Textiles from Bengal
A SHARED LEGACY
EDITED BY Sonia Ashmore
Tirthankar Roy
Niaz Zaman
Textiles from BENGAL
A SHARED LEGACY
Weavers Studio Resource Centre
Textiles from BENGAL
A SHARED LEGACY
EDITED BY Sonia Ashmore
Tirthankar Roy Niaz Zaman
First published in India in 2025 by Mapin Publishing Pvt. Ltd
706 Kaivanna, Panchvati, Ellisbridge Ahmedabad 380006 INDIA
T: +91 79 40 228 228
E: mapin@mapinpub.com
in conjunction with the exhibition presented from 30th January to 31st March 2025 by Weavers Studio Resource Centre 5/1, Anil Moitra Road, Ballygunge Place, Ballygunge, Kolkata – 700019, West Bengal
Presented by Aarong & JSW Foundation
Supported by Garden Vareli, Obeetee Pvt. Ltd., Salarpuria, Gaurang, Apeejay Surrendra Group, Swami Dayananda Educational Trust, Manyavar and Kolkata Centre for Creativity
Text © Weavers Studio Resource Centre. Illustrations © as mentioned.
All rights reserved under international copyright conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any other information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.
The moral rights of Sonia Ashmore, Tirthankar Roy, Niaz Zaman, Rosemary Crill, Darshan Shah, Robert Ivermee, Jayati Bhattacharya, Karolina Hutková, Gordon T. Stewart, Ghulam A. Nadri, Debasmita Dutta Pramanick, Manas Bhaumik, Sushreya Pal, Moumita Ghosh, Ankan Kazi, Hameeda Hossain, Moushumi Ghosh, Chandra Mukhopadhyay, Sangeeta Dutta, Subham China, Nilay Kumar Basak, Bhaskar Das, Debashish Mahalanobish, Chandrasekhar Saha, Anjan Chakraverty, Partho Kar, Indrajit Ray, Rosie Llewellyn-Jones, Pawan Jain, Bessie Cecil, Anna-Louise Meynell, Radhi Parekh, Alka Raman, Arthur MacGregor, Umang Hutheesing, Shahid Hussain Shamim, Barbara Karl, Ebeltje Hartkamp-Jonxis, Byapti Sur, Lenny Hodges, Kazuo Kobayashi, Vibe Maria Martens, Susan S. Bean, Swati Agarwal, Ruby Palchoudhuri, Ritu Sethi, Avalon Fotheringham, G.M. Ranathunga, Paola Manfredi, Susmita Das, Sumit K. Ghosh, Namrata Ghosh, Abhinandan Sarkar, S.K. Saifur
Rahman and Surendra Kumar Patra as the authors of this work are asserted.
ISBN: 978-93-94501-26-3
Copyediting: Ashwati Franklin / Mapin Editorial
Layout, Design and Typeset by: Ishan Khosla Design LLP, India Editorial Management: Subham China / Weavers Studio Resource Centre, Neha Manke / Mapin Editorial and Rakesh Manger / Mapin Design Studio Production: Gopal Limbad and Rakesh Manger / Mapin Design Studio
Printed in India
Front-cover
Frederiksnagore (detail)
J. Hammer, 1810
(See P. 256)
Back-cover
A pit loom, with the process of winding off the thread (detail) c. 1800
(See P. 144)
Page 2
Wall hanging, with a triumphal arch (detail)
Silk chain-stitch embroidered on blue silk with cotton backing 1051/8 x 831/16 inches Mid-17th century
Bengal
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, USA
This colcha was made by embroiderers in Bengal working under Portuguese commission.
Page 7
Tangail zari buti sari Cotton and zari 1960–70
Samudragarh / Dhatrigram, West Bengal Weavers Studio Resource Centre Photograph by Dipbrata Banerjee
Page 8
Muslin angarkha
Woven and embroidered with small butas and terchhi (diagonal) rows of motifs
Bengal c. 19th century
Rajasthan Fabrics and Arts, Collection of Subhash Sharma and Rajesh Gour, Jaipur, Rajasthan, India
Photograph by Subhodeep Chanda
SECTION III
The World of the Bengali Textile Worker
3.1 / Weavers, Gomastas and the Company / Hameeda Hossain
With contributions by Weavers Studio Resource Centre and Moushumi Ghosh 93
3.2 / Spinning a Yarn: Women Spinners of Bengal / Chandra Mukhopadhyay 101
3.3 / The Forced Migration of Skills / Subham China 107
3.4 / Weaving Memories of Migration: 1947–1971 / Nilay Kumar Basak, Bhaskar Das and Debashish Mahalanobish 115
Catalogue 3A / Jamdani Buli / Chandrasekhar Saha 128
Catalogue 3B / Jamdani in Dhaka, Tanda and Banaras: Similarities and Differences / Anjan Chakraverty 132
Catalogue 3C / Balaposh: The Royal Quilt from Murshidabad / Partho Kar 136
SECTION IV
Design and Production
4.1 / Paradigm Shift: Technology and Industrialization / Indrajit Ray 141
4.2 / Muslin: From Loom to Fashion / Sonia Ashmore 147
4.3 / Murshidabad: A Textile Hub / Rosie Llewellyn-Jones 155
4.4 / Jain Merchants in Murshidabad / Pawan Jain 163
4.5 / De-Industrialization / Tirthankar Roy 175
4.6 / Swadeshi and Bengal Textiles / Bessie Cecil 181
4.7 / Ethnic Textiles of the Lower Bengal Delta / Niaz Zaman 189
4.8 / Tracing Transitions: Tribal Textiles Along the Border of Bengal and Assam / Anna-Louise Meynell 197
Catalogue 4A / Textile Labels from Bengal / Radhi Parekh 204
Catalogue 4B / Swatches from Bengal and Manchester: A Microscopic Analysis / Alka Raman 206
Catalogue 4C / Dressing the Clay Models of Krishnanagar / Arthur MacGregor 208
Catalogue 4D / Batik and Nandalal Bose: A Painted Cloth / Umang Hutheesing 210
Catalogue 4E / The Art of Gamchha Weaving in Bangladesh: A Tradition Rooted in Diversity / Shahid Hussain Shamim 212
SECTION V Trade
5.1 / Bengal Commissions: Colchas for the Ibero-European Markets / Barbara Karl 217
5.2 / The Dutch Textile Trade / Ebeltje Hartkamp-Jonxis and Byapti Sur 227
5.3 / Farashdanga: The French Episode / Lenny Hodges 241
5.4 / British Colonial Empire and Textile Trade / Kazuo Kobayashi 251
5.5 / Insatiable Demand: The Danish-Norwegian Trade from Bengal / Vibe Maria Martens 257
5.6 / The Impact of Bengal Textiles in America / Susan S. Bean 265
Catalogue 5A / Patron Textiles in Bengal
5A-i/ Pachha-pere Banarasi Sari: Bengali Taste on Banarasi Looms / Swati Agarwal 274
5A-ii / Kashmir Shawls in Bengal: Patrons, Fashion and Trade / Darshan Shah 276
5A-iii / Begumbahar: Sheer Evening Saris for Bengali Elites / Ruby Palchoudhuri 278
SECTION VI Consumption
6.1 / Exhibiting the Textiles of Bengal and Other Narratives: 1851 to the Commonwealth / Ritu Sethi 283
6.2 / Bengal Textiles in Euro-American Collections / Avalon Fotheringham 293
6.3 / Gifts and Tributes: Bengal Textiles in Sri Lanka / G.M. Ranathunga 301
6.4 / Echoes of Cosmogonic Myths on South Asian Textiles / Paola Manfredi 309
6.5 / Sartorial Traditions of Women in Colonial Bengal / Susmita Das 317
6.6 / Colonial Modernity: Fashioning Bengali Bhadraloks / Sumit K. Ghosh 327
6.7 / Textiles and Memories / Namrata Ghosh 335
Catalogue 6A / Kanthas from Bengal / Niaz Zaman 342
Catalogue 6B / Changing Sartoriality in Political Cartoons / Abhinandan Sarkar 348
Catalogue 6C / Kamdani Blouses of Muslim Women in Bengal / S.K. Saifur Rahman 350
Catalogue 6D / Inscribed Textiles: Gitagovinda Khandua Patas for the Lord / Surendra Kumar Patra 352
Foreword
ROSEMARY CRILL
Former Curator, V&A Museum, UK
As a curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, I had the immense privilege of immersing myself in that exceptional collection, where thousands of South Asian textiles awaited discovery. Mostly bought from the International Exhibitions of the 19th century, some had not even been unpacked from their original wrappings, and were accompanied by precious pieces of information about their places of manufacture, use, price and local names. The textiles were from every part of pre-Partition India, but my first close encounter with a drawer of Bengali muslins was an unforgettable experience. These snowy, diaphanous lengths of plain cotton had an appeal that was almost inexplicable—they had no pattern and no colour but were somehow compellingly beautiful. Their power lay in their total simplicity—a paradox not lost on patrons ranging from the ladies of the Roman Empire to the Mughal emperors, who chose fine muslin over more lavish materials for their court dress.
