The Textiles Tradition of India
Good evening to each and every august presence in this room. And a heartfelt thank you for honouring me with your warm attention - it will be an inspiration for me in my journey with my brand, Amalin. I am delighted that this evening gives me a chance to talk of something that is so close to my heart, my upbringing, and my very being. Of course, I am talking of Indian textiles.
The journey of Indian textiles goes back thousands of years. The story of fabrics in ancient and medieval India is recorded in our literature and, visually, in sculpture. While the Rig Veda refers to weaving, Ramayana and Mahabharata speak of a variety of fabrics. The Ramayana mentions rich stuff worn by the aristocracy and the simple clothes worn by commoners. Murals and sculptures - beginning with those at Ajanta and Ellora - bear testimony to the richness of the traditions that existed in ancient India. Those motifs, patterns, designs, and even some techniques of weaving are still used by contemporary Indian weavers.
Archaeological evidence proves that a cotton textile industry existed in the Indus Valley around 3000 B.C. Fragments from much later periods have survived the ravages of time to tell us that inhabitants of Mohenjo-Daro used homespun cotton for weaving garments, and their textiles were in great demand in a number of countries. There was a big market for them in the Roman Empire. The Greeks who travelled with Alexander the Great wrote of the fine muslins and robes embroidered in gold that they had seen in India. Cotton products originating from India have been found in many Middle East countries - and they were exported to China too, during the heydays of the Silk Route. Silk fabrics from South India were exported to Indonesia and printed cotton fabrics made their way to Europe and the Far East even before Europeans set foot on the subcontinent. In the 13th century Marco Polo left detailed accounts of life in India's coastal regions, and he mentions buckrams, which he described as the most beautiful cloth in the world. He compared it to the tissues of a spider's web.
Given this demand, the textile industries in ancient and medieval India came to be politically controlled. If a ruler was favorably disposed towards the arts, weaving prospered. The rural textiles woven for the masses was differentiated from those made in state workshops for the royalty. In the 14th century, the Sultan of Delhi (1325-1351) initiated price controls for food, cloth, and other commodities to fight inflation. You'd need a permit then to buy silk, satin and brocade, as only the well-to-do were allowed to own them. The Sultan employed 4,000 silk weavers who made robes of honour, hangings and gifts of gold brocade for foreign dignitaries.
The coming of the Mughals in India spelt a succession of strong rulers who provided political stability. That brought economic prosperity and led to a very high standard of workmanship. The court workshops were housed in large halls. While embroiderers worked under a supervisor in one hall, painters, tailors and weavers produced silks, brocades and fine muslins in another hall. Over the next few centuries the skilful adaptation of designs widened the horizon of Indian textile art. It drew inspiration from religious motifs, painting, sculpture, architecture, dance, even music!
Banaras Brocade
It is fascinating to behold the Banaras brocade, also known as Kimkhab. It harks back to the Rig Veda where it is referred to as the Hiranya cloth. Under the Mughals, sometime in the 14th century, weaving brocades with intricate designs in gold and silver became a rage in Banaras. It began to incorporate Mughal designs such as intricate intertwining floral motifs, kalga and bel, a string of upright leaves called jhallar at the outer edge of the borders. Other distinctive features are heavy gold work, compact weaving, figures with details, metallic visual effects, jaal (a net-like pattern), and mina work. Banarasi brocade saris are still an inevitable part of an Indian bride's trousseau.
The chief raw material for the brocades was silk yarns largely imported from production centres like Bengal, Kashmir, Central Asia, China and even Italy. Malda, a small town in north Bengal, was the main centre supplying silk yarns to Banaras.
The next essential material was kalabattu, the gold and silver threads commonly known as 'zari'. If silk is the backbone of the industry, design is its structure and kalabattu its life and soul. The first step in the process was the preparation of the silk yarn or silk twisting. The second step was decolorization or bleaching and degumming of the silk to bring sheen and softness to the fabric and for penetration of the colouring agents in the yarn.
Next, the yarn was dyed. Dyes obtained from flowers, leaves, barks, roots and minerals gave fast colours, beauty and luster to the fabric. The wide range of hues helped to produce an infinite variety of forms and patterns, especially when it was interwoven with kalabattu.
Preparation of the warp thread formed the fourth step. It had to be properly starched for a requisite stiffness. Pattern-making was the fifth step. The designer sketched the design, or got it from the client. It played the most vital role in the manufacture of brocades. The final product, whether in gold or silver, retained its lustre and grandeur over centuries.
Baluchari
Bengal, where I come from, occupied a premier position in textile art. Though somewhat eclipsed by the muslin-craze, Bengal did excel in other varieties of textiles too. Baluchari was one such genre of textile, patronized by the Nawabs of this region. The favourite colours in the art of Baluchari textile making were red, yellow, orange, green, purple, chocolate, indigo, light blue and grey. No metallic thread was ever used in Baluchari. As a norm, the ground colours were dark and the pictorial designs were woven with silk threads of lighter colours, giving an enamel effect. Contemporary human figures were introduced as motifs that resembled portraits and each had its own frame.
Kalamkari
Kalamkari holds a pride of place among the cotton textiles. It could be defined as a fabric patterned through dye rather than loom. The term 'Kalamkari' comes from the Persian words Kalam or pen-brush and Karigari or workmanship. Cotton fabric was painted by an artist-craftsmen and then dyed to turn out fine decorative art fabric.
Kalamkari fabric ranged from the painted to the printed. The technique stemmed from the science of dyeing. Traditional motifs were floral, geometrical, or narrative panels with regional flavour. Hindu temple hangings and canopies over the deities were decorated with mythological themes, prayer mats for Muslims were painted with Islamic themes and palampores or bedspreads, pillow slips, table-cloths and the like generally depicted sporting scenes, human figures, floral sprays, tree panels, fruits and birds.
Patola
Western India gave the world Patola silks. Patola was reserved for bridal costumes, dancer's costume and formal attire of the nobility. Leaf patterns with lions and elephants were the most popular.
The art of Patola originated from Ikat, one of the oldest techniques of decorating textile through the tie-and-dye or Bandhana process. The design is so planned that the weaving starts from one end and continues unbroken till the completion of the piece. Initially Gujarat was greatly dependent on Chinese raw material but by the latter half of the 17th century Bengal had ousted China.
The entire process of crafting Patola is elaborate, laborious, and time consuming. Its overall excellence lies in the harmony of texture, colour and decoration. It is gorgeous but not gaudy, delicate but durable, colourful but soft in mood and ornamented but not overcrowded. One shade blends into the other in sequence and creates the impression of a finished painting by a master artist.
(All these textile genres, ladies and gentleman, are alive and kicking. In fact, many - like the Balucharis, have seen a revival in our times. Many, like Ikat or Patola, have acquired international dimensions. Brocades never went out of our lives although royalty did, many decades ago. And their usage has grown with the usage of accessories - and the ban on plastics by the ecology-concious civilized world. Handbags, jutis, ties for men; bedspreads, tablecloths, napkins and linen; lampshades, diaries, shopping bags - why, even jewellery is now being crafted out of fabric in India!)
It is interesting to note how these genres of Indian textiles developed over centuries. May I show a film to take you on a brief journey through the history of India's textile art?