Special issue with the Sunday Magazine
From the publishers of THE HINDU

WOVEN ART : June 20, 1999

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An elitist symbol?

Gowri Ramnarayan

Inda podavai nallaave illai (this sari is not at all nice). Why have you bought it for me?" asked Mariamma, my indispensable home assistant. Perturbed, I looked at the handloom sari, an expensive Diwali gift. Its leaf green and chilli red were surely the striking colours she loved.

"What's wrong with it?" I asked her. "Ayyo, Amma!" she exclaimed with infinite contempt. "It is cotton! No use at all." She also told me that she did not like any of the handloom saris of mine that I give her off and on, because they are "limp and clammy", not smart and bright, like the nylon and polycot the corner-house Amma gives her maid. "They may be old, but they look as good as new," she ended with a sniff.

It was no use explaining to her that cotton was the best wear for our country and climate. Or to say how cotton was the centuries old norm, until about 40 years ago, before synthetics came into the market. Initially the many varieties of nylon and nylex (including a particularly ghastly material called twinkle nylon) were too expensive for everyday use. But today, walk into any public place from train station and bazaar to cinema house and park - you will see the women draped in one of the myriad varieties of synthetic fabric. Even with senior citizens, the polycot /nylex madisar (nine yards sari) has gained popularity. In the rural regions, women planting saplings in the paddy fields, under the scorching sun, is a common sight today. Worse, you see them sweating it out in polycot blouses, which have almost supplanted the two-by-two or two-by-one cotton in vogue some time ago.

Shalini Saran/Fotomedia

Esther and Lakshmi take the bus together every day to their workplace in George Town (Chennai). They earn Rs. 3500 a month. "Cotton? Handloom?" asks Lakshmi as if the word is foreign to her. "Nobody wears it in my office. If I did, they would tease me saying, did you stand in the queue with drought relief victims to win this prize?" Esther smiles in sympathy and adds, "Cotton needs careful washing and drying, it must be starched and ironed. Who has the time? My Garden sari needs minimum attention, it can be washed and dried quickly, I can even hang it folded close together if there is less space for drying." If you tell them that their mothers found the time, the women will answer that cottons were all right for housewives, especially in the days when women congregated at the riverside for leisurely baths and gossip-peppered washing sessions, not for the urban work force. Moreover, the cotton sari gets crumpled easily, whereas nylex is shrink-crush resistant. It doesn't tear or get frayed as quickly, the colours don't fade. It seems blessed with an immortality of its own.

But don't synthetics make the women feel hot and humid? "No," they chorus. "Anyway, we've got used to it." They are also happy with the tremendous range of hues and patterns in synthetic fabrics. "Whereas every handloom combination has been seen only a million times before!"

Of course, the cost factor plays a major role in their preference. A cotton handloom sari can cost anything from Rs. 400 to Rs. 4000. The reasonably good ones are from Rs. 750 to Rs. 1500. The synthetic price range is far lower, plus the advantages of durability and easy maintenance. Two-by-two blouse material has shot up in price, but polycot, with a plastic zari border, is available at Rs. 40 a metre.

I realise then that an India of beautiful handloom wearing women is a romantic dream, a throwback to the freedom fighting days of Gandhi's charkha, and to Nehruvian socialism with its heavy taxes on synthetics and subsidies for handlooms. Khadar and kaittari were then part of a political issue, national symbols of aspiration, hope and self sufficiency. It was protest against the exploitation of the disadvantaged colony by the Lancashire mills in distant Britain. The impractical ideal persisted for a long time after independence. It might have been possible to clothe the 30 crore population in handloom in 1947. But how does one increase production to serve the needs of a population close to a billion in 1999?

Shyam Jagota

The whole handloom industry survives on heavy subsidies today, as it has always done. Which means that sales depend on the rebates offered during festival times. There are no returns here for the government or the weaver. Most handloom co-operatives are perennially broke, the subsidies don't arrive on time, and the weavers lead a precarious existence. The success stories of a Kanchipuram or a Benares are too few and isolated to mean much. Talk to any of the weavers from Madurai to Chanderi and they will cavil at having to sit at the loom for days and months. Handloom is extremely time consuming. The returns for weaving cotton fabric are woefully insufficient compensation for the labours. In general, no weaver wants his children to break their backs and hearts in this hereditary profession.

In many parts of the world, handloom material has now become exclusive wear for the elite, the health faddist and the fashion conscious. It survives as the handcrafted fabric which only the rich can afford. The trend seems to be moving in that direction. In many States, the middle and lower middle classes have all but given up handloom cotton as everyday wear; though silks are still status symbols, and essential auspicious wear for weddings and other festive occasions.

Perhaps the handloom industry, especially the exquisite varieties of cotton weaving which have made India famous throughout the ancient and modern world, will only survive as an art form, at a prohibitive cost. Hopefully, the weaver will then become a highly paid artist, eager to train his children in the lucrative skills at the loom.