Jamdani dupatta
Supplementary weft, decorated with floral motifs with the borders adorned with four rows of chatai motif and a scattered talisman at the end piece
Dhaka
Late 19th century
Weavers Studio Resource Centre
Photograph by Subhodeep Chanda
As well as jamdani and Baluchari saris, and lengths of embroidered muslin for British dresses, other lesser-known Bengali textiles were also to be discovered. Subtly shaded rumals with muga silk embroidery, lengths of printed handkerchiefs and brilliant yellow silks from Murshidabad opened my eyes to the range of the region’s fabrics.
Fragmentary stories of Bengal’s textiles have been told many times, and in many places, but most have reiterated the same few tropes: the incredible fineness of Dhaka’s muslins; the Portuguese desire for the embroidered quilts of Satgaon; the quirky colonialism of Baluchari silks, or the hidden voices of women in the domestic kantha embroideries. Much less frequently discussed are topics such as the production and trading of silk and jute; the roles of the Dutch, Danish and French in Bengal; the woven cottons of Santipur; the tie-dyed and printed handkerchiefs of Murshidabad, or the tribal textiles of the delta fringes. This publication brings all these strands (and many more) together into a wider framework which shows Undivided Bengal as the site of multiple traditions of cultivation, weaving, printing, embroidery and trading over at least 2,000 years.
The export trade from Bengal is millennia old. While we know about the early trade only from written references in works such as the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea or the writings of Roman authors such as Pliny, exported items from
later periods have been preserved in the countries to which they were traded. The densely embroidered quilts made in Satgaon mainly for Portuguese patrons were also on sale in London by 1618: while the earliest examples survive mostly in Portugal, one of the oldest is at Hardwick Hall, in England. Its poignantly vanishing designs in simply embroidered outlines show elephants and chess-players as well as geometric designs that are very different from the European classical and biblical scenes that cover the later surviving examples in dense yellow chain-stitch.
The appeal of the domestic kantha embroideries came later to a broader public. Never displayed in the big 19thcentury exhibitions, and never shown to the male dealers or buyers from western museums who came scouring India for acquisitions, the personal messages conveyed in these embroideries by the women who made them only started to be truly appreciated outside their original localities in the 20th century. Not only are many kanthas true works of art, they all bear witness to the lives and inherited skills of a multitude of women makers.
This book and its accompanying exhibitions aim not only to illustrate the finest examples of the full range of textiles from Bengal on both sides of its modern international border, but most importantly, to re-connect these textiles to the manyfaceted contexts in which they were made.
Cotton sari with hand-embroidered border of floral motifs Santipur 1890–1910
Weavers Studio Resource Centre
Photograph by Dipbrata Banerjee
Introduction to the Project
DARSHAN SHAH
Project Director, Textiles from Bengal: A Shared Legacy
The touch of a piece of cloth brings many questions to mind—what stories lie within the warp and the weft? What extraordinary tales of its production, markets, patronage and mobility sit within the folds? How much of human history and its cultural narratives hide in its stitches and design?
The project, Baluchari: The Narrative Silks of Bengal (2016–2019) was the beginning of my own journey to research the textiles of Bengal. These woven silks, completely changed in character and quality, iconography, and colours from their traditional versions, were now preserved only in museums and private collections. Although the Baluchari project was daunting at both the state and national level, its success was encouraging.
Baluchari silk sari with terchhi (diagonal) stripes of multicoloured designs and decorative konias on the anchal Murshidabad
c. late 19th century
Weavers Studio Resource Centre Photograph by Subhodeep Chanda
Then Covid-19 took over our lives and my mind buzzed with new ideas and initiatives. By mid-2020, the idea of a project on the holistic history of the textiles of Bengal was born. Zoom meetings began with our mentor, Dr. Madhuvanti Ghosh, who guided, grilled and trained our small team, and prepared us for new challenges. As libraries, archives and museums were closed, physical meetings with experts and curators were not possible; our research trajectory found new and unexpected paths. Information on digital platforms and communication through social media came in handy. Textile collections in our archives and books in our libraries were a starting point for our research.
Textiles from Bengal, which once clothed the world, had received little scholarly attention for the last few decades, and the region’s famed textile legacy was lost in the folds of national borders, wavering markets and a decaying skill repertoire. The vibrant and dynamic history of an industry whose products travelled not just through the subcontinent but through many parts of the globe, also documents culture, economics, superlative artistic skills and human dexterity. This industry enjoyed Mughal patronage, fed an ever-growing European market demand, and then gradually faded—traversing through a series of transformations that followed larger historic changes, from crumbling empires and dying court patronage to colonial exploitation, fluctuating demands in international markets, and stories of cultural fusion.
What led to the dramatic ascent and then gradual eclipse of Bengal’s textiles? What was happening locally; what larger political and economic factors impacted the textile industry in Bengal and its position in international trade? How do we revisit the past to understand its persistent echoes in the present? How does this equip us to face the future—to make use of the knowledge, to ensure a resurgence in the days to come? While we are fascinated by the past glory of Bengal textiles and the dominance of markets, we also contemplate the lessons that history imparts for contemporary analysis and future policies, such as, for instance, the undermining of traditional craft industries by colonial policies.
Given the uncertain times, it was difficult to set timelines for the academic research needed on the one hand, and the planned exhibitions, publication and symposia on the other. Once access to study in libraries, archives, museums and private collections across borders and continents opened up again, our team found its bearings. Our mentors were now experts from various fields, editors from the UK and
Bangladesh, and our 34 contributors from across the world. Our sponsors and supporters continue to grow.
The research led to surprising references ranging from before 1530 to after 1971. The book contains the study of textiles of Bengal to between these two years. The exhibitions and their accompanying catalogues will expand the timeframe to the present and take the discussion forward to the future of the Bengal textiles.
Historical factors needing investigation included the changing geographies of Bengal, fluctuations in commerce, shifting demand and supply, commercialization of raw materials and the advent of industrial technology. From intricate nakshi kanthas embroidered by women, to majestic embroidered quilts from Satgaon, sheer muslins and fine jamdanis from Sonargaon, lustrous silks from Malda, fascinating narrative Balucharis from Murshidabad, hand-block printed textiles from Berhampore and Serampore, and saris with woven figurative borders from Santipur and Tangail, the spectrum of research was varied. Larger political movements included the exile of Wajid Ali Shah from Lucknow to Bengal, the shift of the capital from Dacca (Dhaka) to Murshidabad by Murshid Quli Khan, and the migration of garad and Tangail weavers from East Pakistan to West Bengal. The causes and impact of these shifts set the tone of this publication.
The project makes us re-examine the past, understand the present better, and thoughtfully graft future plans to celebrate textile heritage. I invite the reader to absorb the rich history and beautiful artistry contained within the textiles but also to let their minds drift through these fascinating historic trajectories. This book will take you on a journey through an intricate tapestry, and claim, justifiably, that this legacy be celebrated and continued.
