Textiles are a part of India’s history — its past, present, and future. Indian textiles were found in the tombs of the Egyptian Pharaohs, they were a sought-after export to ancient Greece and Rome, they also became part of the fashionable attire of both European and Mughal courts. Suppressing and replacing the Indian handloom cotton trade with mill-made alternatives was a key factor of the British Industrial Revolution. That is the reason Gandhi made handspun khadi a symbol of the Indian Independence movement. Even today, millions of craftspeople all over India produce extraordinary traditional textiles that appeal to the international market. Weaving a Tradition Sathya sat at the big wooden loom, throwing the shuttle through the shining silk threads stretched on its frame. As he wove the warp and weft together, the fabric that unfolded was a Kanjeevaram silk saree, purple and red, with gold tigers, elephants and peacocks dancing together on its resplendent pallav. The ‘thak-thak’ sound of the shuttle as it moved to and fro had always been part of his life. His father, and his father’s father, and his father’s father’s father, had all woven sarees on the same family loom—as had their forefathers as far back as memory could stretch. 8 TEXTILES Brocade work, Varanasi 84 LIVING CRAFT TRADITIONS OF INDIA Sathya was 17. He had learnt to weave when he was eight, though he longed to play football with the other village boys. New laws do not allow children below fourteen years of age to work. But everyone in his village was involved in weaving. The women spun the thread, and stretched the warp on the loom. The village dyers and washermen dyed the yarn in wonderful colours, starched, and sized the finished fabric. Traders came to the village from all over India to buy the sarees, while other traders from Surat brought the gold zari thread with which they were woven. The village economy depended on women continuing to wear these traditional sarees for weddings, festivals, and special occasions. Sathya’s father had a picture cut-out from a magazine of a famous film star in one of his sarees. Sathya’s grandfather was now too frail and blind to weave the intricate sarees. He told Sathya stories of the days, many hundred years ago, when South Indian weavers were one of the richest communities in India. Their wealth built the huge temples and funded royal armies. Whole communities were known for their weaving skills, and their surnames proudly denoted their trade — Vankars in Gujarat, Ansaris in UP, Mehers in Orissa — just as the Kutchi Khatris were dyers and printers. Sathya knows that these days even highly skilled weavers are desperately poor, even though their sarees are worn only by the very rich. Weavers depend on traders for loans in order to pay for the expensive silk and gold yarn from which the sarees are woven. Machine-made sarees made in the big industrial mills and cheap synthetic silk copies from China are Kanjeevaram saree, taking over the market.