IMMIGRATION wasn’t easy at Kolkata’s Dum Dum airport. Instead of the multiple visitors expected from Bangladesh, there were only two of us, me and Chandra Shekhar da (a reputed textile expert), who had visas issued before the Indian government’s embargo on entry into the country came into effect in August 2024. The event we planned to attend was ‘Textiles from Bengal: A Shared Legacy’, to be held from 29th January till 2nd February 2025. It was the brainchild of Darshan Shah, a well-known entrepreneur and owner of Weavers Studio, a textile boutique specialising in saris, located in Ballygunge, Kolkata. I was grudgingly admitted after being advised by the immigration officer that I needed to have entered on a ‘conference or seminar visa’ and not a tourist one.
The event itself was being held by the Weavers Studio Resource Centre and was billed as ‘a pioneering initiative…which explores the rich heritage of handmade textiles from India and Bangladesh’. It also mentioned Aarong, easily the largest handicraft enterprise in Bangladesh, if not the world, and Bibi Russell, a well-known cultural icon, as a patron and a supporter of this event, respectively, their names displayed on-screen on the opening day.
A private viewing was arranged the day before for a select group that easily numbered in the hundreds at the Kolkata Centre for Creativity, located in Anandapur, the spatial host of this event. It is a smart, modern building with management that is receptive to innovation in arts.
Many guests milled at the entrance of the exhibition in colourful profusion, renewing contacts and exchanging views on the ‘oh-so-fantastic latest craft fair’. Mayank Kaul, one of India’s brightest curators, led the entire group through the nine zones of the exhibition hall. The beauty of Bengal’s textiles was on full display under the dim, textile-sensitive lighting. From Bhagalpuri silks to royal kanthas (quilts), batik prints to fine muslin and colourful gamchas to exquisite jamdanis, most items were collated and curated from a large range of private collections across India. The high quality, unique artistry and visual intensity of the artefacts on display set the tone for what was expected from the event. The addition of a map in the exhibition, showing the production sites of these items, would have been useful, as the emphasis on Bengal tended to blur the distinction between the increasingly divergent history, art and culture of the two Bengals, i.e., West Bengal and Bangladesh (East Bengal).
It was the next day that panel presentations started, some live and a few on Zoom. It quickly became apparent that there was a huge paucity of speakers/writers from Bangladesh, explained as a lack of visas, though in a post-Covid world, they could have been easily asked to engage by Zoom. The book launch of ‘Textiles from Bengal: A Shared Legacy’, published by MAPIN, India, was done on the opening day. I bought my copy of the first print, and my thoughts on it are mentioned below.
The book is an attractive compilation of scholarly articles. Its design and production values are superior, with clear illustrations and images that aptly underpin the text. There is a tone of ‘documentation’ to the images, many of which are flat and even and could have done with more abstract, artistic imagery too. Overall, the publication elegantly reflects ‘Bengal’s’ textiles and their contribution to crafts.
The two areas one would have liked to see more of are firstly, a more extensive coverage of the lives and work of the actual artisans themselves (perhaps a section dedicated to them), the master crafts-people whose imagination, skill and dedication deliver the products that we as ‘middle-people’, as latter-day ambassadors, discuss, hold seminars and write about. Books that cover the product more than the people are sometimes devoid of the ‘human connection’. This is perhaps more noticeable in books written by ‘overseas experts’ who, through no fault of theirs, do not speak the language, sense the environment or have a feel for our land and people.
Secondly, the visual, intellectual and historical inclusion of East Bengal appears to be very limited. With approximately thirty-three authors from West Bengal, fifteen from overseas and five from East Bengal, it is a publication whose tone and coverage is weighted significantly more towards West Bengal and India, at the expense of East Bengal and Bangladesh. One understands the scarcity of contributors from Bangladesh, a sad fact for us. However, this places a greater onus on those who are contributing to the publication to step into the absent shoes and cover both the Bengals with greater objectivity and appreciation. This does not happen. Even visually, the publication shows only a couple of images of artisans (from the Hill Tracts) from Bangladesh, whereas the rest of the images, including one of a jamdani weaver, are from West Bengal. This subtly reduces the presence of Bangladesh, even where its premier textile ‘jamdani’ is considered.