Kantha, decorated with a central medallion, human and animal figurines, tree of life and paisleys on the borders
Cotton Jessore, Bangladesh c. 19th century Weavers Studio Resource Centre Photograph by Subhodeep Chanda
Introduction to the Book
SONIA ASHMORE, TIRTHANKAR ROY & NIAZ ZAMAN
Over thousands of years, India has produced the world’s greatest and most splendid variety of textiles, but those from Bengal have rarely been given prominence. This book, and the exhibitions accompanying it, showcase exceptional surviving examples of textiles produced by hand in Bengal, placing them in their historical and cultural contexts and indicating their global impact.
The designation ‘Bengal’ is itself problematic, since both its physical features and historical boundaries have altered significantly over time. Yet these changes are integral to the story of its textiles, tied in with the land, the movements of people, techniques, patronage and trade. Bengal appears to have first existed as a politically and culturally cohesive state in the seventh century as the Gauda kingdom, covering much of modern-day West Bengal and Bangladesh. Its boundaries expanded and contracted as it was ruled by different dynasties before being incorporated in the Mughal Empire as the Bengal Subah, which included parts of modern Odisha, Bihar and Jharkhand, as well as present-day Bangladesh.
Indigo-dyed cotton sari embroidered in imitation of a jamdani weave Bengal c. 1900
Weavers Studio Resource Centre
Photograph by Subhodeep Chanda
This complex and evolving story has led to the title of our project, Textiles from Bengal: A Shared Legacy. Besides its 31 chapters, the book also has a series of expert catalogue entries explaining the significance of particular items, from a royal quilt from Murshidabad, to jamdani count songs or the textiles of terracotta dolls from Krishnanagar.
The book opens with Robert Ivermee’s study, ‘The Historical Geography of Bengal: A Region in Flux’. This illustrates how the shifting landscape of Bengal and changes in the centres of political power, including the eventual inclusion of Bengal in the Mughal Empire, impacted its textile industry. The variety of Bengal’s physical environments, including the largest riverine delta in the world, and moving river courses, affected agriculture, trade routes and population patterns. In ‘Textile Maps of Bengal’, this changing geography and the human response to it is illustrated by Subham China, with a series of maps showing the decay and resurgence of textile centres in relation to the fluvial shifts and dissolving sandbanks of the Bengal Delta (the Ganges–Brahmaputra–Meghna Delta). The location of Bengal’s textile production in the global arena of both maritime and overland trade is discussed by Jayati Bhattacharya in ‘Bengal Textiles: A Global Demand’.
Essays on production, technology, products and people in Sections 2 to 4 collectively point out how we might study the history of Indian, in this case Bengali, textiles. Modern research interest stems from studies of the British Industrial Revolution, when revolutionary changes occurred in textile and transport technology, and Europe’s economic expansion into Asia and Africa from the 19th century effectively integrated markets more closely. Local artisanal textiles sometimes collapsed in the face of this dual process of industrialization and colonization.
The impact of socio-economic conditions of 18th–19th century Bengal on the organization, hierarchy and ‘place’ of the weavers in the arang system (an arang was a centre for collection of textiles for export) is discussed by Hameeda Hossain in ‘Weavers, Gomostas and the Company’, while Subham China discusses a different aspect of enforced inequality in ‘Forced Migration of Skills’.
In ‘Deindustrialization’, Tirthankar Roy considers how artisans and traders adapted to changes in consumption, technologies and raw materials. They made goods of varied quality, reached new markets, cut costs, relocated themselves, and shared knowledge, information and risks by strengthening their collective organization. While European trade was undoubtedly significant for Bengal, local exchange networks were also substantial, and many traditional goods continued to
be actively traded in these networks. Lastly, foreign trade was not just a trade in physical commodities but also in design and knowledge of quality. A range of tools and attachments that could be fitted into the handloom enabled a wider variety of designs that came from Europe to India in the 19th and 20th centuries. Indian textiles became part of a trans-national exchange of knowledge about ‘exotic’ material goods, as consumers became familiar with their varieties and wearing qualities, and of iconography, as patterns and images were exchanged across continents, enabling traditional Indian designs to be acceptable to foreign tastes, and absorbed into artefacts. The local reaction to these changes as well as to the colonial presence, is discussed by Bessie Cecil, in ‘Textiles and Swadeshi’, tracing the effect that the Swadeshi Movement had on the production of Bengal textiles, khadi as an anti-colonial statement, and conflicts between modernist and arts and crafts attitudes within the self-reliance movement. Bhaskar Das adds to this, in ‘Weaving Memories of Partition’.
Although some of this story is common to other South Asian regions, the Bengal Delta’s textile heritage is especially rich in its great variety of fibres, colours and design styles. The area around Dhaka produced the short-staple cotton plant that gave rise to muslin weaving. In ‘Muslin: From Loom to Fashion’, Sonia Ashmore explains how this delicate fabric became a fashionable accessory from the late 17th century, accounting for large exports, and defining high fashion in late-18th century Europe.
Sericulture was an extensive household industry in west-central Bengal and the connection between the British and Bengal economies mediated by the English East India Company (EEIC) and its raw silk trade in Bengal is explored by Karolina Hutková in ‘Silks from Bengal: Production and Dissemination’. Raw silk was a major item of overland trade in 18th-century India and a mainstay of the business of merchants from North India who settled in Bengal, in places such as Cossimbazar (Kasim Bazar) and Murshidabad. Before Calcutta (now Kolkata) became a destination for migrant capital, small towns specializing in textiles and related trade exercised a similar
Indigo-dyed Baluchari silk sari with motifs in terchhi (diagonal) stripes on the body and the palla decorated with four panels of noblemen on elephants and five paisleys in the centre with a nazarbattu (a pattern to ward off the evil eye)
Murshidabad, Bengal c. late 19th century
Weavers Studio Resource Centre
Photograph by Subhodeep Chanda
Ashon kantha, nakshi, cotton, quilted with white thread and embroidered with red, blue, yellow and green thread, with a central lotus and four paisley konias. Intersecting spaces filled with different motifs of everyday life and culture, signed by Brajasundari Possibly Jessore, Bengal c. 20th century
Weavers Studio Resource Centre
Photograph by Subhodeep Chanda
pull. In ‘Murshidabad as a Textile Hub’ and ‘Jain Merchants of Murshidabad’, Rosie Llewellyn-Jones and Pawan Jain respectively study the origin and endurance of this small-town urbanism in relation to textile production.
Bengal was rich in other raw materials. Among them, jute has been influential in Bengal’s political economy (see Gordon Stewart’s ‘The Golden Fibre’) and indigo was cultivated over a vast expanse of the delta land. In ‘The Blue Dye’, Ghulam Nadri discusses the use of natural dyes and shows how Bengal became the leading world producer of indigo by the late 18th century, producing high-quality blue dye for British textile manufacturers. In ‘Bengal Cotton’, Sonia Ashmore describes how cotton was arguably the fibre most critical to Bengal’s textile economy, and also central to its near demise.
From the 16th century onwards, European merchants and settlers discovered the advantages of having a business base in Bengal with its rich resources and trading possibilities. Francois Bernier, doctor at the court of Aurangzeb, was cynical about India, but effusive on Bengal and its appeal to Europeans:
“The rich exuberance of the country, together with the beauty and amiable disposition of the native women, has given rise to a proverb in common use among the Portuguese, English, and Dutch, that the Kingdom of Bengale has a hundred gates open for entrance, but not one for departure.”
The centre of European business was along the Bhagirathi River in western Bengal, which gave easy access to North India. The textile industry was spread over a much wider area. Most local styles and craft clusters served local consumption and occasionally, long-distance trade. Against the richness of the Bengal Delta’s textile industry, articles going into European exports were of simpler sorts, with exceptions like muslins. Most of the woven silks went into Indian markets and little of the household weaving practised in the eastern and northern fringes of the Delta was commercialized.
