Mothers and Godmothers of Crafts: Female Leadership and the Imagination of India as a Crafts Nation, 1947–67

Abstract

Among the many nation-building projects launched soon after India’s Independence, crafts had a prominent role as a key way to support Indian culture, encourage diverse Indian production and build rural employment. These new efforts in crafts reveal the leadership of a group of powerful women, including most prominently Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay and Pupul Jayakar. Together, Chattopadhyay, Jayakar and others helped forge the idea of India as a crafts nation even as they made possible new roles for women within the fields of crafts. Powerful women operating in areas formerly dominated by men, they helped to shape the vision of crafts in the new state but faced important limits, revealing the narrow space for female leadership after Independence.

Keywords:

• All India Handicrafts Board
• All India Handloom Board
• Chattopadhyay
• crafts
• gender
• Jayakar
• state-building

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to the editors of this special section, Anjali Bhardwaj Datta, Mytheli Sreenivas and Uditi Sen, the participants in the 2018 workshop, ‘Women, Nation-Building and Feminism in India’, held at the University of Cambridge, and the anonymous reviewers for South Asia for comments, suggestions and insightful feedback on this essay.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Paul Greenough, ‘Nation, Economy and Tradition Displayed: The Indian Crafts Museum, New Delhi’, in Carol Breckenridge (ed.), Consuming Modernity: Public Culture in Contemporary India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 216–48 [241].

2. Advertisement for the All India Handicrafts Board, in Design, Vol. 5, no. 2 (Feb. 1961), p. 40.

3. The term ‘Hastakala Ma’ or ‘Handicrafts Mother’ was used for Chattopadhyay, and ‘godmother’ was used for both Chattopadhyay and Jayakar. For Chattopadhyay, see Jamila Brijbhushan, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya: Portrait of a Rebel (New Delhi: Abhinav Publications, 1976), p. 143; for Jayakar, see National Institute of Design, 50 Years of the National Institute of Design, 1961–2011 (Ahmedabad: National Institute of Design, 2013), p. 305; and Lokesh Chandra and Jyotindra Jain (eds), Dimensions of Indian Art: Pupul Jayakar at Seventy, Vol. I (Delhi: Agam Kala Prakashan, 1986).

4. Ritu Sethi, ‘Shaping Textile Futures: Those Who Led the Way’, in Marg, Vol. 67, no. 4 (Sept. 2016), pp. 22–31 [22]; Malvika Singh, ‘The Tapestry of Her Life’, in Lokesh Chandra and Jyotindra Jain (eds), Dimensions of Indian Art: Pupul Jayakar at Seventy, Vol. I (Delhi: Agam Kala Prakashan, 1986), pp. xv–xix [xvii]; Monisha Ahmed and Mayank Mansingh Kaul, ‘Conversations: Jasleen Dhamija, Jyotindra Jain, Ritu Kumar and Rahul Jain’, in Marg, Vol. 67, no. 4 (Sept. 2016), pp. 60–77 [71]; and L.C. Jain, ‘Obituary—Kamaladevi’, in Economic & Political Weekly, Vol. 23, no. 48 (26 Nov. 1988), pp. 2520–1 [2521].

5. For Kalapesi, see P.A., ‘Handicrafts of Sohan Sahakari Sangh’, in Design, Vol. 6, no. 4 (April 1962), pp. 33–5; for Nelly Sethna, see Monisha Ahmed, ‘The Revival of Natural Dyes: Jasleen Dhamija in Conversation with Monisha Ahmed’, in Marg, Vol. 65, no. 2 (Dec. 2013), pp. 74–83 [79] for Suraiya Hasan Bose, see Radhika Singh, ‘The Loom as Ideology: Suraiya Apa’s Legacy’, in Marg, Vol. 67, no. 4 (Sept. 2016), pp. 96–101; and for Dhamija and Arundale, see Ahmed and Kaul, ‘Jasleen Dhamija, Jyotindra Jain, Ritu Kumar and Rahul Jain’.

6. Sethi, ‘Shaping Textile Futures’.

7. Contemporary leaders in the crafts sector include Laila Tyabji, Jaya Jaitly, Judy Frater, Sally Holkar, Ritu Kumar, Reema Nanavaty and others. There certainly have been prominent men in the field including Martand Singh, Jyotindra Jain, Ashoke Chatterjee, John and William Bissel, and Rajeev Sethi, but they remain exceptions within a largely feminised sphere.