Scanning through the contents, the chapters dwell adequately on the technical details of most textiles, also delving into the political economy, the trading aspects and the consumption patterns of some of them. But the opening chapter on Bengal’s history by Rober Ivermee (an English art historian with a special interest in India) shows a disquieting trend of covering Bengal from its ancient past till the English colonial rule, with a focus on the Hooghly (his own area of publication). So why does it not continue to the pain of Partition, to the struggle for Bangladesh’s liberation war, to the formation of three separate political and cultural entities, i.e., India and Pakistan and subsequently Bangladesh too? The suspension of events at the entrance to the twentieth century appears arbitrary, leaning towards a pre-determined agenda of a bygone unity. Why must our five-decade-old identity be subsumed in the mist of time by looking backward without acknowledging the events and changes that have led to the present? Is it a very Indian approach to harp about the past, to colour and present contemporary times through the lenses of the Ramayana?
Out of the many articles, I read far more carefully the ones that address Bangladesh’s famed textiles, i.e., Kantha, Jamdani and Muslin. The Kantha section is covered by professor Niaz Zaman, an acknowledged expert on the subject, and there was nothing more to add or detract from it. However, in the remaining two articles, there were far more worrying assertions.
The jamdani section written by Anjan Chakravarty is firstly titled ‘Jamdani in Dhaka, Tanda and Banaras’, thereby equating all three within a single frame of reference. This is similar to lumping together the champagne from the Marne Valley, Manchester and Mumbai and herding readers into a false paradigm. We know the last two either do not exist or are a poor imitation of the first. This titular distortion ignores jamdani’s history and its recognition as a unique craft that has been born and perfected in Dhaka, Bangladesh. The article starts by stating that jamdani flourished in ‘the guilds …in mid-19th century of undivided Bengal’, almost as if it started across the whole of ‘undivided Bengal’, without a clear beginning, as the finest, most sought-after version of muslin, which was produced in a cluster of villages around Dhaka, East Bengal, where its raw material, the inimitable ‘phuti karpas’, grew. Mr Chakravarty then deftly segues into praising the Banaras jamdani, though he admits it to be a late 18th-century manifestation, but (in yet another distortion) of the Dhaka-Tanda jamdani. How can Tanda, a later development, be equated with Dhaka, the original producer? Further on in the article, the jamdani developments are attributed by him to the dexterity of Ustad Mohammad Ayoob from the Madanpura school, after which he proceeds to eulogise the Awadh and Tanda masters. He saves the greatest misinformation for the last, writing that ‘the Awadh Nawabs…encouraged them (Tanda weavers) …to manufacture the finest possible version of figured muslin, much superior to Dhaka jamdani in terms of textural refinement and patterning’.
The above verges on propaganda, as opposed to academic expertise. The author appears to have disregarded the very exhibition of this event which showcased excellent, fine, original jamdani muslins of a far earlier era than that of the Awadh or Banaras variety. He also appears to not have read Henry Glassie and Firoze Mahmud’s work, Living Traditions, where they state, ‘the jamdani was a woven fabric in cotton, and it was undoubtedly one of the finest varieties of muslin. It has been spoken of as ‘the most artistic textile of the Bangladeshi weaver’ (pg 351).ÌýThey provide historical support (unlike Mr Chakravarty) by quoting James Taylor (1851), TN Mukharji (1888), John Gillow, Illay Cooper and Nicholas Barnard (1991). They also do state that confusion about jamdani techniques arose because of G N Gupta’s spurious analysis in 1908 (pg 354), a practice continued by Mr Chakravarty in his article. Often, much is made of the Basak weavers, who migrated from East Bengal to the West during the Partition and reportedly carried on, even further refining, the art of jamdani weaving. Henry and Firoz dispel this oft-repeated Kolkata claim by stating that there is ‘…doubt that the Basaks were really weavers. As the surname – Basak – indicates, they were merchants. They appear to have bought the jamdani’s from the weavers and then sent them…’, which is why to this day their jamdani’s are a simplified and diluted version of the original jamdani made in Dhaka.
A key point is that most Indian textile authors, in successive error, often define jamdani as solely defined by the technique of weaving a supplementary weft, irrespective of the motifs used. However, in Bangladesh, both the supplementary weft technique and the motifs define jamdani. This divergent view has been repeated ad nauseum where Indians will showcase their jamdanis which have a paltry imitation of motifs, but insist on calling it that simply because there is an extra weft in the weave.
There is more evidence to support Bangladesh’s claim to jamdani, such as Dr Iftikhar Iqbal’s (associate professor, Universiti Brunei Darussalam) presentation at the event, where he said that during his research, he found no evidence of an Awadh jamdani pre-1940. The textile expert and a driving force in Bangladesh’s craft world, the late Ruby Ghaznavi, had researched and written (Jamdani: The Textile Heritage of Bangladesh) and established that jamdani originated and continues to be developed in villages near Dhaka, i.e., Sonargaon, Rupganj, Rupshi, Demra, Noapara, etc. This and much more (most of it familiar to many) had led to UNESCO’s recognition of Bangladesh’s ‘Traditional Art of Jamdani Weaving as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity’ in 2013, a significant international milestone which Mr Chakravarty blithely fails to mention in his article.
