In the past, the maharajas, in their role as divine monarchs, proclaimed power and wealth not only by extending their kingdoms and armies, but also by the blazing turban ornaments, necklaces, armbands and bangles they adorned themselves with. These symbolized divine kingship.
In religion, literature and poetry in India, clothes, jewels and gems are used as metaphors for character, beauty and physical attributes. This is also evident in our sculptures and paintings. The art of adornment with jewels is even prescribed in ancient texts like the Kamasutra, which declares that the arts and sciences women must know should include knowledge of gold, silver, jewels and gems, and the art of stringing necklaces and making ear ornaments.3 Certain ornaments even today define social relationships such as marriage and status, caste and community. Certain jewels and gemstones are considered powerful amulets against the negative effects of planets. They adorn the strategic marma or pressure points in the body, which are closely linked with physical, mental and spiritual well-being. Energy is believed to travel in the body along these points, and so it is believed that wearing a particular piece of jewellery on these points opens up the pathways and facilitates the movement of energy within the wearer. Even now, if you look at Indian high-end luxury designer wear, it is usually dripping with gold embellishments on clothes as well as accessories.
But India is a land of heartbreaking contrasts. On the other end of the socio-economic spectrum are the tribals, who are the most socio-economically as well as politically disadvantaged group in our country.
I travelled to remote parts of Chhattisgarh and Odisha for about two weeks each month for work. On one of my trips, I discovered that in Sambalpur, a five-hour drive from Bhubaneswar, there were homes where silk was woven on a pit loom. The family sat around a bamboo loom in a room often decorated like a temple, with an anointed shrine and hand-painted motifs on the floor. On the loom, narrow design bands of rudraksha beads were made with simple string heddles. Weighted eyes were tied together for each row in the pattern, threaded over the top of the loom, with a sequence of rings woven in tightly, which they pulled down tight over a circular wire. A simple loom could render such complex patterns.
However, I found that many of the weavers in Odisha and Chhattisgarh belonged to tribal communities, which found it difficult to sell their wares in the market. They lived in secluded areas, lacked the know-how to market their product, and suffered because of the general bias that handicrafts made by tribal populations were of inferior design and quality. Handicrafts were most often purchased by those belonging to higher castes or living in urban pockets as artefacts, an object of wonder to be displayed at home, or sometimes as an act of solidarity to support backward communities—but rarely as a product good enough to be used regularly. I realized that in India, relations with lower castes and the tribes are most often theorized in religious, political or economic terms, but too little attention is given to the aesthetic dimensions of the response to ‘otherness’. There is a distinct aesthetic response—consisting of a disconnect in taste and trust—to those who are denigrated by political and social oppression. What I mean is that we do not connect with the tribal population on their taste in design, and we do not trust them for the quality and manufacturing technique of their product either.
Our sense of aesthetics, I found, also had a cops-and-robbers relationship with modernity. On the one hand, it is believed that only our ancestors had a genetic, innate propensity for appreciating and creating beauty, and that modernity has now chased that out of our reach. It is commonly lamented that modernity has turned our villages into dung heaps and our cities into sewers, because we live in a country infested by fairness creams and mass commodification of everything from Ganesha to Gucci handbags.
On the other hand, I discovered that with all its new technologies and global connectivity, modernity has boosted the industry producing cultural items. Brocade manufacturing in Benares and the surrounding areas, for instance, has gradually incorporated mechanical devices such as punched cards to supplement manual skills. While retaining the intricacy of the original handcrafted process, these mechanical supplements have speeded up the production process and reduced errors. Modern processes such as jacquard weaving on power looms and metallic transfer printing have been introduced. There has been experimentation with motifs, asymmetrical layouts and non-traditional imagery, borrowing visual elements from other textile traditions and international fashion houses.4 How we interpret these changes is a matter of personal ‘taste’. One of India’s foremost contemporary philosophers, Sudipta Kaviraj, writes: ‘What modern art achieves is not a sense of beauty, but an intelligence.’5 He defends Indian modernity by pointing out that our symbols have perhaps become more complex, cluttered and asymmetrical, but they continue to remain powerful.
‘Marrying our crafts with modernity has its own challenges,’ Ashdeen Lilaowala told me over the phone. During my research on Indian aesthetics, Ashdeen was introduced to me by a friend. I knew of him already as a textile designer, but now I discovered him as an