8. Lisa Trivedi, Clothing Gandhi’s Nation: Homespun and Modern India (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007), chap. 1.

9. Details for the following are drawn from Brijbhushan, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya; Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay, Inner Recesses, Outer Spaces: Memoirs (New Delhi: Navrang, 1986); Jasleen Dhamija, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay (New Delhi: National Book Trust, 2007); Ellen Carol Dubois and Vinay Lal (eds), A Passionate Life: Writings by and on Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay (New Delhi: Zubaan, 2017); and Reena Nanda, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya: A Biography (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002).

10. Details for the following are drawn from Singh, ‘The Tapestry of Her Life’; see also Pupul Jayakar, The Children of Barren Women: Essays, Investigations, Stories (Delhi: Penguin Books, 1994).

11. For details of these two sets of exhibitions, see Monroe Wheeler (ed.), Textiles and Ornaments of India (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1956); and Lory Frankel (ed.), Festival of India in the United States (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1985). See also Rebecca M. Brown, Displaying Time: The Many Temporalities of the Festival of India (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2017); and Farhan Karim, Of Greater Dignity Than Riches: Austerity and Housing Design in India (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019), chap. 5, pp. 219–59.

12. Pupul Jayakar, ‘Eames: A Personal Tribute’, in Inside/Outside, no. 6 (April 1979), pp. 47–9, 58.

13. Most prominently, Chattopadhyay fiercely opposed splitting handicrafts and handlooms into separate boards in 1953, while Jayakar—who was the first head of the Handlooms Board—supported the move. See Ahmed, ‘The Revival of Natural Dyes’.

14. John Irwin, ‘Indian Printed Textiles: Review of Pupul Jayakar’s Monograph’, in Marg, Vol. 7, no. 4 (Sept. 1954), pp. 41–6 [44].

15. In one of its first major initiatives, the AIHB launched an all-India survey of crafts in 1953, involving travel through twelve states over eighteen months, exploring the ‘bamboo and loom of the North East, the pottery of Poompuhar of Tamil Nadu, nirmal work and bidar inlay of Andhra, ikat weaves of Orissa, Madhubani of Bihar, the embroidered shawls, bed covers and kurtas of Kutchh’. See L.C. Jain, Civil Disobedience: Two Freedom Struggles, One Life (Delhi: The Book Review Literary Trust, 2011), p. 124.

16. Prominent examples from this period from Marg magazine include a special issue on Indian embroidery edited by Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay (and including essays by her, Jasleen Dhamija and several others) in March 1964, as well as a range of individual articles. Stand-alone books from this period include Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay, Indian Embroideries (New Delhi: Wiley Eastern, 1977); Kamala Dongerkery, The Romance of Indian Embroidery (Bombay: Thacker & Co., 1951); John Irwin, Indian Embroidery (London: Victoria & Albert Museum, 1951); and Kumari Rampa Pal, Phulkari (New Delhi: All India Handicrafts Board, 1959).

17. See, for instance, Jain, Civil Disobedience, p. 131.

18. Report on the Marketing of Handicrafts (New Delhi: Indian Cooperative Union, 1955), pp. 1–2.

19. For the economics of the crafts sector, see Ragnar Nurkse, ‘Reflections on India’s Development Plan’, in The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 71, no. 2 (1957), pp. 188–204; and L.C. Jain, ‘A Heritage to Keep: The Handicrafts Industry, 1955–85’, in Economic & Political Weekly, Vol. 21, no. 20 (17 May 1986), pp. 873–87.

20. Pupul Jayakar, ‘The Role of Cottage Industries’, in Marg, Vol. 6, no. 2 (Mar. 1953), pp. 2–5 [3]

21. Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay, ‘India’s Craft Tradition’, in India International Centre Quarterly, Vol. 25/26, nos. 4/1 (Winter/Spring 1998–99), pp. 76–81 [79].; and Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya, ‘Painting with the Needle’, in Marg, Vol. 17, no. 2 (Mar. 1964), pp. 2–4 [3].

22. Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1993).

