The Fragility of India’s Artisan Communities

India’s artisans are often knowledge-keepers of centuries-old craft traditions. But they face an uncertain future. In this episode of the Craftsmanship podcast, writer Laura Fraser looks at some of the ongoing efforts to support these master artisans before their skills fade into history.

Laura Fraser's article, “The Fragility of India’s Artisan Communities,” was originally written for Craftsmanship magazine. This audio version was narrated and produced by Pauline Bartolone.

Craftsmanship is a multimedia publication about artisans and innovators who are creating a world built to last. More episodes—along with original feature stories, short videos, and more—can be found on www.craftsmanship.net.

Music in this series is from Blue Dot Sessions. Todd Oppenheimer is the founding editor and executive director of the magazine and its parent organization, The Craftsmanship Initiative. Laurie Weed is the magazine's managing editor.

LINKS:

Read "The Fragility of India’s Artisan Communities” here: https://craftsmanship.net/field-notes/the-fragility-of-indias-artisan-communities/

Laura Fraser's website: https://laurafraser.com/

Craftsmanship's podcast page: https://craftsmanship.net/podcasts/

Subscribe to Craftsmanship on Substack: https://craftsmanship.substack.com/

Transcript

The Fragility of India’s Artisan Communities

Written by Laura Fraser

A few miles from the Taj Mahal, in Agra, I watch two artisans demonstrate how they create intricate designs with inlaid semi-precious stones, the same kind that cover the marble walls of that storied mausoleum. 

One artist takes a shard of orange carnelian and grinds it on an emery wheel until it takes the shape of a flower petal. 

Tiny pieces of the flower fit together like a jigsaw puzzle, with carnelian, malachite, lapis lazuli, and jade shards… creating pistils, stamens, leaves, and shading. The second artist traces the flowers onto a piece of marble…  dyed with henna to reveal the etchings—color that will be removed in the polishing phase—then scrapes the marble with a diamond-headed chisel to fit the stones, attaching them with a special glue.

A man is working with a traditional tool on a stone surface, surrounded by colorful decorative pieces and a bowl of water.

“This is the same glue our ancestors made,” says Sahil Khan, who oversees the workshop… in the boxy, concrete Uttar Pradesh Arts & Crafts Development Centre. The craftsmen claim to be descendants of the original Taj Mahal artists who came from Persia; the technique, called Parchin Kari, goes back to ancient Rome; and the botanical designs were likely influenced by Florentine inlay work that flourished during the Renaissance. 

“We made a promise to our ancestors over 400 years ago, not to tell the recipe of the Indian traditional secret glue,” Khan says.

When I ask whether this centuries-old craft will survive, Khan says, “Crafts are dying all over the world, because the new generation doesn’t want to sit here, twelve hours a day.”

But judging from the quantities of inlaid boxes, frames, and tables for sale, both here and in souvenir shops all over Agra, this particular craft seems to be an exception. Whether a traditional craft survives—and even thrives—in the 21st century seems somewhat arbitrary, depending, perhaps, on the whims of tourists. Nearly 10 million people visit the Taj Mahal each year, and many want to take home a stone inlay souvenir (the cost of each piece, starting at $20—about 1,700 rupees—and ending in the stratosphere) is determined not by its size but by its number of stones).

Some tourists, unfortunately, chip away the stones from the Taj Mahal itself. Which is why, on Fridays, when the monument is closed, the artisans go in to make repairs. Muslims say that anyone who steals a stone from the Taj Mahal is cursed for life. But from the time of the plundering British, local craftspeople have had to repair its stolen or damaged inlays. When the Taj Mahal was built, in 1632, 400 families were employed in the inlay craft; today, 150 families continue the tradition.

“The government of India is supporting us to keep this craft alive,” says Khan. The national government provides the otherwise prohibitively expensive stones, while the center gives the 62 families it employs a place to work, and a share of the profits.

The project is among the “One District One Product” schemes that the region of Uttar Pradesh launched in 2019, with a budget of 250 crores (about $133 million). The funding supports and develops the skills and marketing of local craftspeople and balances India’s regional development. In its first year, the project increased export revenues for the region by 35 percent. But which traditional crafts in this and other regions will ultimately survive in the 21st century is anyone’s guess.

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Agra is one among hundreds of artisanal communities across India that have been making distinctive crafts for centuries, some for daily use, others for religious or courtly art. Everything is made from local, natural materials: woods, mineral and plant dyes, reeds, mud, cashmere. Many of these crafts are on display at the National Crafts Museum in Delhi, which has a demonstration “village” outside that replicates the rural huts where today’s living artisans still work.

“Art is a part of daily life in India,” says Guatami Raju, an art historian who teaches at O.P. Jindal Global University in Sonipat, Haryana. She points to a heavy wooden door embellished with brass reliefs that depict the god Vishnu in his many reincarnations: fish, tortoise, lion.

“This door is utility, religion, and craft all coming together,” Raju says. “Everything in the museum is made by hand.”

MUSIC

In 1951, shoring up craftsmanship became a policy priority for India.

Inside the museum, bathed in natural light from open courtyards, the displays are an ethnographic study of craftsmanship from the country’s different regions. While most countries around the world have indigenous craft traditions of some kind, the variety in India is unusual. There are paintings, masks, dolls, ornaments, jewelry, and crafts from performative arts, such as folding lacquered scrolls that help an itinerant storyteller illustrate his tales. The textiles are breathtaking in their range, colors, intricacy, and skill—from embroidered Kashmiri pashminas to Ikat weavings, intricate Bandhani tie-dyes, and block prints.

