Behind The Sari

In this large, historical tome for posterity, Martand Singh warns "that which is contemporary is fast becoming historical.... Rural India is slowly being enveloped by the style and the taste of the urban milieu, aided and abetted by the spread of television and film. A standardised style of wearing the sari conceived in the late 19th century by Gyanodanandini Tagore, has now become the uniform mode of India."

Although it is both unconceivable and improbable that the village women will abandon the sari for designer wear—as simply as 'Punjabi suits' have swept South India, two threats are already evident: the style of wearing the sari, which the book under review records so meticulously, is fast becoming standardised; and the weaves of the local weaver seem less alluring than the mill-made terrycots and nylons. So the legendary, unruffled yardage of Draupadi has reason to wrinkle with worry. "Thus, with time we find a strange paradox at work here, as the weavers succumb to the temptations of a wider market and lose their sense of origin...imitating mill-made saris...moving involuntarily towards a greater uniformity. We thus begin to see the emergence of a 'general' product which can "be made, bought and sold anywhere", as an official explained.

To a specialist of textiles the book is woven in gold threads, but even to a lay wearer/reader it is not without its silver linings. Skipping some of the technical pages which record border widths and sari lengths by the measure of the hand, the book becomes an ethnographic travelogue of Bihar and West Bengal "following the trail of weaver/printer/dyer settlements village by village...spending over a year on Bihar and two years on West Bengal," writes Rta Kapur Chisti. The end result is reminiscent of the comprehensive British publications of the last century, which are even today consulted as resource material. Where else would anyone unwrap the 10 wearing styles of Bihar or the four Bengali ways to wear a sari if this book didn't exist. However, there is a 20th century difference which lies in the novel-like narrative of the journey, recording for posterity the plight of the weavers, their wealth of tradition lightly weighed against the odds of their poverty, cuts taken by commission agents, government apathy and red tape. Someday, sadly when many of these saris will not be around, history would at least have recorded what seems like the inevitable helplessness of this process from decline to death. Sticking to traditional wearing in Bihar is labelled 'budhaoo ka zamana', the days of the oldies!

Despite the simplicity of many of the saris worn by the village folk, the variety is not lacking. The book records for Singhbhum: "The array of colours is surprising for a tribal belt where a single colour usually predominates, but then there is Bengal on one side with its stripes and checks and Orissa on the other, with its abundance of bright colours." A simple statement such as this one, along with comparative statements from the reports and journals of the early 19th century put two centuries in a comparative focus. In an ongoing journey, any unrecorded period prophesies a blank page of history.

The two sections on Bihar and Bengal are further divided into The Woven Journey with a post script, History and Process, with pre-loom, loom and post-loom observations, accession details under the chapters Each Sari and Sari Language. The book, encyclopaedic and complex, has been very competently and painstakingly designed by Vinay Jain of Designations, New Delhi, who claims rather discreet credit for this mammoth task.

Research authors: Priya Ravish Mehra and Tushar Kumar in Bihar; and Nivedita Bannerji in Bengal.