23. See, for instance, the calls for the reform of women’s lives laid out in Ashraf ‘Ali Thanvi, Perfecting Women: Maulana Ashraf ʻAli Thanawi’s Bihishti Zewar: A Partial Translation with Commentary, Barbara Metcalf (trans.) (Berkeley, CA: University of Chicago Press, 1990); and Judith E. Walsh, How to Be the Goddess of Your Home: An Anthology of Bengali Domestic Manuals (New Delhi: Yoda Press, 2005).

24. Emma Tarlo, Clothing Matters: Dress and Identity in Modern India (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 1996).

25. For a discussion of home furnishing trends among different communities in western India, see Government of Bombay, Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency, Vol. IX, Part I: Gujarat Population―Hindus (Bombay: Government Central Press, 1901); and Government of Bombay, Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency, Vol. IX, Part II: Gujarat Population―Musalmans and Parsis (Bombay: Government Central Press, 1899).

26. For two collections of essays on the subject, see D. Fairchild Ruggles (ed.), Woman’s Eye, Woman’s Hand: Making Art and Architecture in Modern India (New Delhi: Zubaan, 2014); and Melia Belli Bose (ed.), Women, Gender and Art in Asia, c. 1500–1900 (New York: Routledge, 2018).

27. Mary Hancock, ‘Home Science and the Nationalization of Domesticity in Colonial India’, in Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 35, no. 4 (2001), pp. 871–903.

28. For Gandhi’s complaints on this topic, see M.K. Gandhi, ‘Hind Swaraj’, in Rudrangushu Mukerjee (ed.), The Penguin Gandhi Reader (New York: Penguin Books, 1993), pp. 3–66 [18].

29. Geraldine Forbes, ‘The Politics of Respectability: Indian Women and the Indian National Congress’, in D.A. Low (ed.), The Indian National Congress: Centenary Hindsights (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 54–97.

30. For a discussion of home science, see Hancock, ‘Home Science and the Nationalization of Domesticity in Colonial India’; for cloth as women’s work, see Abigail McGowan, ‘Khadi Curtains and Swadeshi Bedcovers: Textiles and the Changing Possibilities of Home in Western India, 1900–1960’, in Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 50, no. 2 (2016), pp. 518–63.

31. Christopher A. Bayly, ‘The Origins of Swadeshi (Home Industry): Cloth and Indian Society, 1700–1930’, in Arjun Appadurai (ed.), The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 285–321.

32. Rebecca M. Brown, Gandhi’s Spinning Wheel and the Making of India (New York: Routledge, 2010), pp. 86–105; and Trivedi, Clothing Gandhi’s Nation.

33. Anjali Bhardwaj Datta, ‘“Useful” and “Earning” Citizens? Gender, State, and the Market in Post-Colonial Delhi’, in Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 53, no. 6 (2019), pp. 1924–55 [1930].

34. U. Bhaskar Rao, The Story of Rehabilitation (New Delhi: Government of India, Department of Rehabilitation, 1967), pp. 72–3.

35. Datta, ‘“Useful” and “Earning” Citizens?’, p. 1937; and Uditi Sen, Citizen Refugee: Forging the Indian Nation after Partition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), pp. 213–4.

36. Gulshan Nanda, Kamaladevi’s Vision of Handicraft Cooperatives: A Personal Narrative (New Delhi: Indian International Centre, 2013), p. 5.

37. Gyan Prakash, ‘The Urban Turn’, in Ravi Vasudevan et al. (eds), Sarai Reader 02: Cities of Everyday Life (Delhi: Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, 2002), pp. 2–7 [3].

38. For but two examples, see ‘The Embroidery of India’, in Marg, Vol. 1, no. 5 (Jan. 1951), pp. 76–9 [76]; and Jayakar, The Children of Barren Women, pp. 24–5.

39. Brown, Gandhi’s Spinning Wheel and the Making of India, chap. 3.

40. Adris Banerji, ‘Phulkaris: A Folk Art of the Punjab’, in Marg, Vol. 8, no. 3 (June 1955), pp. 59–64 [61–2].

41. Advertisements for the All India Handloom Board in The Illustrated Weekly of India (23 Dec. 1956), p. 30; The Illustrated Weekly of India (3 Mar. 1957), p. 77; and The Illustrated Weekly of India (5 May 1957), p. 4.

42. Advertisements for the All India Handicrafts Board in Marg, Vol. 17, no. 4 (Sept. 1964), n.p.; and Marg, Vol. 20, no. 4 (Sept. 1967), n.p.

