Many Indian fashion designers are rising to the challenge. Take for example, top-tier designers such as Manish Malhotra and Sabyasachi Mukherjee—both famous for bridal couture and Bollywood costumes—who have led the way with their use of traditional fabrics like benarasi and matka, and embroidery styles like zardosi and gota patti. 

Beyond the bridal fashion space, there is Anita Dongre who has made it her mission to preserve India’s textile heritage by incorporating it in her contemporary clothes. Dongre, whose creations have been worn by Kate Middleton and Hilary Clinton, uses traditional weaving techniques and fabrics for ready-to-wear garments in both Western and Indian styles.

“I think no other country in the world has the kind of [textile] craft legacy that India has,” Dongre said in a 2021 panel discussion at FashionInnovation, a global platform that connects fashion entrepreneurs with tech companies.

Dongre isn’t wrong—India’s textile crafts industry is historically considered among the finest, but a long period of British colonisation took its toll. For example, in the 1700s, British parliament passed an act restricting the import of cotton fabric from India, hitherto a popular commodity, adversely affecting Indian textile manufacturers and rendering thousands of weavers jobless. It was only after India regained independence in 1947 that these industries started to recover, but by then, some techniques and fabrics were almost lost entirely to history. Also, it was hard for weavers working on handlooms to compete with the efficiency and cost effectiveness of fabric mass-produced on power looms.

For example, himroo—a fabric from Aurangabad, Maharashtra, that was invented in 14th century Mughal India—was a favourite among the ruling classes of that time for its intricate design and jewel tones, but it has become increasingly rare in modern times. Even in the 1950s there were still 50,000 himroo weavers operating in Aurangabad, but as of 2018, that number had dwindled to just two as older weavers had passed away and younger generations had turned to more lucrative jobs.

Social enterprises such as LoomKatha, which empowers and trains weavers in rural regions, as well as the district government, has been working hard to revive the arcane art by promoting its history, but it’s an uphill task. Not only is preserving and continuing the art form a challenge, but because the end product is far more expensive than power loom textiles, it draws fewer buyers and is therefore in weaker demand.

Meanwhile, in West Bengal, textiles have been used as a repository of heritage in more ways than one. The famous baluchari and swarnachuri sarees of the region are not only rich in colours and traditional techniques, but they also serve as tapestries on which scenes from mythological tales, folklores and religious stories are depicted and preserved. Scenes from ancient epics such as Ramayana are handwoven onto them, making the weaving process extremely time-consuming and skill-based. Though baluchari and swarnachuri sarees are considered prized possessions, the handwoven version faces tremendous competition from ones made by machines, as it’s hard to tell the two apart with the naked eye.

The Bengal government has been trying to protect the handwoven variety by giving it the Geographical Indication (GI) tag, which is a mark of authentication that verifies a product’s origin, quality and value.

“We are trying to recreate the exact designs of the 19th century baluchari sarees kept in the Indian Museum,” says Debotree Goswami, a textile designer at Biswa Bangla, a retail chain under the textile department of the Bengal government. “Some baluchari sarees from the 18th and 19th centuries needed to be woven by two weavers at the same time because the borders of the sarees were incredibly intricate. We are training the current crop of weavers to do the same so that they can make these sarees again. That way, our heritage won’t get lost.”

Training and upskilling artisans and craftsmen, especially in rural communities, have been at the heart of preserving heritage, because governments, social enterprises, NGOs, fashion designers and other industry insiders recognise that it’s not possible to protect traditional craftsmanship without also empowering the people behind the craft. In turn, this has provided a means to earn a living for the weavers who would otherwise be struggling to keep their craft alive.

Umang Shridhar is one such designer, whose textile company Umangshridhar Designs works with more than 1,500 artisans across Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Maharashtra and Rajasthan. “We don’t only have a transactional relation with the weavers, we provide training so that they can earn better livelihoods,” she says.

“Most weavers know their craft very well, but they don’t know how to market and sell them,” Shridhar continues. “We teach them how to be business savvy by providing them entrepreneurship training. Once they complete the training, we offer them funds so that they can set up their own business and sell their handmade products through these shops”.

However, those who want to train and upskill weavers sometimes find that they are faced with reluctance from an unexpected quarter: the weavers themselves. Because among weavers, it’s common for a family to be in the same craft for many generations, and sometimes they are reluctant to pass the secrets of their trade to “outsiders”.

Goswami knows this well from her experience with one such family in Bengal whose ancestors were commissioned to make quilts for Bengal’s Nawab Siraj-ud-Daulah, who ruled from 1756 to 1757. “They make the same special quilt to this day, but they are very secretive about the arcane art form, and to this day, we haven’t been able to get them to share the technique with others,” says Goswami.

Conservative patriarchal norms in rural communities present yet another challenge.

“Master weavers, those who create the design and instruct the other weavers, would always be male—no woman was ever allowed to be a master weaver,” says Shridhar, which limits the number of people who can pass the torch and preserve the craft.

“Even now, there’s resistance from some quarters of the weavers community to employ women as master weavers,” Shridhar says. “In some cases, we have been able to work past this taboo and train women as master weavers. And when the resistance has been too strong, we have trained women in digital marketing, packaging, and other skills that are also key to the manufacturing process. It’s not an easy road ahead, but we will trudge on.”

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