A strong, colourful and resilient thread, India's hand-woven textile tradition stitches together the joints and seams of the subcontinent’s history. From the fragments of cloth residue found at Mohenjo Daro dating to between the mid-third and early second millennium BC, the journey of Indian fabrics passes through many phases of innovation and diversification.
In the 20 century, hand spun and woven cotton fabric became the cloth of nationalism. Modernisation saw the decline of niche and patronage-dependent weaving traditions. With mechanisation, unequal competition, new sartorial preferences and the lack of marketing outlets, several traditional fabrics went out of daily use. Yet, millions of people continue to work in the handloom sector, the largest employment generator in India after agriculture, and a formidable base for the revival of India’s extraordinary diversity of weaves.
This is a story that The Fabric of India — a first-of-its-kind exhibition at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum — seeks to tell, drawing from its own collection of nearly 10,000 samples of Indian textiles, and from museums elsewhere. As garment for both the humble and vain; as transmitter of symbolism, myth and religion; heralder of wealth and authority; and as canvas for creative and aesthetic exploration — textiles indeed mirror the fabric of India.
“In Fabric of India we are trying to tell an ancient and wide-ranging story,” said exhibition Curator Rosalind Crill. From a global historical perspective, the Indian subcontinent has always been a region with a concentrated but varied textile tradition. “I know that in many places their heyday has passed, but that is what makes the historical collections of Indian textiles so amazing.” Curated with a no-frills directness that speaks clearly to the visitor, there is an understated sophistication in this exhibition, both in the choice and display of its 200 exhibits, and in the thematic planning that underpins it.
Not surprisingly, therefore, it starts by examining the two basic qualities of fabric — its texture, which is determined by the fibre used; and its appearance, in which colour plays a key role. The varieties of cotton, silk and wool that weavers used from early times are represented and explained, as are the origins of the natural dyes that were used to embellish fabric. Red (from many sources including lac, and the chay plant), blue (from the once-prized Indigo plant), yellow (from turmeric and other plant sources) and black (from tannin-bearing plants) formed the basic palette.
A process of mixing the basic four in different strengths and combinations yielded the colourful range that marks Indian textiles.
With this introduction, the exhibition explodes into a tour-de-force of Indian textiles — its history, regional variations, and multiplicity of functions. Fabric as sari, shawl, temple hanging, ornate border, pennant, room panel, tent interior, royal garment, and myriad other uses are presented in exuberant variety. Varanasi brocades hang alongside liquid Pashmina shawls with chaste hand embroidered borders, from Kashmir; lungis from the Punjab contrast with the fine muslins of the subcontinent’s east; Bengal’s Baluchar weaves compete with Gujarat’s Paithani shawls; and ancient Kalamkari temple hangings from Machilipatnam meet Ajrakh block prints from Gujarat. One room is occupied by the versatile chintz from the Coromandel coast, a fabric that lent itself to design requirements from places as far as Europe, Japan and Indonesia.
There are curiosities too, like the room created by a 17-metre length of Gujarati applique work, which we are told was found discarded on the pavement of a New York street 20 years ago by an art appraiser, and which eventually found its way to the V&A museum.
The eye catches some of the exhibit highlights — here an elegant eight-panelled tent used by Tipu Sultan, its interiors lined by red floral printed chintz panels, borders and ceilings; there an embroidered shawl that wraps its user with a bird’s eye view of Srinagar — a busy and dense depiction complete with the pleasure gardens of Nishat and Shalimar Bagh, blue lakes with shikaras , the meandering Jhelum teeming with boats; temples, bridges, houses, mansions and people.
In its section on fabric and the freedom movement is displayed the wedding sari worn by Indira Gandhi, India’s late Prime Minister. Responding to the call of Mahatma Gandhi for the patronage of homespun and hand-woven fabric, she chose a fine cotton Khadi sari with a silk and metal-thread embroidered border.
The museum is in talks with the government of India on the possibility of taking the exhibition to India. If so, The Fabric of India would have returned home, if only on a short visit.
