new steel machines. Indian varieties were too soft and their fibres were too short. And so American cotton varieties were introduced into Indian cotton farms by the East India Company, the long strong fibres that had the long strong fibres the newly invented English technology needed. A Colonel Prain writing in 1828 tells us: “I have no doubt that the fine cotton produced near Dacca is one cause of the superiority of the manufacture”, he says “nor do I think that any American cotton is so fine, but then there can be no doubt that the American kinds have a longer filament and on that account are more fitted for European machinery”. The machines were heavy metal, bruising and battering the delicate cotton fibres. Longer, stronger filaments took the strain better, though they didn’t produce better cloth. That was it. Now that kind of cotton, became known as the best cotton, not the cotton that made the best cloth. Instead of inventing a technology to suit the cotton, Walmart’s ancestor, the EIC, changed the cotton plant to suit the technology. And nobody cared that Desi/indigenous and Americans grow in very different ways, one of which is suited to Indian conditions, and one of which emphatically is not. And since then, till today, the definition of best quality cotton is what can stand up to harsh ..machine processing. .. and as machines are made to run faster and faster, nature is expected to keep up. But nature has its limits: and we’re feeling those limits now in the 21^st century. Cotton farmers today have only one customer - the spinning mill, and all spinning mills today only have one kind of machinery, the kind that demands ever longer and stronger staples. Growing American cottons does not suit Indian soils or Indian climates, why because as we say down South, the American hirsutum cottons are shallow rooted, they cannot stand extremes of climate.. You can never depend on the Indian climate - one year it rains too much, the next year the rains fail. Desis have long taproots, which helps them survive both too much and too little rain. Hirsutums need irrigation. Irrigation creates humidity in which bacterial, viral, fungal diseases and pests thrive to which cotton is particularly prone. The Bt gene is only useful against a few varieties of caterpillar, its not a cure for virus or fungus, nor does it prevent insect attack by thrips, aphids, mites, mealy bugs. Large-scale spinning broke up the close relation of weaving cotton with growing cotton. After all, weavers and farmers were neighbours – as they still are. Today between them stands the modern spinning mill, to whom the cotton farmers must sell their cotton and from whom the handloom weavers must buy their yarn. A mill that forces farmers to grow the kind of cotton that’s immensely risky for them …a level of risk that small farmers cannot bear..the farmer suicides that have been happening particularly in Maharashtra & Andhra Pradesh for the last 20 years, part of the largest wave of suicides in history as Sainath reminds us. Many, possibly most, of these suicides are of cotton farmers. But I don’t read anywhere that the connection of cotton farmer suicides with cotton spinning technology has been made. Let’s take a quick look at how yarn making happens in the mill: Cotton lint from the plant is first separated from the seeds. In the 1800s, a new stage was introduced: after seed removal loose fluffy lint began to be pressed tightly into bales. So tightly that it becomes as hard as a block of wood, and needs an elaborate process and huge machinery to get it back into separate fibres. Basically to its original form. Its only after that the fibres are made into a loose blanket, then twisted and thinned more in 3 stages into yarn. Of course baling made sense when it was done to carry the cotton overseas to England. But the unbelievable thing is that baling, bale breaking, bale opening and reconstituting it into individual fibres are still integral parts of yarn making! Even when cotton grows nearby! And these additional, energy-guzzling stages that need huge infrastructure, are one of the main reasons for the unviability of modern textile technology. And of course the reason why this industrial revolution yarn technology is unsuited to Indian conditions is: it is uniform. It needs one kind of cotton and one kind of cotton only. With this way of making yarn India loses what could its greatest advantage, of being able to grow different kinds of cotton in different regions. We need flexible yarn making technology that can adapt to different varieties of cotton. Yarn-making specifically suited to Indian diversity of cotton varieties is the missing link in our otherwise potential, green, low-energy cotton-to-cloth production chain. If we had that we could regenerate our diversity of cotton varieties. We still have the handloom. Link the flexible technology of the handloom with diversity of cottons through adaptable spinning and what will you get? A unique, hard-to-beat cotton textile industry. It’s only the middle stage that’s missing. I suggest we rid ourselves of a past “that lies upon the present like a giant’s dead body” [to quote Nathaniel Hawthorne] the burden of a rigid, inflexible, energy-intensive yarn spinning technology. And how are the existing modern spinning mills of India doing? Very badly. Today the mechanized textile industry of India -mostly spinning- is on financial life-support from banks. It has gargantuan bad debts which it is unable to repay. If you think Kingfisher Airlines’s debts are enormous at 7000 crores, what d’you think of the mechanized Indian textile industry's debt, at almost 2 lakh crores! Strange that we don’t hear these dire facts about the mainstream industry, while its constantly dinned into us that handlooms are in such bad shape. Its not the handloom industry that has these huge debts! The fact is that the textile technology that today is considered modern, both yarn spinning and mechanical weaving, is “viable” only through debt-financing and on the back of an exploited workforce. A kind of exploitation in which we can’t compete with China. And because its on life-support its attracting Vulture Investors. Vulture investors look for dead & dying industries: “There are a lot of dead carcasses on the road, and the vultures are out sniffing,” says a New York Times report after the 2008 Wall Street crash[ii]. They’re here already. A recent headline in the Economic Times [July 30 this year] says the US’ W L Ross plans to invest in the Indian textile sector. Has anybody heard of Wilbur L Ross? He is known in the US as the dean of vulture investors. And now this canny investor has already taken the first steps towards swallowing up the Indian Textile industry. Its my guess that he is poised to flood the great Indian market with low-cost yarn spun in China and Vietnam. He could be the 21^st century avatar of the East India Company, destroying Indian spinning again 200 years later! So it becomes urgent to develop small-scale spinning, because the only kind of industry that can stand up to Wilbur L Ross and his ilk is a dispersed one, with small investments in scattered infrastructure. This is a plea to the country’s scientists and technologists to put in the research and development needed to work out small-scale cotton yarn making for the future, specifically suited to Indian cottons and to the handloom: smaller, flexible machinery that can be run by alternative energy and that can process different cotton varieties. We could then take the cotton textile industry out of ghettos and industrial centres where it is today and put the whole field-to-fabric production chain in thousands of locations next to cotton fields. Cutting out the exploitation of powerloom workers. Saving energy by cutting out transport, cutting out baling. With smaller investments in small-scale infrastructure. An industry that can be owned by producer collectives. A truly modern, democratic textile industry on a vast scale, suited to an energy-stressed future. That would bring smiles and not tears to cotton farmers and weavers - whose combined numbers make up a substantial part of the Indian population. And finally: handlooms & climate change. A recent report of the Global Commission on the economy & Climate change, which has members from the World Bank, Unilever, and the Bank of England, says that investments in low-carbon technologies will stimulate rather than hamper economic growth. That makes India several steps ahead on this score – we don’t even need to invest vast sums - we already have a low-carbon weaving technology in all parts of the country, complete with its huge bank of equipment and skills. This means that we can have our cake and eat it too and share it around: by promoting hand weaving we can claim international credit for setting up a low-carbon textile industry, we can make good cotton cloth for ourselves and for export and spread the profits of textile making among a large part of our population. Weavers and farmers must be re-connected through small-scale spinning – not by harking back to the past, but in a modern, viable, feasible way, building producer-owned, flexible technologies around the handloom rather than replacing it.The handlooms are there, the weavers are there, the cotton farmers are there waiting to be offered an honourable life in return for providing us energy-efficient cotton textile production! As a post-script I’d like to add that the Malkha initiative in which I have been involved for some years has taken the first small steps in this direction, so far with some success. End Notes [i] Including 6 million cotton farmers: Indian Textile Journal [ii] Investors Stalk the Wounded of Wall Street Lecture delivered in 2014 at the LILA Foundation sponsored PRISM series in New Delhi, India