As the Industrial Revolution kicked in, as discussed by Indrajit Ray in ‘The Industrial Revolution and Bengal Textiles’, part of this heritage collapsed. Rural change often went unnoticed, including the unemployment of hundreds and thousands of women who took part in the spinning and processing of cotton. Some of their experience lives on in the songs that supplied a rhythm to their work. Since women still engage in textile work on an extensive scale, these songs reflecting a work–life mix are not all about extinct livelihoods. They are described in Chandra Mukhopadhyay’s chapter, ‘Sing and Spin: Life of Women Spinners
in Folk Songs’. As Paola Manfredi, reminds us, the design of Indian textiles is not merely about surface pattern. In ‘Echoes of Cosmogonic Myths on South Asian Textiles’, she illustrates the symbolic language of textiles, with the image of the tree of life in kantha embroideries from Bengal.
By the late 19th century, cotton handloom weaving was beginning to recover and expand in the major regions of India, including Bengal. It was a struggling industry, because it was under-capitalized, but it also had a loyal customer base. Specific local sari types became recognized commercially, and urban marketing systems modernized, as cloth merchants invested in retail showrooms in Calcutta, Dhaka, and other cities. Jute processing and weaving was a significant factory industry near Calcutta, employing hundreds of thousands of migrant and local workers.
The Partition of India and other mid-20th century crises, such as the Bengal Famine of 1943 and the forced migration of people across the new international border, disrupted these trends. As borders appeared between India and Pakistan, and within northeastern India, industries on both sides lost access to markets and raw materials. This particularly affected indigenous ethnic groups practising their own weaving styles, who had considerable contact with the deltaic textiles. The jute industry was revived briefly before falling into a seemingly never-ending depression in the 1970s.
Textile artisans are not wealthy people, and they struggled through these crises, but those with refined skills did not easily give up their hereditary livelihoods. The chapter by Nilay Kumar Basak and Debashish Mahalanobish on ‘Weaving Memories of Partition’, shows how involuntary migrations led to the successful relocation rather than disappearance of the Tangail sari. In recent years, as Gordon Stewart describes, jute has shown interesting dynamism on the back of its image as an organic fibre as opposed to the polymer packaging material that had captured the market. In ‘Ethnic Textiles of the Lower Bengal Delta’, Niaz Zaman recreates the long history of ‘tribal textiles’ along the fringes of the Bengal Delta, explaining how these partially commercial artisanal textiles drew, and still draw, ideas and skills from elsewhere in the Bengal Delta. Anna-Louise Meynell uses textiles as a means of understanding the shifting borders, landscapes and complex histories of the tribal regions in her essay, ‘Tracing Transitions: Tribal Textiles Along the Borders of Bengal and Assam’.
It is well known that Bengal had a significant textile trade both within India and beyond, centuries before the arrival of European trading companies. Yet, from the 16th century, new forms of external trade fundamentally affected both textile production
within Bengal, and trading practices and consumption habits from Europe to North America. Bengal’s textile producers became, to an extent, subject to forces beyond their spheres of influence, whether from European commercial ambitions, European wars, or the growth of an industrial textile industry ultimately dependent on cotton production by enslaved labour. Although recent scholarship has addressed the global scope and impact of India’s (including Bengal’s) textile trade, there is still much detail to be learned about the operation of different national trading companies and how Bengal textiles were used in the rest of the world, topics addressed in Section 5.
Before industrialized spinning and weaving developed, Indian cotton textiles dominated markets in Asia and Africa besides supplying European demand. Although silk was an important textile commodity for Bengal, cotton was valued as the most widely affordable and versatile clothing fabric, even in northern climates. Particularly refined varieties were made in Bengal. Cotton textiles were developed in other parts of the world, but the superior qualities of Indian cotton cloths, sophisticated techniques, a variety of methods of weaving and decoration, and the skills of their producers in adapting to the cultural preferences of consumers around the world are not contested. At first traded for their exchange value for spices, the textiles themselves came to be regarded as a significant commodity, with potential markets beyond Asia. The historical narrative has been somewhat dominated by the story of the overwhelming British presence in Bengal, but in this section, six authors explain the ways in which other overseas trading companies—the Portuguese, Dutch, French and Danish—exploited Bengal’s textile resources, as well as the growth of the EEIC into an imperial power through its commercial bases in Bengal. Also considered is the role of private traders in importing Bengal cottons into North America, generating new consumer desires for practical and previously unknown cotton fabrics, and, eventually, new industries for reproducing this versatile textile.
Following Vasco da Gama’s discovery of the sea route to India in 1498, the first Europeans to establish themselves in Bengal were the Portuguese, making a base at the already ancient port of Chittagong in 1528 and later establishing trading posts on the Hooghly. While the Portuguese exported many commodities from Bengal, the embroidered colchas described by Barbara Karl are, as she notes, one of the few surviving material traces of that trade. In ‘Bengal Commissions: Colchas for the Ibero-European Markets’, Karl describes how these finely worked quilts, at first considered exotic souvenirs, became a significant trade item, a specifically
Indo-Portuguese artefact whose iconography was skilfully adapted to accommodate European, and often Christian imagery. Two authors discuss aspects of the Dutch East India Company (the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie, the VOC) enterprise in Bengal, first at Pipli (now in Odisha) and then at Chinsurah (now in West Bengal) on the Hooghly. Ebeltje Hartkamp-Jonxis, in ‘Dutch Bengal: De Vette Weyde’, describes the active Dutch trade in Bengali and other Indian textiles to Indonesia, preceding its domestic trade in Coromandel chintzes and Bengal silks and cottons. This chapter considers their consumption in Holland and also in Japan. It also addresses the issue of Dutch involvement in the slave trades. Byapti Sur looks at textile production in Bengal under the Dutch, and details the preferences of VOC markets in different parts of the world, from the Maldives to Mozambique.
Focusing on another part of Northern Europe in ‘Insatiable Demand: The Danish-Norwegian trade from Bengal’, Vibe Maria Martens recounts the lesser-known case of the Danish-Norwegian Asiatic Company’s activities in Bengal, the major source of their textile trade from India, and details the specific cotton textile varieties exported to Denmark.
France, as a fashion leader, became a significant market for Indian textiles, to the extent of their being banned, as in Britain, as a threat to home industries. In ‘Farasdanga: The French Episode’, Lenny Hodges traces the activities of the French East India Company, through its trading posts, its Bengal headquarters at Chandernagore (Chandannagar) and factory at Kasim Bazar, outlining the complexities of assembling a huge range of textiles for export to France, a thriving trade, until the British became commercially and militarily dominant.
‘The British Colonial Empire and the Textile Trade’, by Kazuo Kobayashi, analyses the role of Bengali cotton textiles in the English East India Company’s trade, its influence on the development of industrialized textiles in Britain, the creation of laws protecting its domestic industries, and the indirect encouragement of international slave trade by a global taste for cotton originating in India, including Bengal.
Susan Bean takes us to the North American market for Bengal cottons in ‘Bengal Fabrics in America: Changing Fashion Trends’. This chapter traces the story from a post-independence private shipping trade, to the development of a vast mechanized textile industry and the Southern cotton plantations supporting it. The practical, washable and decorative cottons from Bengal appealed to the new American markets, as did the more luxurious muslins, tie-dyed and printed silk bandannas, which in time became part of American vernacular dress.
These accounts of highly competitive foreign trading systems illustrate the enormous impact that handwoven textiles from Bengal, mostly produced in rudimentary circumstances, had on the clothing and consumption habits of large areas of the rest of the world, incidentally encouraging the development of radically new methods of production, and the organization of human labour.