43. Advertisements for the All India Handloom Board in Design, Vol. 1, no. 7 (July 1957), p. 7; and Design, Vol. 1, no. 10 (Oct. 1957), p. viii.

44. The Illustrated Weekly of India (10 Nov. 1957), p. 54.

45. M.V. Narayana Rao (ed.), Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay: A True Karmayogi (Bangalore: Crafts Council of Karnataka, 2003), pp. 7, 31, 48.

46. For Sethna, see Veronica Hauge, ‘A Textile Designer of Distinction’, in Design, Vol. 1, no. 9 (Sept. 1957), pp. 12–3; for Ray, see Veronica Hauge, ‘Handloom Designs’, in Design, Vol. 1, no. 7 (July 1957), pp. 23–5.

47. For Sethna’s work with Chattopadhyay, see Ahmed and Kaul, ‘Jasleen Dhamija, Jyotindra Jain, Ritu Kumar and Rahul Jain’, p. 65; and Shyla Boga, ‘Inside/Outside Meets Nelly Sethna, Designer and Weaver’, in Inside/Outside, Vol. 1, no. 1 (Nov. 1977), pp. 45–9.

48. Hauge, ‘Handloom Designs’.

49. P.S., ‘Display Art of Ratna Fabri’, in Design, Vol. 6, no. 4 (April 1962), pp. 30–2; see also Ritu Sethi, ‘Catalysing Craft: Women who Shaped the Way’, in Indian International Centre Quarterly, Vol. 39, no. 3/4 (Winter 2012–Spring 2013), pp. 168–85 [179].

50. D.N. Saraf, In the Journey of Craft Development (New Delhi: Sampark, 1991), p. 25.

51. Sita Krishnan, ‘My Days with Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay’, in M.V. Narayana Rao (ed.), Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay: A True Karmayogi (Bangalore: Crafts Council of Karnataka, 2003), pp. 73–5.

52. There were, of course, exceptional early female designers in other fields. For architecture, see Madhavi Desai, Women Architects and Modernism in India: Narratives and Contemporary Practices (New York: Routledge, 2017); and Mary N. Woods, Women Architects in India: Histories of Practice in Mumbai and Delhi (London/New York: Routledge, 2017).

53. National Institute of Design, 50 Years of the National Institute of Design, pp. 54–9.

54. Maria Mies, The Lace Makers of Narsapur: Indian Housewives Produce for the World Market (London: Zed Press, 1982); and Clare M. Wilkinson-Weber, Embroidering Lives: Women’s Work and Skill in the Lucknow Embroidery Industry (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999).

55. Desai, Women Architects and Modernism in India; and Woods, Women Architects in India.

56. Abigail McGowan, ‘The Materials of Home: Studying Domesticity in Late Colonial India’, in American Historical Review, Vol. 124, no. 4 (2019), pp. 1302–15.

57. Allyn Johnston Fisher, ‘The All India Handicrafts Board and the Development of Handicrafts in India’, unpublished PhD dissertation, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, USA, 1972, pp. 24–7.

58. Sen, Citizen Refugee, pp. 211, 208.

59. An exception to this rule came in 1963–64 when crafts fell under the minister for social welfare: see L.C. Jain, ‘Development of Decentralized Industries: A Review and Some Suggestions’, in Economic & Political Weekly, Vol. 15, no. 41–42–43 (Oct. 1980), pp. 1747–54 [1748]; see also Nasir Tyabji, ‘Capitalism in India and the Small Industries Policy’, in Economic & Political Weekly, Vol. 15, no. 41–42–43 (Oct. 1980), pp. 1721–32.

60. See Jain, ‘Development of Decentralized Industries’, p. 1754; and Tyabji, ‘Capitalism in India and the Small Industries Policy’, p. 1723.

61. Ritu Sethi, interview, Delhi, 8 April 2019.

62. For a recent, privately circulating biography of the Sarabhai family, see Aparna Basu, As Times Change: The Story of an Ahmedabad Business Family, The Sarabhais, 1823–1975 (Ahmedabad: Sarabhai Foundation, 2018); see also Desai, Women Architects and Modernism in India, pp. 58–63.

63. Hermann Goetz, ‘Calico Museum of Textiles at Ahmedabad’, in Marg, Vol. 3, no. 4 (Sept. 1949), pp. 57–61.

64. National Institute of Design, 50 Years of the National Institute of Design, pp. 7–14, 95–7.