Issue 1, Summer 2019 ISSN: 2581 - 9410 The cotton handloom industry of India is one of the great manufacturing institutions of the world: its looms have run continuously for five thousand years. Remnants of cotton thread have been found in the ruins of the Harappan civilization [5000-3500 BC], and the weavers of India have supplied the markets of the world with cotton cloth since at least the first century of the Christian era. The golden age of Indian cotton in recorded history stretches from that time until the beginning of the nineteenth century and there are testaments to the quantity, quality and variety of Indian cotton fabrics scattered through written records. Indian textiles were traded for Roman gold at the time of the Roman Empire; Pliny, the Roman historian of the 1st century AD, calculates the value of imports of Indian fabrics to Rome at a hundred million sesterces [equal at the time to 15 million Indian rupees] every year, and complains that India is draining Rome of her gold. Suleiman, an Arab trader who visits Calicut in 851 A.D writes in his diary “..Garments are made in so extraordinary a manner, that nowhere else are the like to be seen. These garments are ......wove to that degree of fineness that they may be drawn through a ring of middling size”¹. Tome Pires, a Portugese traveler of the 16th century writes in 1515 from Malacca describing the ships that come there from Gujarat and the Coromandel Coast, worth eighty to ninety thousand cruzados, carrying cloth of thirty different sorts². Pyrard de Laval in the early 17th century says Indian fabrics clothed “everyone from the Cape of Good Hope to China, man and woman, …from head to foot.³" Certainly the largest manufactured trade item in the world in pre-industrial times, Indian cotton cloth, paid for in gold and silver, was the source of India’s fabled wealth. The thriving export trade in cotton textiles was built on the base of domestic industry. Cotton was grown and cloth woven for export as well as for local use in weaving regions throughout the country, each making its own distinctive product. Fine textiles were woven for the nobility, ordinary home-spun for common people. The rich had many fine garments, the finer the more costly. The emperor Aurangzeb [1618-1717] is said to have chided his daughter for being improperly dressed, to which she replied that she had on seven jamas⁴ or suits . The common people on the other hand dressed in coarse undyed cloth, as the descriptions of early European travellers and the sketches of European artists show⁵.