The focus of Section 6 is on the uses of the textiles of Bengal and their influence, the impact of colonization on Bengal textiles, and changes in sartorial tastes in Bengal with the consolidation of British power in India. The international exhibitions of Bengal textiles, their impact on textile production and the archiving of iconic Bengal textiles in foreign museums are also discussed. What becomes clear in these different narratives is that colonization both affected and displaced the textiles of Bengal from the pride of place they had occupied previously. The advent of the Mughals and the Portuguese had influenced the textiles of the region, they had also enriched them. Production of muslin, jamdani and chikan—originally from Bengal, but now associated with Lucknow—for example, profited by demand from the Mughal court. The interventions of the British gradually led to a degradation of the textile traditions of Bengal; from producers of fine handmade textiles, Bengal became a profitable market for British manufactured goods. Ironically, many of the fabled textiles of the past are to be found in museum collections abroad, so that the South Asian researcher needs to travel far to study them.
Examples of Bengal’s fine textiles were publicly displayed at London’s Great Exhibition of All Nations in 1851, as described by Ritu Sethi, in ‘Exhibiting Bengal Textiles: 1851 to the Commonwealth’. As Sethi notes, however, by the mid-19th century, India’s deindustrialization was already underway, and the country was becoming a consumer-importer of finished goods and an exporter of raw materials destined for the textile mills of Britain. Sethi highlights two decisive factors in this transformation: the changing balance of political and economic power in India with the British presence, and the impact of the industrial revolution in Britain.
The symbolic value of textiles is the subject of ‘Gifts and Tributes: Bengal Textiles in Sri Lanka’. G.M. Ranathunga describes how Bengal textiles were exchanged as gifts or given as tributes from the 14th to the early 19th century in Sri Lanka, where they were highly valued.
A wide variety of Bengali textiles to be found in public and private collections across Europe and America, are discussed by Avalon Fotheringham in ‘Bengal Textiles in Euro-American Collections’. Four international museums are examined, which
respectively hold embroidered colchas, Dhaka muslins, Baluchari saris and kanthas. Their presence in these collections reflects the long history of Euro-American engagement with the region of Bengal. The chapter also shows how the Bengali textiles chosen for these collections reflect the changing priorities of Euro-American collectors, curators, and institutions, the changing landscape of textile production in Bengal and beyond, and evolving conceptions of Bengali culture from the 19th century onwards.
The weaving clusters of Bengal, which produced some of the finest textiles ever known, are discussed by Susmita Das, in ‘Sartorial Traditions of Women in Colonial Bengal’. The women of elite Bengali families (both Hindu and Brahmo) had a wide choice. Early fabrics, worn without blouse or petticoat, were sheer, and Das ascribes this fascination for transparent textiles to the Mughal influence, noting how, with cultural changes, saris from Dhaka and Chandrakona made way for the denser weaves from Phulia, Tangail and Santipur.
The sartorial tastes of 19th-century Bengali bhadralok, or middle-class men, are considered in ‘Colonial Modernity: Fashioning Bengali Bhadraloks’. Here, Sumit K. Ghosh describes how the taste for Mughal dress faded with Western education and the consolidation of British rule. A hybridized dress culture emerged that not only influenced the attire of middle-class men but also of the entire family.
Finally, Namrata Ghosh considers how textiles are imbued with memories, sentiments and histories in ‘Textiles and Memory’. Ghosh notes how the evolution of the textiles of Bengal is interwoven with the history of the region. She reflects on how the textile industry of colonial Bengal reveals the politics of British power and control, and highlights the use of textile as a tool of resistance when the Swadeshi Movement chose the coarser handmade khadi over the finer, machine-made British cloth. Using the examples of textiles such as the Baluchari sari and the homemade kantha, Ghosh shows how they provide glimpses of the socio-cultural history of Bengal under the Europeans. Bengal textiles are an ancient yet living tradition. The many superb varieties of cloth included here show the inventiveness and skills developed in the region, over centuries. Considering the disrupted history of Bengal and the significant difference in weaving capacity between a handloom and a machine loom, it is surprising how extensively traditional methods have persisted into the present. Yet, as this book reminds us, Bengal’s often ancient textile traditions are embedded deep in the memories and culture of the people of Bengal and beyond, and in the hands of its makers.
SECTION I
Bengal and Beyond
Bengal’s position on the eastern coast of the Indian subcontinent made it a key region for Indian Ocean and world trade. Water took Bengal textiles to the world and brought the world to Bengal. The history of Bengal, including present day Bangladesh, has largely been determined by its vast riverine system, the provider of fertile soil, navigation routes and access to and from the world beyond. Shifting river systems were reflected in geographical and political flux, moving its boundaries and population patterns.
The history of Bengal trade is an ancient one, with exports of superb silk and cotton textiles besides agricultural produce, saltpetre, indigo and opium. Imported commodities included spices, camphor, sandalwood, cowries and bullion. Bengal became the richest part of the Mughal Empire, its wealth concentrated briefly in the banking centre of Murshidabad. A magnet for European trading companies from the 17th century, Bengal’s desirable resources were gradually subjected to British military and political control, its cotton textile production challenged by British factory-made imitations.
A kantha with map of undivided India (detail; See p. 33)
1.1 / The Historical Geography of Bengal: A Region in Flux
Robert Ivermee
The territory of Bengal once stretched from the Himalayas to the ocean, from the rocks of the Chota Nagpur plateau to the jungles of Burma. At its centre was the Bengal Delta, the largest riverine delta in the world. This chapter identifies the key factors shaping the region’s fragmented and shifting geographies through the ages, including fluvial shifts, the distribution of natural resources, climatic changes, and political upheaval, which in turn impacted patterns of migration and commerce. The two-way relationship between this changing geography and the production and trade of textiles is explored, setting the stage for the chapters that follow.
ANCIENT TO EARLY MODERN BENGAL
Deltaic Bengal was, in the most literal sense, a product of its rivers, the delta formed over centuries by silt deposited in the sea by the Ganges, the Brahmaputra and the Meghna. Its earliest settlers were probably Mongolian peoples from Burma and the Himalayas, who began cultivating rice across the delta. They were joined in the fifth century BC by Indo-Aryans from the Gangetic plains who mostly settled in western Bengal, around the river Hooghly. At this time, the Hooghly—the most westerly distributary of the Ganges—carried most of the water of the Ganges to the sea. Its basin was the most fertile area of the region.1
One of the earliest records of textile production in Bengal dates to the period of the Mauryan Empire (c. 322–185 BC), which expanded from Pataliputra (near modern-day Patna) in Bihar, across most of northern India. The Sanskrit treatise Arthashastra, credited to the scholar and statesman Kautilya (c. 375–283 BC), outlined several major regions of India for the production of cotton cloth, including Bengal, which was also renowned for its silk. Different centres of Bengali textile production were
The earliest map printed by the English East India Company depicting the textile centres of Bengal (Murshidabad, Kasim Bazar, Dhaka)
Published by John Thornton, London, c. 1680; Wikimedia
mentioned, among them Vanga in the southern delta; Pundra, with its epicentre between the Ganges and the Brahmaputra; and Suvarnakundya, north of the Brahmaputra in modern-day Assam.2 It is clear from this extensive geographical spread, that by the time Kautilya wrote his treatise, textile production was already a long-standing practice. The cotton plant Gossypium arboreum grew across the region, and the red silk-producing Bombyx mori moth was widely bred, particularly in Assam.
From the Mauryan Empire also date the earliest surviving records of long-distance maritime trade linking Bengal with other sites in the Indian Ocean and beyond. Tamralipti (present-day Tamluk), near the confluence of the Rupnarayan and Hooghly rivers, attracted merchants from the Persian Gulf, Arabia, Ceylon (present-day Sri Lanka), southeast Asia and China. Among the main attractions were the region’s textiles, which by the first century AD had even made their way back to Europe via Egypt and the Red Sea. The testimonies of Roman scholar Pliny the Elder and the near contemporaneous (but anonymous) author of the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, a Greek treatise on navigation and trade, reveal that ‘Ganges’ textiles were a highly sought-after commodity in the classical world.3 Ptolemy’s Geography, published in the second century AD, confirms that the basic geography of the Ganges and the Bay of Bengal was relatively well understood in classical Europe.
