Weavers across the country are protesting amid reports that the textile ministry may be in favour of removing some products from the “protected category” and allow their production on powerloom, despite government’s assurance that it won’t dilute the act. Presently, the law allows 11 products to be exclusively produced on handloom. It also guards handloom weaves from being copied by powerloom owners.
“There is a strong lobbying happening. I do not understand what we will get by killing our own heritage,” said Kumar, who is holding a sari exhibition with rare hand block prints from Bengal. It’s a part of her company’s revival series. “When I was a student of art history, I discovered this place Serampore, which is almost 200 kms away from Kolkata. It used to be a Dutch colony. The area is rich in silk and yarns. There were a lot of weavers. The unique factor was that they knew how to print the silk, which is a rare discipline.
They used vegetable dyes and they printed them on saris. I couldn’t understand why there was a lack of work. The samples that I had seen were so magnificent but the weavers had no work. They were printing polka dots for export to America at the same price as synthetic scarves. It was terrible. Though I wasn’t a designer of print, I tried to do something for them. I made blocks and asked them to print them on saris. It’s an old heritage which came back to life. Over the years, we carried the block printing and I also used Bhagalpur silk, which is made from ahimsa silk from that region,” she said adding that “over the years, things changed and people wanted digital prints and synthetic saris or Chinese silk. Slowly, the demand for that came down.”
So the designer is now reviving her rare works which she has done over decades inspired from the rare handlooms of the country. “I hope we will be able to give at least that amount of work to those weavers once again with the renewed interest. I think we need to create more awareness about Indian handlooms. More education is required. People hardly know what they are wearing,” she said.
To celebrate this exhibition, Kumar invited her old and loyal clientele. Some ladies have been wearing Kumar’s creations from 1960s. “A couple of ladies had attended my first exhibition which I did in Kolkata on hand block printing for saris. My company is doing it as a part of CSR. A lot of forthcoming activities will be based on handloom. The reason why it is needed is that the quantities produced by the weavers are not large and their garments don’t reach malls. We don’t have a bandwidth to do it nor these areas have commercial ability to meet the needs of retail sector,” she said.