While many of these pieces date back centuries, the techniques used to make them are still very much alive. “Most of what you see inside the museum, you can buy from artisans outside,” says Raju. In other words, they aren’t knock-offs for tourists like you see in many places; they are still the real thing.

The National Crafts Museum—originally set up in 1956, and expanded to its present complex in 1972—is an attempt by the Indian government, after its independence from the British in 1947, to preserve India’s traditions and bolster its economy, specifically by supporting its artisans. In 1951, says Ritu Sethi, founder of the preservation nonprofit Crafts Revival Trust, shoring up craftsmanship became a policy priority for India. Craftspeople, who are mostly from poor rural villages, were underemployed, and the crafts themselves were at risk of extinction. “Policymakers recognized [that craftspeople] represented an invaluable cultural tradition and economic force,” Sethi says.

Along with the museum and its crafts gallery, a permanent bazaar in Delhi, called Dilli Haat, was created in 1982 to enable artisans to gain access to a larger market. Jaya Jaitly helped found the market, which displays 600 craft groups from 69 Indian states and has been recreated in several other locations. “Why not replicate bazaars to counter the malls popping up all over the country?” she said, in a recent discussion at the Asia Society. “It was the first time people could sell outside their villages directly, not with a middleman.”

But even with some government support—which ebbs and flows with the political tides—the challenges that craftspeople face today are many. Traditionally, many craftspeople come from marginalized Dalit communities—whose members belonged to the caste once known as “untouchables.” And the Dalit people generally come from rural areas that are often still rigidly caste-bound. These artisans frequently rely on child laborers, who do not become educated even in the financial skills it takes to sell their crafts. As is the case the world over, younger generations are steadily leaving their country’s craft traditions—not just to make more money (although plenty would prefer to study computer science), but because the status of a craftsperson is considered low.

And there’s another vicious cycle that craft traditions have to fight. Global fashion designers frequently use handcrafted items in goods to command exorbitant prices, without paying their workers a sustainable wage. Meanwhile, as the costs of raw materials, such as silk, go up, buyers ruthlessly bargain for even lower prices.

Even though the Indian government supports a variety of crafts initiatives, advocates say priorities have shifted in recent years, and crafts are no longer viewed as a significant economic engine. After the Indian economy suffered huge budget deficits in the 1990s, says Sethi, the craft sector in the 2000s was relegated to “policy backwaters,” which she said was “echoed in financial allocations. Policies need to keep step. We need an acknowledgment of the economic significance and societal value of cultural and creative industries.”

Yet Jaitly believes that India’s artisans are becoming more viable again, being uniquely positioned to sell to younger consumers who are demanding more natural, sustainable goods. “Handmade is the past,” she said. “And handmade is the future.”

MUSIC 

Strolling one day through the courtyard at the National Crafts Museum, I watch traditional Indian drummers play in one pavilion… as vendors show off their patterned silk scarves, shawls, paintings, and carvings in others. In one stall, a man paints papier-mâché boxes with intricate designs. He is from Kashmir, where, Guatami Raju (GAW-te-mee RA-jew) says, the mosques have ceilings decorated with the same materials. Many crafts that originated for religious purposes are being used now to adorn smaller, more salable products, such as these jewelry boxes, adorned lampshades, carved side tables, and other household goods.

The papier-mâché artisan, Syed Ajuz Shah, says his family has been practicing this craft for 600 years, but his children will not continue the tradition; they want to have more professional jobs. Each one of his boxes, he explains, takes over a week to finish. The paper pulp is molded, then dried for two months. After tissue is placed over the object, Shah paints it with watercolors, using a brush made of an eagle’s feather and kitten hair, and finishes it with a varnish for shine.

Here at the Crafts Museum, he makes about 300 rupees, or $35 US, a day—barely enough, he says, to cover the costs of his materials. He shows off a particularly intricate box and says he will never make another like it. His eyesight is going, and this is the last of such fine craftsmanship his family will produce.

For others, the family craft heritage is more likely to carry on. Two stalls over, at Manu Weavers, brothers from Kashmir are briskly selling pashmina shawls. Their family, one brother says, has been weaving and embroidering shawls for the past two centuries; as long as women everywhere want to wear light-as-a-cloud cashmere shawls, they aren’t worried that their tradition will die off. “In my village, everyone is engaged in weaving,” says Himachal Pradesh, with a proud look in his eyes. “And everyone’s children are learning.” 

But without the determined push India’s government gave its craftspeople after independence, the immense and sublime variety of Indian crafts may get winnowed down to just a few survivors. If one day their work can be seen only inside the National Museum of Crafts, under glass, I wonder if any Indian officials will regret not paying higher wages to living, working artisans who once toiled away in the pavilion outside.

That’s it for this edition of Craftsmanship.

“The Fragility of India’s Artisan Communities” was written by Laura Fraser. And produced by me, Pauline Bartolone. Our managing editor is Laurie Weed. Todd Oppenheimer is the founding editor and executive director. Our theme music is from Blue Dot sessions. 

You can read this story on craftsmanship.net, and by subscribing to Craftsmanship on substack. 

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