The volume of textiles exported from Bengal increased through the first millennium of the common era, with Arab traders playing a leading role in the shipping of cotton and silk cloth, westwards. In parallel, most of Bengal was united for the first time under King Shashanka (r. c. AD 590–625), who established his capital on the Hooghly at Karnasuvarna (present-day Berhampore). The city’s production of textiles soon flourished, no doubt in part because of royal patronage. The town of Satgaon (present day Saptagram), 150 kilometres south of Karnasuvarna—on a small distributary of the Hooghly known as the Saraswati—succeeded Tamralipti as the main port of the Hooghly basin and its textile trade. The relative stability of the periods of rule of the Pala dynasty (AD 750–1161) and the Sena dynasty (1070–1230), whose kingdoms also concentrated political power in western Bengal, then provided a further boost
SECTION III
The World of the Bengali Textile Worker
The world of the weaver was rich and diverse. Before technical education took off, and even after it did, much of the knowledge of how to weave good clothes was embodied in the person of the weaver. Adverse conditions that impacted weaving in one place tended to cause migrations to other regions where this embedded knowledge may have been valued. It had a great deal of value for merchants, as well. During the era of European trade, merchants were keen to maintain a steady relationship with weavers, though negotiations broke down from time to time, among other reasons, because the skills were in high demand among rival groups of merchants. Handloom weaving was usually a household enterprise. Women, even children and young adults, performed a range of tasks related to the production, the most famous being spinning by hand. If the male weaver had an external world in dealing with the traders who left some accounts of their situation, the women registered their experience in songs and folklore. While a fuller history of this heritage would need us to balance these sources, a chapter in this set shows the nature of the task.
Weaving a contemporary jamdani sari for the global market
Weavers Studio Research Centre
Photograph by Anuj Arora
The jamdani tradition has undergone sea changes in technology and designs— to survive—today.
3.1 / Weavers, Gomastas and the Company
Hameeda Hossain
With contributions by Weavers Studio Resource Centre and Moushumi Ghosh
HAND-IN-HAND WITH HANDLOOM
Handloom production in Bengal is a fascinating subject. Its study spans several centuries, and tells of the changing links between manufacture and trade, and the weavers’ links with buyers and other intermediaries. Its historical focus has been on the challenges of supply under different political and economic pressures. The sources for a historical study are to be found in many official records of the time.
Handloom production has had a long and rich history in Undivided India. It is the story of how markets and merchants functioned to create demand and support production and how the rural artisans of Bengal used their skills to produce a wide variety of cloth [Figs 3.1.1 and 3.1.2] for consumption and distribution. This chapter discusses how the system of production responded to changes in the market and the challenges it faced to meet its need for credit and capital. We then assess how weavers’ lives and functions came under restrictions from trade, and later, under the direction of the European Companies.
CRAFTSPEOPLE
From the early days, coarse cloth was woven by family members for their own consumption. Production was done by a division of labour within each family. Later, production for the market retained a similar, simple technology, but its different functions
(Facing page)
Length of royal jamdani muslin
Cotton, plain weave with supplementary warps and brocading (discontinuous supplementary pattern wefts) of silver lamella wrapped around cotton
Dhaka
c. 1910
From Mrs. Elaine Brunner (née Howlett), daughter of Richard Howlett, valet to King George V from 1901 until his death in 1936
Collection of Francesca Galloway, UK
Fig. 3.1.1
Jamdani angarkha
Woven cotton, supplementary weft
Dhaka, Bengal
c. 19th century
Weavers Studio Resource Centre
Photograph by Anuj Arora
were performed by a gender- and caste-based division of labour. Women were employed for spinning, cleaning, warping, weaving and post-weaving activities.
The available reports and surveys on caste dynamics in Bengal reveal a nuanced division of labour based on gender, age and caste. Unlike the southern regions, there was no caste bias in spinning yarn for cloth manufacture in Bengal. Women from various classes/castes, including Brahmans, weavers and cultivators, engaged in the activity. Weavers, classified into nine castes known as Naba-Sudras, were further divided into higher-status Tantis and Jugis, with Muslim weavers having their own distinctions. Castes such as the Jugis were associated with specific types of cloth, indicating a prescribed division of manufacturers. In East Bengal, Jugis were sub-divided into the Masya and Ekdasi. The Bonga Tantis of East Bengal claimed
Design and Production
The studies that follow in this section centre around the production and trade of cloth: the emergence of a textile hub in middle Bengal; muslin cloth, and how it changed the notion of elegance in the 19th century; the invention and wide use of machines in cotton spinning and weaving; and the persistence of diversity despite machines imposing a certain extent of standardization. We may think standardization won the battle for the soul of the modern consumer. If it did, we would not be writing this book. There are several distinct levels at which the studies in this set register the great changes happening in textiles in Bengal from the 17th century to modern times: products; capital and enterprise; technology; and producers. We see the distinctness of products and producers with muslin. Capital and enterprise take the foreground in the studies on Murshidabad and Swadeshi mills. Two chapters take an interest in technology and the complex and uneven impact it had on indigenous textiles. And a study of tribal textiles reveals the experience of products and producers deeply rooted in regional culture.
Dacca muslin
Woven and embroidered square cloth
1800 Cleveland Museum of Art, USA
Gift of Mrs. Harry F. Stratton 1955.621
4.1. / Paradigm Shift:
Technology and Industrialization
Indrajit Ray
The root of Bengal’s textile industry lies in great antiquity. The beauty and fineness of its cotton and silk products are referred to in many ancient and early modern-age documents. Those were superior to European textiles in terms of thread diameters and number of twists. The only disadvantage was that the staple length was short for both raw cotton and silk. But Bengal’s skill and dexterity over-compensated for those drawbacks.
(Facing page)
Weaving equipment
Industrial Section of the Indian Museum
Botanical Survey of India, Kolkata, India
Photograph by Subhodeep Chanda
Fig. 4.1.1
Razor-sharp teeth in the upper jaw of a boalee (catfish)
Photograph: Shahidul Alam, Drik
In the 17th and 18th centuries, Bengal’s textile industry dominated the global market thanks to superior skills in spinning and weaving. In the 19th century, technological advancement during the Industrial Revolution led to its obsolescence and decline. This chapter will describe the production processes in use in earlier times, when Bengal cloth was the envy of the world. It will explain the changing technology of production in the 19th century and show that the experiences of all varieties of cloth, especially cotton and silk, were not exactly similar.
THE ERA OF GLOBAL DOMINANCE
Both cotton and silk textiles were developed in Bengal as rural household industries. Cotton spinning was undertaken by women. After cleansing karpas (raw cotton), three steps were followed: (a) carding with the jaw-bone of a type of freshwater catfish, locally called boalee fish [Fig. 4.1.1], (b) detaching fibres from seeds with an iron pin, and (c) teasing the wool with a small hand-bow.
The spinning apparatus comprised an iron spindle (10–15 inches in length), and a piece of shell embedded in clay. The spinner held the spindle in an inclined position, with its point resting in the hollow of the shell and turned it between the thumb and forefinger of one hand, while drawing out the single filaments from the roll of cotton held in the other hand and twisting them into yarn upon the spindle. When a certain quantity of the yarn had been spun and collected on this instrument, it was wound from it, upon a reed. Much of this work would take place in the morning and late afternoon, because dry and hot air tended to break the threads and slowed spinning.
In silk, spinning processes were adapted to the quality of the cocoons: the khamru spinning for ‘healthy’ cocoons and the matka spinning for ‘pierced’ cocoons. Good spinning required the proper processing of cocoons. It started with exposing them to the sun, followed by steaming, so that pupae were
From the early 16th century, European and North American traders in the subcontinent had a profound impact both on textile production in Bengal and on global trading practices. Here, we look beyond a story dominated by the role of an increasingly militaristic English East India Company, to consider the ways in which other European trading companies, private traders and North American merchants established themselves in Bengal and exploited its textile resources. These accounts of competing foreign trading organizations illustrate the lasting effect that handwoven textiles from Bengal had on consumption habits and the production of textiles far beyond Asia.