Indian cloth was ‘in demand from China to the Mediterranean’⁶ and trade in Indian cotton fabrics had been carried on for centuries by Armenian, Arab and Indian traders until, from the early seventeenth century, the large European trading companies began to dominate the region’s textile, spice and slave trade, ensuring control of supply through forcible conquest of producing regions. Portuguese, Dutch, French and English trading companies seized territories in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, China and India. In 1600 the British East India Company was granted a Royal Charter for exclusive rights to Britain’s trade with India. Textile exports from India, for which the demand in Europe seemed to be insatiable, made up the bulk of its trade. In 1682 the port of Surat on the West coast alone exported 1,436,000 pieces and the total for the whole of India came to more than 3 million pieces – each piece being about 18 yards in length⁷ . The cloth was of different descriptions, most of it cotton of a variety of weaves and weights, dyed, printed and plain, for both garments and drapery. Ship’s musters of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries speak of thirty to forty different sorts of cotton fabrics, each with a name: bafta, mulmul, mashru, jamdani, moree, percale, nainsukh, chintz, etc, all paid for in bullion: in 4 years alone between 1681 and 1685 the East India Company imported 240 tonnes of silver and 7 tonnes of gold⁸ into India. During the 17th century so much Indian cotton was imported into England that the English woollen handweaving industry suffered and declined. English weavers protested, and eventually at the end of the 18th century England loaded a duty of 75% onto Indian cotton imports. The East India Company, beginning as a trader carrying finished cotton textiles from India, soon transformed itself into a colonial power. It proceeded through a series of wars and treaties with local rulers to establish itself as the ruler of large parts of the country and extractor of revenue through taxation. At the time when it began operations cotton in India was almost entirely grown for the domestic weaving industry, which ‘is, and has been for ages past, enormous’⁹ . This massive textile manufacturing industry worked through a smooth and well-established chain of exchange and processing between the peasant cultivator, the local market, itinerant carders, domestic spinners and home-based weaver families. Under Company rule the chain was disrupted. The peasant cultivator, who had under Mughal rule paid a maximum of 25% of his annual income in taxes, now became the source of land revenue for the Company and had to pay a much larger proportion, varying from 40 to 50%. Besides, cloth making was taxed again at different stages: “The story of cotton in India is not half told,” writes Francis Carnac Brown, a British cotton planter in the Malabar region of India, “how it was systematically depressed from the earliest date that American cotton came into competition with it about the year 1786, how for 40 or 50 years after, one half of the crop was taken in kind as revenue, the other half by the sovereign merchant at a price much below the market price of the day which was habitually kept down for the purpose, how the cotton farmer's plough and bullocks were taxed, the Churkha taxed, the bow taxed and the loom taxed; how inland custom houses were posted in and around every village on passing which cotton on its way to the Coast was stopped and like every other produce taxed afresh; how it paid export duty both in a raw state and in every shape of yarn, of thread, cloth or handkerchief, in which it was possible to manufacture it; how the dyer was taxed and the dyed cloth taxed, plain in the loom, taxed a second time in the dye vats, how Indian piece goods were loaded in England with a prohibitory duty and English piece goods were imported into India at an ad valorem duty of 2 ½ per cent. It is my firm conviction that the same treatment would long since have converted any of the finest countries in Europe into wilderness. But the Sun has continued to give forth to India its vast vivifying rays, the Heavens to pour down upon the vast surface its tropical rains. These perennial gifts of the Universal Father it has not been possible to tax."¹⁰ Oppressive taxation by the Company accompanied export of raw cotton and import of finished products, at first yarn and later, cloth. This combination had the effect of reversing the traditional trade flow; India which for centuries had been a net exporter of cotton textiles, gradually became an importer. First came the import of yarn. One immediate effect this had was of taking away the occupation of millions of women spinners in this country. Until colonial times, the yarn for handloom weaving in India had traditionally been spun by hand. Millions of women spun at home, the richer ones as a leisure pastime, the poorer ones to earn a living. With the invention of spinning machinery in Britain and the import of Bobbin winding, Andhra Pradesh machine-spun cotton yarn this occupation vanished. This letter, from the 1820s, was printed in a Bengali paper Samachar Darpan, translated into English and re-printed a hundred years later in Gandhi’s Young India¹¹ illustrates the effect of the imports:

“To the Editor, The Samachar,

I am a spinner. After having suffered a great deal, I am writing this letter.......I have heard that, if it is published, it will reach those who may lighten my distress and fulfil my desire....When my age was five and a half gandas (22) I became a widow with three daughters. My husband left nothing at the time of his death wherewith to maintain my old father-and mother-in-law and three daughters...I sold my jewellery for his shraddha ceremony. At last as we were on the verge of starvation God showed me a way by which we could save ourselves. I began to spin on takli and charkha.. In the morning I used to do the usual work of cleaning the house and then sit at the charkha till noon, and after cooking and feeding the old parents and daughters I would have my fill and sit spinning fine yarn on the takli. Thus I used to spin about a tola. The weavers used to visit our houses and buy the charkha yarn at three tolas per rupee. Whatever amount I wanted as advance from the weavers, I could get for the asking. This saved us from cares about food and cloth. In a few years' time I got together seven ganda rupees (Rs28). With this I married one daughter. In the same way, I got all three daughters married. There was no departure from caste customs. Nobody looked down upon these daughters because I gave all concerned ....what was due to them. When my father-in-law died I spent eleven ganda rupees (Rs 44) on his shraddha. This money was lent me by the weavers which I repaid in a year and a half, all this through the grace of the charkha. Now for 3 years we two women, mother-in-law and I, are in want of food. The weavers do not call at the house for buying yarn. Not only this, if the yarn is sent to the market, it is not sold even at one-fourth the old prices. I do not know how it happened. I asked many about it. They say that bilati (foreign) yarn is being largely imported. The weavers buy that yarn and weave. I had a sense of pride that bilati yarn could not be equal to my yarn, but when I got bilati yarn I saw that it was better than my yarn. I heard that its price is Rs 3 or Rs 4 per seer. I beat my brow and said, ‘Oh God, there are sisters more distressed even than I. I had thought that all men of Bilat were rich, but now I see that there are women there who are poorer than I'. I fully realize the poverty which induced those poor women to spin. They have sent the product of so much toil out here because they could not sell it there. It would have been something if it were sold here at good prices. But it has brought our ruin only. Men cannot use the cloth out of this yarn even for two months; it rots away. I therefore entreat the spinners over there that, if they will consider this representation, they will be able to judge whether it is fair to send yarn here or not.”

