’Art & soul
Weaving life into crafts

Sustained efforts by individuals and organisations have helped the revival of languishing crafts and craftspersons, says B. N. Goswamy

I will give you a talisman. Whenever you are in doubt or when the self becomes too much with you, apply the following test: recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man whom you may have seen and ask yourself if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him. Will he gain anything by it? Will it restore him to a control over his own life and destiny? In other words, will it lead to swaraj for the hungry and spiritually starving millions? Then, you will find your doubts and your self melting away.

— Mahatma Gandhi

It will be difficult to determine if these words — so wonderfully humane and wise — were actively present to the minds of persons like Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay or Elaben Bhatt or Pupul Jayakar when they set about working with such passion towards the saving and regeneration of our crafts and craftspersons. But something at least akin to these must have moved them. For both crafts and craftspersons had begun to languish and wilt. The combined onslaught of industry and market forces was proving to be too much, and the leaden-footed ways of the government were not helping a great deal. Something needed desperately to be done, and fortunately there were these persons, and some others, who recognised the need. To be sure, not every craft could be saved, nor every craftsperson pulled back from the brink. But a great deal was done; what is more, the state of our crafts and the condition of our craftspersons began to matter to a number of persons of the succeeding generation too. Today, looking at the field, it is easy to sense that there is a real concern for them, and the community of those concerned is steadily expanding. One could, but is afraid to, ask for more.

Tasks remain but, happily, they are not Sisyphean any more. And to the myriad questions that hang in the air, like bats in abandoned palaces, some answers are being found. It is in this context that I found a recent Marg volume — Threads & Voices: Behind the Indian Textile Tradition — put together by Laila Tyabji, who has done singularly valuable work in this area and is a leading figure in it, particularly stimulating. For this work forces you to think, and somehow draws you into the field. Clearly, the volume does not concern itself with the entire range of Indian crafts and is, by design, limited to the textile tradition alone, but the questions Laila, together with the very impressive group of her co-contributors, asks in the context of textiles apply to the field of crafts as a whole. Debates have raged, and opposing points of view have been put forward.

But here one is brought face to face with dilemmas, and question marks, conflicts and challenges; issues of social and economic change; traditional skills being pitted against the relentless march of market forces; the need for empowerment through work, especially of women, and the resistance to it; the desirability of resolving the conflict between economics, tradition, fashion, and creativity. That old chestnut — the separation of, and difference between, art and craft — also figures in these pages.

Even if no real answers can be found, pointed questions are asked. Does collective work, as in craft, rather than a single vision, as in art, diminish the value of a piece, for instance? Or: "Is a votive painting done in the style of one’s ancestors less or more meaningful than a secular piece painted by an art-school-nurtured contemporary artist?" And, again: "Is it we, the urban buyers and viewers, who force folk artists to ‘freeze’ tradition and go on replicating their forefathers?" As I said, and everyone knows, the questions are endless.

But here, in this volume, it is not a dry litany of issues and attempted answers that one finds. Everywhere, in each single essay, one meets living persons who walk through these pages, some with aplomb and confidence, others bearing furrows on their brows. For the focus of the volume is not on old heirlooms of textiles but on contemporary practice and practitioners.

Here one runs into the lively and remarkably self-assured Pabiben from Gujarat working with a Vietnamese counterpart, Kalawati and Raghunath who are now the ‘seth and sethani’ of natural dyeing, Jasleen Dhamija recapturing the magic of phulkaris and baghs in the midst of which she grew up, Javed of Kashmir entrusted with the task of reproducing a 19th century shawl that once belonged to the painter, John Singer Sargent, Puriben of Banaskantha with her steely resolve to overcome all impediments, Shanta, the Lambani girl who has been to Sweden and Spain and wishes one day to win the ‘world cup for embroidery’ if there ever is going to be one. There are stories of courage here and of dedication: alike on the part of the practitioners and of the burgeoning groups of volunteers and entrepreneurs working in NGOs across the land. And many of them are truly moving.

In the midst of probing questions and fluent narratives, there is also, somewhere in these essays, a message of hope. Basing herself on her own extensive experience in the field, Laila says, in her elegantly written introductory piece: "For most craftspeople craft is hard economics. It is encouraging and moving that for many, it also remains art." As for myself, I do not despair either. For one knows that the powers of regeneration remain silently at work, and that, all said and done, there is great resilience in our crafts, and craftspersons. The great Urdu poet, Ahmed Nadeem Qasimi once wrote:

(New branches sprout, and there is no stopping the sap from continuing to course and flow.)

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