Colcha Silk thread embroidery on cotton fabric Satgaon, Bengal c. 17th century Collection of The Museum of Art & Photography (MAP), Bengaluru, India
5.1 / Bengal Commissions: Colchas for the Ibero-European Markets
Barbara Karl
Among the most interesting artworks to be exported to Europe from early modern Bengal by the Portuguese were different types of embroidered textiles. In the early exchange of goods between Asia and Europe, private merchants from Portugal and skilled Bengal craftsmen developed embroidered textile products for an internationalizing Portuguese, or rather Ibero-European market. What is remarkable about the specific group of embroideries from Bengal is they were considered important by both commentators and their owners. They were not only preserved, so that many survive, but were also described in written accounts listed in inventories in such a way—and this is crucial—that we are able to identify the surviving pieces and lost ones as Bengali. The ability to identify surviving pieces in a wide range of textiles makes it possible to gain detailed insight in the intercultural exchange of Indian textiles in general, during this period.1
This chapter traces the development of a specific type of textile from Bengal—the large, golden-yellow embroidered colchas, as they were known in Portuguese sources. The iconography of these fascinating embroideries shed light on the hybridized merchant classes within Portuguese colonial society, the changing political framework in which they operated, and the end-consumers they had in mind when developing the textiles. Moreover, such iconographies and styles reflect the taste and culture of makers, commissioners and buyers.
Colchas are not only among the earliest surviving embroideries of the Indian subcontinent, but are also among the very few remaining material traces of Portuguese activity in Bengal. Further, they are crucial to understanding the later development of Indian textile production for export to Europe. The embroidered Bengali and Gujarati colchas that the Portuguese exported to Europe prepared the ground for successive European interventions by the Dutch and the English in the field of Indian textile production.2
Long vestment worn primarily by priests
Embroidered with yellow tussah
(tussar) silk in chain stitch and bobbin
lace applications using linen thread
Bengal c. 1600–1630
Fundacao Oriente, FO 1137
SETTING THE STAGE
The Portuguese glimpsed products from India even before reaching the subcontinent.3 Diplomatic contact brought gifts, the seizure of Indian merchant vessels brought booty, and both showed the newcomers what was worth trading in the region, and where the goods came from. Gaspar Correia recorded one well-known early gift exchange between the King of Melinde on the East African coast, and Vasco da Gama on his second voyage to India in 1502. This featured a monochromatic Bengal embroidery, the specific product type later adapted by Portuguese private merchants for export.4 The evident status of these objects probably drew Portuguese attention to them. A white cotton ground is embroidered with a naturally yellow, wild tussar silk from Bengal [Fig. 5.1.1].5 Often, the individual scenes are difficult to discern due to this characteristic colour combination, but in the right light, the fabric shines almost like gold. The affinity to the precious material—restricted by sumptuary laws in Europe—represents the most probable reason for this choice of colour combination by the European commissioners and the success of these embroideries.6 They imitated gold, but cost less. Just about a decade after this first documented encounter with an embroidered Bengali colcha, official relations were initiated between the Estado da Índia (the Portuguese State of India), established by the Portuguese, and the Bengal Sultanate.
Colchas were just one among many types of cotton and silk textiles exported by the Portuguese from India.7 Initially, the Portuguese bought what the local market offered—different types of embroideries, for example.8 In Bengal, raw materials for both colchas and other textiles—cotton and wild silk (in this case, mostly tussar silk), were easy to come by, as were excellent craftsmen. Access to the markets was good, thanks to the location of the new settlement at Hugli; in the Ganges Delta region, the waterways connected trade between sea and the hinterland. Additionally, Satgaon and Dacca (Dhaka) had been important centres of textile production not only during the Sultanate period but since antiquity.9
5A / Patron Textiles in Bengal
5A-iii / Begumbahar:
Sheer Evening Saris for Bengali Elites
Ruby Palchoudhuri
After marrying into the Palchoudhuri family in 1959, I saw my mother-in-law, Srimati Ila Palchoudhuri buying stacks of sheer and delicate cotton saris, popularly known as Begumbahar, from Rashid-er Maa (Rashid’s mother, a colloquial way of referring to women in Bengal) at Rs. 250 each. Begumbahar oozed royalty, delicacy, and everything ethereal.
Rashid-er Maa walked across the border from Jessore (in present day Bangladesh) carrying these saris in bundles. She sold them to the women of the prominent houses in Calcutta, including the Palchoudhuris. Being this sheer, these saris only catered to the tastes of a specific class of women, and were not available in local markets, which were flooded with coarser Dhonekhali and Santipur saris at those times. Begumbahar saris were not as starched as other cotton saris to allow the fabric to be softer to the skin of the women draping them.
The story goes that in the hot summer evenings, women of some of the prominent houses in North Calcutta painted their backs with alta (a red dye traditionally applied by Indian women), draped these sheer and soft saris around their bodies, and sang and danced in the presence of the male members, at terrace parties. Long after we lost the skill to make fine cotton muslins in Bengal, its hot and humid climate kept the demand for these translucent Begumbahars alive.
Fig. 5.7.6
Begumbahar
Woven cotton and silk
Bangladesh c. 1960s
Collection: Ruby Palchoudhuri
Arab and Greek merchants had imported varieties of muslin from Bengal since the 4th century BC. Muslin was also popular in Rome. Even before its popularity revived in Europe after colonization, muslin was traded to Sri Lanka, where it was the textile of choice of the Sri Lankan kings. Gifts of muslin were made both to Indian rulers and visiting ambassadors. Colchas were commissioned from Bengal by the Portuguese and found their place in other parts of Europe as well. With the beginning of British rule in India—first informally with the East India Company and then formally with Queen Victoria becoming the Empress of India—Bengal textiles continued to be exported to Britain, while British manufactures and fashions infiltrated Bengal. Men’s fashions as well as women’s fashions, though more slowly, were affected by the presence of the British in India. Exhibitions to display Indian textiles, but also to learn the methods of production, started being organized. The popularity of British textiles and fashions led to a decline in textile manufacture in Bengal, a decline that was exacerbated by the partition in 1947. The chapters in this section explore the long history of Bengali textiles and their varieties over several centuries, beginning with their popularity, through their decline, and subsequently a rising nationalism which attempted to restore the glory of Bengal textiles.
memory of Madhusudan Dutt, considered one of the pioneers of
c.
A nakshi kantha with faces of Bengali poet and playwright Madhusudan Dutt embroidered in different corners by Hemchandra Dutt (as signed) Cotton, embroidered in the
Bengali literature
20th century Weavers Studio Resource Centre
Barbara Karl is an art historian and museum curator. She is Head of Research and Deputy Director of Ballenberg, the Swiss open-air museum. She is an expert on the Indo-Portuguese Satgaon quilts and has published a book titled Embroidered Histories (2016).
Ankan Kazi is the Deputy Director of Museums at DAG, Kolkata. He is a writer, translator, literary critic, and art historian. He has a particular interest on the Company and Bengal schools of painting and has contributed several articles on renowned platforms.
Kazuo Kobayashi is an Associate Professor at Waseda University, Japan. He completed his PhD at the London School of Economics. He has published journal articles and contributed book chapters on the Atlantic slave trade, textiles, commodity histories, and economic globalisation during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Rosie Llewellyn-Jones has worked for the Royal Society for Asian Affairs. She holds a PhD degree in Urdu from SOAS University of London. She is Editor of the journal Chowkidar. She was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in 2015 for services to the British Association for Cemeteries in South Asia and to British Indian studies.
Arthur MacGregor is a British academic and author. He was a curator at the Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford from 1979 to 2008. Since 2019, he has been a Visiting Professor at the Victoria and Albert Museum’s Research Institute for the ‘The India Museum Revisited’ project.