Britain saw India as a supplier of raw materials and a market for its manufactures. Machine-woven cotton fabrics were brought into the country, while cotton was shipped out to supply its own industry. But there was a problem: Though Indian cotton, Gossypium arboreum, had produced the finest fabrics the world has yet seen, the famous Dhaka muslins, it was unsuited to the newly invented textile machinery, which was designed for the cotton of America. ‘I have no doubt that the fine cotton produced near Dacca is one cause of the superiority of the manufacture’, writes Dr.Hamilton in 1828, ‘nor do I think that any American cotton is so fine, but then there can be no doubt that the American kinds have a longer filament and on that account are more fitted for European machinery’¹² . That is to say, American cotton varieties, Gossypium hirsutum, produced a longer, stronger staple, more fitted to the rigours of machine processing. Since America had declared itself independent it could no longer be relied on as a supplier of cotton, and so the East India Company set about ‘improving’ Indian cotton, which meant making it more suited to the machine. ‘The American plant grown in India produce[s] a staple longer, and therefore better calculated for the European manufacturer’¹³ . Before the Company’s intervention, local cotton varieties had been closely adapted to Indian textile technology, producing cotton fabrics of a staggering diversity that were durable, strong, soft, light in weight, absorbent, washable, and that were capable of holding colour permanently. Native Indian varieties were grown without irrigation on rain-fed soils, intercropped with the local food crops. They fruited over a long period, and so could be picked by family labour. In other words, they were suited to an economy of dispersed rather than mass production. The new British machines on the other hand were the heralds of the era of mass-production, and they needed uniform raw materials in large quantities, and the need to grow cotton to supply those machines rather than for the local textile industry completely transformed cotton cultivation in India. This was the critical point when the hundreds of varieties of Indian cotton which had been bred over centuries to supply the hundreds of weaving regions, now had to produce instead a uniform supply. Diversity which had until then been valued, now became a handicap. The East India Company began to research into ways to increase the quantity of cotton for export, and its suitability for the spinning machinery, replacing the centuries old Indian varieties with American ones. Obviously this research benefited the Company and the English textile manufacturers, neither of whom cared about preserving Indian textile traditions, or the welfare of Indian farmers or weavers. In fact they saw the Indian weaver as a competitor for the supply of cotton and the Indian farmer as inefficient, because he was unwilling to fit into the new trade-dominated industrial pattern. They knew that Indian cotton produced much less per acre than the American, and they felt the fault lay in the ignorance of the Indian farmer of better varieties and better agricultural practices. They decided to bring American cotton planters to India to teach Indians how to grow cotton, about which John Sullivan of the Madras Revenue Board had this to say: ‘when the cotton fabrics of India had been carried to the highest perfection centuries and centuries before the cotton plant was known in America, it seems odd that we should be thinking now of importing people from America to teach the people of India how to cultivate, clean and collect their cotton’¹⁴ But the Company went ahead. In 1840 it employed ten American cotton planters to demonstrate American style cotton growing in India. Three of these planters were sent to Coimbatore and given land and all the help they needed. They were supervised by Dr Wight, who at the same time gave the American seed to the Indian ryots and bought back the cotton produced. The experiment went on for 13 years. In 1861 Wight reported: In three years the American planters had completely exhausted the fertility of the soil by cropping it with cotton year after year. In the fourth and fifth year the crop was not worth gathering. At the end of the fifth year, the planters retired from the field altogether, confessing candidly that they could not compete with the Coimbatore farmers American planters were beaten out in three years. ‘The Coimbatore ryots at the end of the thirteenth year of trials produced from American seed of their own raising a cotton crop as good and as abundant as was produced by the planters in the first year, and this cotton was produced at half the cost of the Americans’.¹⁵ The damaging effect of substituting American for native varieties was recognized by the well-informed. George Watt, the botanical advisor to the Government was categoric: “It might almost be said that progression is deliberately stultified, the labours of centuries ruthlessly thrown away, and a large and important industry practically cornered or restricted in its possible development by interested parties. … since the existing traffic is aimed at the destruction of all the good features of the indigenous fibre …”¹⁶ In 1947 India regained its independence, but by this time mass production was synonymous with modernity and India’s own spinning and weaving mills took over the role of Lancashire in the textile industry. It was taken for granted that research into cotton varieties would continue to develop cotton for the mills, making sure that the cotton plant kept pace with the development of the machines. American cotton varieties and their hybrids gradually replaced the native ones, so that at present the native varieties grow only in a few pockets. Cotton in India is grown largely by small farmers, and the new practices have changed the nature of farm practices from sustainable family based agriculture to intensive commercial farming with severe and tragic consequences. Seeds come from large multinationals rather the farmer’s own stock, and are expensive. While the local varieties were rain-fed, the new varieties need irrigation, which increases humidity. Humidity in turn encourages pests and fungus. A cocktail of chemicals – fertilizer, pesticide¹⁷ and fungicide is used which adds to the cost of cultivation, but does not guarantee