Master embroiderer and tailor: Jamnaben Ahir
LOkesh Ghai returns to Kutch to find a radical decline in the number of artisans practising their traditional crafts.
Folk crafts and craftspeople are part of a heritage ecosystem. The system includes a sustainable supply chain, usually local raw materials with a conscious approach to sourcing from animals, land, or flora-fauna, circular making with a minimum carbon footprint, and lasting and direct relations between makers and consumers. A strong connection with spiritual elements is embedded in the making process of crafts; Gods and nature is honoured through the creation of visuals, songs or prayers that are part of the making process. There is a proud sense of identity and distinct aesthetics in craft objects. The outcome is functional objects that are qualitative and long-lasting, often generational. Craft and crafting are a lifestyle and a culture.
The downfall of a craft is a response to the change in the ecological and value system that is not just inclusive of economic value but beyond. When the Indian subcontinent was colonised, there were systematic approaches to countering the crafts. In many cases, the makers’ communities were deprived of access to raw materials. In other instances, markets were filled with cheaper imitations of craft objects made using raw materials, causing damage to the environment and fractional longevity compared to originals. ‘Colonial mentality’ discourages local consumption patterns, where cultural inferiority was imposed, which led to gradually reducing the consumption of culturally specific craft objects.
Post-independence, the nation-building agenda focused on industry. In comparison, the craft sector was neglected. The focus was on scaling up and mechanisation, with more emphasis on cities than villages, which are the heart of crafts. The focus was on design, an outcome of industrial revolution that concerns more production and depersonalisation than craft or folk art, which focuses on creation and the individual.
Unfortunately, most efforts, even today, to engage with crafts are from a lens of industry, failing to recognise the core value of heritage crafts. Standardisation is for machines that are limited to following an algorithm. Human creative capacity is beyond this. Why force craft people to work like machines reproducing identically, thus devaluing the human capacity? The strength of craft is bespoke.
Artisans in India are often exploited in the name of support.
Greenwashing in the craft sector has many forms. Artisans in India are often exploited in the name of support. Many NGOs operate as ‘factory-models’ where craftspeople are reduced to ‘labourers’. With very little negotiating power, the artisan toils—made to work like a donkey. At the same time, they contribute to building the name and fame of the organisation and for those holding top positions. Will shared business equity for artisans ever see the light of day? Most corporates equally exploit artisans in the name of ‘social responsibility’. The recent phenomenon in India is that top industrialists are diving into the craft sector purely to work on the commerce of number games with large qualities, which means even lesser profit for the artisans. The real maker, the artisan, is reduced to a labourer in a factory. In this format, the making has very little cultural context or heritage identity.
Baddiben’s son is now running a shop.
Recently, I visited the craft makers in Kutch, under whom I had apprenticed during my MA research a decade ago, studying the heritage of cutting and stitching. A senior Rabari community embroiderer and tailor, Baddiben, passed away during COVID-19 and her friend Puriben Rabari a few months ago. Baddiben’s son now runs a small shop. He was both happy and emotional to meet me as we listened to the recording of his mother and recalled old times. This, to him, was priceless. Jamnaben Ahir, another artist, bends and walks; she cannot practice her craft.
None of the next generations practice the craft. Some elderly women artisans, in particular, who used to make objects for their family members, are now forced to take up dictated “job-work” for the markets. What I could study and document a decade ago is no longer possible in the region. I could not find the yellow sparrows in the village. The domestic cows and the goats, too, are gone, as the system fractures.
Master embroiderer and tailor: Jamnaben Ahir and LOkesh Ghai