Debashish Mahalanobish is an Associate Professor at Visva-Bharati University, India. His research interests include handloom and khadi, textile chemistry, textile design and fashion. He has published several books, articles, and conference proceedings.
Paola Manfredi, an Italian ethnologist, is a member of the World Crafts Council. She has specialized on the history of Indian textile traditions and particularly on chikankari, aari and kantha embroideries. She studied ethnology at L’École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris, and is a prolific scholar on Indian handcrafted textiles.
Vibe Maria Martens is an Archivist at Danish National Archives, Copenhagen, Denmark. She has completed her PhD from the Department of History and Civilization at European University Institute in Fiesole (Tuscany), Italy. Her research includes the study of Danish colonial trade in Indian cotton textiles in the 18th century and its effect on Danish consumption and material culture.
Anna-Louise Meynell is a PhD research scholar at the London School of Fashion and owner of Annaloom, India. Her research is an ethnographic documentation of eri silk
handweaving in Meghalaya (northeast India) and the community approach to preservation of this artisanal heritage.
Chandra Mukhopadhyay is a retired schoolteacher, independent collector and researcher of women’s folksongs of Bengal. Over the last thirty years, she has collected about 6000 such songs from rural women. Her book Narir Gaan Shromer Gaan (in Bengali) delves into the socio-economic and geo-cultural milieu that produces such musical tools of history.
Ghulam A. Nadri is a Professor of History and Director at the Asian Studies Institute, Georgia State University, USA. He specializes in the social and economic history of early modern and colonial India/South Asia. He is the author of The Political Economy of Indigo in India, 1580-1930: A Global Perspective (2016) and Eighteenth-Century Gujarat: The Dynamics of Its Political Economy, 1750–1800 (2009).
Sushreya Pal is a Botanical Assistant at the Industrial Section Indian Museum, Botanical Survey of India, Kolkata. She is engaged in the curatorial work of the Botanical Gallery, including the maintenance and development of its vast collection.
Ruby Palchoudhuri is the President Emeritus of Crafts Council of West Bengal. She is one of India’s leading experts on craft revival and documentation. She was elected as Honorary General Secretary and Executive Director, Crafts Council of West Bengal, affiliated to the Crafts Council of India and World Crafts Council.
Radhi Parekh is a graduate in Visual Communications from the National Institute of Design (NID), India. In 2011, she founded ARTISANS, a social enterprise, in Mumbai. Located in the historic Kala Ghoda district, it anchors a thriving design destination.
Surendra Kumar Patra is retired Deputy Director of the Weavers Service Centre, Odisha, India. Hailing from a family of ikat weavers in Nuapatna village, Cuttack district, he has deep knowledge of traditional ikat textiles of the state of Odisha and the technicalities of ikat dyeing and weaving.
S.K. Saifur Rahman started as a sports reporter in 1992. He also reports on crafts in Bangladesh. His paper Jamdani: Geographical Indication of Bangladesh was published in 2013. He is the General Secretary of the National Crafts Council of Bangladesh since 2018.
Alka Raman is a Hallsworth Fellow at Department of History, University of Manchester, UK. Her research has assessed the impact of Indian cotton textiles on industrialisation in the British cotton industry between 1700 and 1860. She uses historic textiles and a scientific experiments-based methodology to source quantitative evidence from textile objects.
Gayathri M. Ranathunga is Professor at the Department of Textile & Apparel Engineering, University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka. Her research interests include the history of dress, fashion and technology, and the trade and exchange of textiles. She is a co-author of the textbook The Buddhist Robe: The Path Pointing to Natural Dyes and the Possible Establishment of a Natural Dyeing Industry in the Apparel Sector of Sri Lanka (2019).
Indrajit Ray is a Professor at University of North Bengal, India. From 1988 to 2023, he taught in the Department of Commerce at the University of North Bengal. He has published a trilogy in the Routledge Explorations in Economic History Series.
Chandrasekhar Saha is one of the pathfinders in modern crafting and textile design in Bangladesh. He has been involved in the Executive Committee of the National Crafts Council of Bangladesh for last fifteen years and has chaired the Council.
Abhinandan Sarkar is pursuing Ph.D. in history at the Department of History, Jadavpur University, India. His research titled ‘Visual Culture and Politics: Study of Bengal Politics through Political Cartoons, 1930–77’ locates the satirical tradition in Bengal within the changing political ethos of postcolonial India.
Ritu Sethi is the founder-trustee of the Craft Revival Trust and editor of the online international journal Global InCH. In addition, she oversees the Asia InCH Encyclopaedia. Her research interests lie in tracing the evolution of textile and craft traditions from the colonial to more recent practice, reflecting on its impact on culture, heritage and on living practices.
Shahid Hussain Shamim is a fabric designer and the director of the three-decades-old brand ‘Prabartana’, an icon today in the realm of fair trade, ethically produced artefacts. Shamim has engaged in extensive research on handloom products, woven fabrics and the process, and collaboratively worked for promotion of the handloom products and for betterment of the local weavers.
Gordon T. Stewart is a Professor Emeritus of World History and British Empire History at Michigan State University, USA. In addition to Jute & Empire (1998), Stewart has authored Journeys to Empire: Enlightenment, Imperialism and the British Encounter with Tibet 1774–1904 (2009) and written numerous articles for a range of international professional journals.
Byapti Sur is an Assistant Professor at Thapar School of Liberal Arts & Sciences, India. She specialises in early-modern history and in Indo-Dutch socio-cultural connections (1600–1800). She was granted the Erasmus Mundus IBIES and COSMOPOLIS scholarships.
CRAFTS
Textiles from Bengal A Shared Legacy
Edited by Sonia Ashmore, Tirthankar Roy and Niaz Zaman
Foreword by Rosemary Crill
360 pages, 295 illustrations
10 x 11” (254 x 279 mm), hc
ISBN: 978-93-94501-26-3
₹4950 | $70 | £55
Jan. 2025 | World Rights
The famed Bengal textiles which once ‘clothed the world’ have received little scholarly attention. With the systemic destruction of Bengal’s textile industry, prompted by the Industrial Revolution in Europe, the muslins and Balucharis of Bengal were lost in obscurity. The partition of the Indian subcontinent and the consequent varieties of cultural and social identity in present-day India and Bangladesh have contributed to this neglect. This pioneering publication explores in depth the lost textile traditions of Bengal from the 16th to the 20th century and traces its impact on the historical and cultural aspects of the region.
This book is conceived as a dialogue between historians, anthropologists, art historians, textile practitioners and textile scholars who bring their diverse perspectives and expertise on the fundamental catalysts of change in the textile tradition of Bengal. The book serves as a public history, with engaging chapters presenting a unique perspective on the textiles of wider Bengal supported by superb illustrations of textiles, maps and trade documents from the past, most of which have never been published before. This volume will inspire the reader, reorient scholarly attention and provoke a rethinking of the nature and history of Bengal textiles.
SONIA ASHMORE is a design historian, lecturer and writer based in London, UK. As a Research Fellow at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, she has published on the museum’s extensive South Asian textile collections, including the book Muslin (V&A, 2012).
TIRTHANKAR ROY is Professor at Department of Economic History, London School of Economics. His research interests include the history and development of South Asia, global history, empires, and environmental history. His recent books include Crafts and Capitalism: Handloom Weaving Industry in Colonial India (Routledge, 2020), and Monsoon Economies: Indian History in a Changing Climate (MIT Press, 2022).
NIAZ ZAMAN, former Professor at the University of Dhaka, retired in 2023 as Advisor, Department of English and Modern Languages, Independent University, Bangladesh. Her books include the first book on nakshi kantha titled The Art of Kantha Embroidery (Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy, 1981; second rev. ed., The University Press Limited, 1993) and A Descriptive Catalogue of Textile Objects in the Bangladesh National Museum (Bangladesh National Museum, 2017).
With 295 illustrations.
www.mapinpub.com