a good harvest. The farmer runs up huge debts hoping for a good crop, but India’s weather is variable, ground water is fast depleting and if the crop fails the risks are entirely the farmer’s. The distress of the cotton farmer leads to numbers of suicides; in 2004 in the state of Andhra Pradesh alone almost 600 farmers, the majority of them cotton growers, ended their lives¹⁸. Lately the introduction of genetically modified seeds has led to even more severe problems in cotton growing areas of Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh. Not only cotton farmers but handloom weavers too are in trouble, and a large part of their problem is related to cotton yarn. Hand weaving in India today is a livelihood for a large section of the population, particularly in villages. Over 6 million square yards of textiles – 16% of India’s textile output - were produced on hand looms last year [04-05]. There are six and a half million weaving families, besides whom there are an equal number occupied in ancillary trades connected with the industry – dyers, warpers, sizers, bobbin-winders, and tool makers. Yet this enormously significant and productive sector does not get yarn specifically suited to it, but is treated as a poor relation of the mill textile industry, and has to use mill-spun yarn, which puts handwoven textiles at a disadvantage in terms of quality. Handwoven fabrics can compete in the market only on their quality, not their price. The Indian weaver’s skills need to be underpinned by suitable yarn to carry through into fabric the important characteristics of cotton. The technology in use in contemporary spinning mills is a centralized, capital and energy intensive technology ill-suited to the operating conditions in India where cotton is grown by millions of farmers on small farms and yarn in turn is woven mostly (over 90%) by dispersed handlooms and power looms. Because spinning machinery has high capacities, only large quantities are economical to spin, so farmers are required to grow uniform varieties of cotton. The overheads of transporting cotton to the mills and yarn to the weavers add to the costs. On the weavers’ side, small quantities of different types of yarn are needed, which are difficult for large mills to supply. When cotton began to be exported not only the growing but also the handling changed. For local use cotton was carried in loose sacks, but these obviously were not suited to transport overseas. Steam presses were introduced to compress the loose cotton into bales, squeezing the soft fibres into a dense mass of the consistency of wood, pressing trash – bits of leaf, seed-coat and dirt - more firmly into it. Now baling is taken to be an essential part of cotton processing even if both cotton growers and spinning mills are located within miles of each other. Today spinning mills in India use only baled cotton. The bales are torn open by spiked metal wheels and the loosened cotton blown apart by force in the blow-room to separate the fibres before the cotton is cleaned and carded. By the time it has gone through these processes the cotton is limp and lifeless and has lost the springiness that would otherwise give cotton fabric a wonderful drape and feel. The yarn made on these machines is strong enough for machine weaving, but with its tighter twist is over-spun for handlooms, and has also lost some of its durability, absorbency and colour holding capacity, all the desirable natural qualities of cotton which can be retained through gentle processing and hand-weaving. Dastkar Andhra, Hyderabad, is a not-for-profit independent Trust, whose objective is to reaffirm the vitality of household production of cotton textiles as an economic activity in the contemporary context. The Trust provides consultancy services to artisan industries to contemporize their organizational structures and market linkages, making use of new technologies where it suits them, while retaining and reinforcing the strengths of traditional skills. Dastkar, in collaboration with handloom weaving co-operatives, develops systems for effective linkages between dispersed production and the market and researches technologies both traditional and modern that would buttress the strengths of the cotton handweaving industry. Dastkar Andhra and Vortex Engineering, Chennai, are collaborating in a research project to design and manufacture a set of machines that uses fresh cotton straight from the fields, eliminating some steps between ginning and spinning - baling, transport of bales, blow-room - and simplifying carding. These machines are capable of spinning small lots of cotton of highly variable quality, suited to meeting the differing yarn needs of unstandardized looms. They free the cotton farmer from the tyranny of demands by ever faster spinning machinery, needing cotton of longer & stronger staple, unsuited to being grown in Indian conditions. They can supply handloom weavers with yarn made from local cottons. With these machines it will be possible to link cotton growing to hand-weaving in the many hundreds of villages in India where both co-exist. This is our vision, of a way of regaining the diversity and variety that were the hallmarks of India’s ancient textile tradition. At present we have one pilot unit working, processing about 25 kg of ginned cotton in each 8-hour shift into sliver, which is then distributed to domestic spinners operating small motorized ring-frames. Once the yarn is spun it is woven on hand looms into a soft, durable, absorbent, medium weight cloth called ‘malkha’ with excellent draping and dye-holding properties. Some say that as energy from steam, oil and electricity ushered in the era of mass production in the 19th century, it will be clean, renewable energy that will take dispersed production industries to the top of the heap in the 21st. As the stock of fossil fuels comes to an end notions of efficiency will change and low-energy manufacturing processes will gain in value. At the same time markets are becoming saturated with the look-alike products of factory production, and there are more and more customers for the individualized products that dispersed production can offer. In this situation household manufacture of cotton textiles in India, particularly if it can use yarn made from cotton fresh from the field, looks as if it will have the last laugh over mass production after all.

