Woven Textiles of Varanasi

Book Specification

Book Description

About the Book

One of the strong and best known traditions of weaving in India is situated in Varanasi. It has had a tumultuous history of ups and downs but has steadfastly refused to be obliterated. Many cities have risen and fallen, but Varansi clings to its title as the oldest living city in the world. The River Ganga flows by, offering a sense of sacredness, continuity and eternal salvation for those whose last rites are performed on its banks. Hundreds of thousands of visitors touch upon Varanasi as a place of pilgrimage, to connect with history or to get under the skin of Indias spirituality.

Against this backdrop, the author, Jaya Jailty, emphasises the need to acknowledge the beauty of Varanasis textiles emerging out of age-old traditions and techniques. She highlights the danger of the loss of livelihoods and highly sophisticated skills. The erosion of identity and importance in the wake of machine-made imitations being produced in other parts of the world has already begun. The book also present, linking them to different moments in the citys history, and makes a powerful case for rediscovering, preserving and patronizing these textile treasure that are inextricably bound to the ancient aura of the city.

About the Author

Jaya Jaitly studied in Japan, Burma, Belgium, and the UK. She graduated from Smith Collage, USA.

Apart from being a political and social activist, she has an intimate knowledge of the craft traditions of the country, having worked with crafts people for over 40 years. She is considered a leader and expert in this field.

In 1986 she founded an association of crafts people called the Dastkari Haat Samiti, which enables traditional workers to gain confidence in the marketplace through many innovative strategies. She is the creator of the concept of Dilli Haat, a crafts marketplace in Delhi. It enables thousands of artisans to sustain craft livelihood and preserve their cultural heritage.

She is a prolific writer and has published books on the Crafts of Jamun, Kashmir and Ladakh, the Craft Traditions of India, Viswakarmas Children, a socio-economic study of crafts people, and Crafting Nature. She has created a vast documentation of the arts, crafts and textiles of India through 24 highly artistic and unique maps of all the states of India, called the Crafts Atlas of India. She has written stories on crafts children that were first published by Penguin and now widely distributed in many regional languages through the well-known NGO Pratham. She has assisted in creating, a syllabus for schools of Indias craft heritage for NCERT. Her recent publication Crafting Indian Script is based on a major project called Akshara combining literacy, craft and calligraphy. A Podium on the Pavement is a selection of her writings on a variety of subjects including politics, foreign affairs, women and social issues. She is also the editor and publisher of The Other Side, a monthly political journal on democratic socialist through and action.

Preface

Our highest salute should go to the entire community of people involved in keeping alive the traditions of handloom weaving in Varanasi. From the lowliest weaver, who is occasionally and tragically compelled to donate his blood to earn money to feed his family, to aged women who continue to sort yarn and spin, despite wearing broken spectacles and living in penury, to the elite group of Muslim and Hindu masterweavers; add to these the zari makers, exporters, traders, shopkeepers, urban textile designers, and dedicated activists and academics, all of them are enmeshed in this collective strength that refuses to let honoured skills die. It may be a compulsion for some because there is no other option for survival in sight. Many view it simply as tradition or habit. For others it is a source of prestige, pride and earning.

Older weavers reminisce nostalgically of the days when the younger generation came to learn and worked hard to hone the skills they were taught. Today they shake their heads in disapproval and despair as they describe how young men are busier with their mobile phones than with handwork, preferring to sit at a powerloom, provided the power is on, reading a film magazine while the machine does the work. They curse computerization and cheap foreign imitations of what their old naqshabands