It should be noted that Mr Chakravarty is at Banaras Hindu University, and it may not be entirely coincidental that his parochial slant is also reflected in the work of Dr Jasminder Kaur (The Magnificent Weave of Banarasi Jamdani, 2016), an article which had both historical, technical and grammatical errors. Needless to say, she is a faculty member at the same institution.
Dr Sonia Ashmore authored an article on ‘Muslin’, and she is a renowned expert on this topic. However, her book, ‘Muslin’ (2012), contained the error of naming the ‘phuti karpas’ plant (Dhaka’s legendary cotton plant that yielded the finest muslin yarn) as Gossypium herbaceum var. neglecta instead of the correct nomenclature of Gossypium arboreum var. neglecta. This error appears to be repeated in Note 1, pg 153 of the publication. Besides this, her article ‘Bengal Cotton’ in closing reiterates her habitual disregard of the well-publicised initiative for muslin revival in Bangladesh. The Bengal Muslin project started at the end of 2013 and has been covered by the BBC, the Smithsonian, etc., and its muslin fabric is part of the British Museum’s collection.
The above claims and errors do not appear to have been challenged by the Advisory Team (where there is one corporate representative from Bangladesh) of the publication, who appears to have rubber-stamped the key contents. Since this article is not a stand-alone, independent view but contained within the ‘Textiles from Bengal – A Shared Legacy’ publication, it gives the appearance of representing a unified, consensual view from both Bengals. I discussed the issues with professor N Zaman (a member of the editorial board and the only one from Bangladesh), and she has written that ‘I had repeatedly requested a final proof copy of the entire book, but this was never sent to me.’ She goes on to state, ‘No serious efforts were made to ensure an error-free book.’ These are serious allegations that appear to be a case of deliberate withholding or editorial amnesia. At the same time, while individuals such as professor Zaman and Chandra Shekar offered support, none of our institutional craft organisations in Bangladesh spoke out in favour of our artisans and their heritage.
At the inception of the project, Weavers Research had cast a wide net, searching for editors and writers. I recommended a Bangladeshi friend, who backed out after asking me, ‘Who’s paying for this project?’, ‘Who decides what information goes in and what stays out?’, and ‘Who decides what textile belongs to which part of Bengal?’. My answers were not detailed enough to satisfy her perceptions that there needed to be equal investment from both sides of the border to ensure fairness of research – a point worth remembering for the future.
Seen within the context of the Indian/West Bengal government’s repeated claims on jamdani, Bengal Muslin, Tangail sari, etc., which have been GIS registered in India and many others that are to follow (reportedly another forty ‘contestable GIS’ are in the works by the application-happy West Bengal government), on Bangladesh’s heritage crafts, Mr Chakravarty’s write-up could be viewed as another act of cultural appropriation, a ‘land grab’ by India where the voice of 180 million Bangalis from the nation of Bangladesh is subsumed within the noise and staged events of 60 million from the province of West Bengal.
ÌýThe publication and the event sessions rightly glorified Bengal’s unified past but glossed over the real divisions in the present and averted addressing the issue of ‘What now?’; are we looking for a celebration of ‘What was?’, or attempting to build bridges to ‘What next?’. If it’s the latter, there was no road map in the discussions or within the publication for such an envisioned future. During the presentations, many spoke glibly of ‘one Bengal’, which contributed to a ‘feel good’ atmosphere, especially as we did not introduce or address the harsh truths of Partition, migration, the distinct identity forged by Bangladesh’s Liberation War and the recent political changes. East Bengal, because of its past leadership, which has been removed through nationwide protests, often bent backwards to accommodate the ‘one Bengal’ mantra, a vision far less attractive now because of the public’s perception of Indian intransigence on all matters. As an example, consider the fact that there is a shared legacy with Punjab too, where West Punjab (Pakistan) and East Punjab (India) share many textile traditions from the khes to the khaddar and the phulkari, yet any dreams of a ‘one Punjab’ project are bound to remain just that — a dream.
‘Textiles from Bengal: A Shared Legacy’ as a project was a great opportunity to foster partnership between the two Bengals; to recognise, inspire and connect at multiple cultural levels. But, in order to do so, it must be led by an objective and fair vision —a vision that it currently struggles to deliver.
Ìý
Saiful Islam is CEO of Bengal Muslin.