References

Sir George Watt, The Wild & Cultivated Cotton Plants of the World, 1907 (New Delhi: Sagar Book House, 1989) Mattiebelle Gittinger, Master Dyers to the World (Washington: Textile Museum, 1982) Yule & Burnell, Hobson-Jobson (London: John Murray, 1903) See for example the early 19th century engravings of Rudolph Ackermann, Balthazar Solvyns and others John Guy, Woven Cargoes (New York: Thames & Hudson, 1998) Nick Robins, The Corporation that Changed the World, (Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2006) John Keay, The Honourable Company, (London: Harper Collins, 1993) Report from the Select Committee on the Growth of Cotton in India, (London:1848) Proceedings of the Madras Board of Revenue no 407 dated April 9, 1862, quoted in Ratnam, Agricultural Development in Madras State prior to 1900, (Madras: New Century Book House, 1966) M K Gandhi, Young India 21-5-1931, reprinted in Economics of Khadi, (Ahmedabad: Navjivan Press, 1941) Sir George Watt, ‘The Wild & Cultivated Cotton Plants of the World’, 1907, reprinted: (New Delhi: Sagar Book House, 1989) Report from the Select Committee on the Growth of Cotton in India, (London: 1848) Report from the Select Committee on the Growth of Cotton in India, (London: 1848) C Shambu Prasad, Suicide Deaths and Quality of Indian Cotton, Economic & Political Weekly, January 30, 1999 Sir George Watt, ‘The Wild & Cultivated Cotton Plants of the World’, 1907, reprinted: (New Delhi: Sagar Book House, 1989) Cotton which is grown on about 5% of the cultivated land accounts for 55% of all the pesticide used in India. Andhra Pradesh Rythu Sangam, 2005

Websites Census of India: http/www.censusindia.gov.in Craft Revival Trust: http/www.craftrevival.org Geographical Indication Registry: http:/www.ipindia.nic.in/girindia/

THE KHATRIS OF KUTCH

TRADITIONAL TRADE

References

What is at stake?

EVIDENCES OF COTTON SEEDS

WOVEN IMPRESSION ON ARTIFACTS

METHOD OF GINNING AND CHARKI IMPLEMENT

Spinning implements

Ornamentation of fabric

Dye and Dyeing

Block printing and Stamping

Needle

Awl

References