The Slow Death of Handweaving in India: What Happened to Banarasi?

The ancient city of Varanasi, once known as Banaras, is revered across and beyond India. It has been home to many religions, rulers, artists, and scholars, and remains a popular destination for travel. Known for being the site of the River Ganges, it symbolises life, death, and beyond to many. According to Hinduism, if one's ashes are spread in the river, they may ascend beyond the cycle of rebirth to a higher plane of existence, achieving immortality.

The city has been acknowledged as a centre for weaving and trade throughout history, with these sectors employing a significant number of the local population. This is particularly true in relation to cultural clothing like sarees and sherwanis. While these are often worn in India, a handwoven silk saree or sherwani from Varanasi (referred to as Banarasi), is delicate, expensive, and increasingly difficult to source. Therefore, it is generally considered a luxury, often reserved for a special occasion like one's wedding, and is treated as a generational heirloom by families.

While silk-weaving is common in all of India, the Banarasi weave stands out for its beautiful intricacies and rich history, having Persian, Mughal, and Central Asian influences.

By Tilfi Banarasi, an antique Banarasi skirt from the Mughal Dynasty 1526-1875 C.E., made of silk and gold zari threads.

The process of assembling a Banarasi weave is painstaking. Artisans - weavers who specialise in handweaving Banarasi silk - use knowledge passed down to them through generations and a handloom to weft and warp designs from silver and gold zari threads, reflecting both the context they're created in and the distinct craftwork of the individual who makes them. These brocades are then bound into a custom saree or sherwani, that have been previously commissioned.

A Banarasi saree from Jayanti Reddy, available for purchase at Pernia's Pop-Up Shop.

However, handweaving Banarasi has been rendered a dwindling craft, with knowledge passed from generation to generation fading with little concern from existence, like a skipping stone sinking into deep water. It seems the handweaving of cultural clothing in India is dying a slow death, trapped in the moment the stone starts losing momentum.

This is happening for a multitude of reasons.

Handweaving is truly a fine art, nothing short of a labour of love.  But labour is still labour, and understanding the practice means understanding the effort and exhaustion seeping through it. A pair of hands will never weave like another, allowing for variations in designs between generations to arise.  There will always be a degree of uncertainty surrounding the longevity of this craft, which is inherent when creating luxury, handmade garments. This comes with a certain burden of continuation among these weavers; an understanding that the handloom depends on every strand of silk you weave through it. Thus, handweaving, particularly Banarasi, is an artform intrinsically devoted to itself.

This burden has been compounded by other factors.

For one, the technique used to make Banarasi has changed dramatically. When India was colonised by the British, industrial-era factories devastated the market for hand-woven garments as they introduced arguably the most significant modern invention in textiles manufacturing: the power loom. It could weave three to four sarees a day as opposed to one over weeks, allowing for them to be sold for correspondingly low prices. A lack of government intervention ensured that policy could not protect local artisans for long, and by the early 90s, the country had adapted to cheap, mass-produced machine goods. Ultimately, weavers didn't stand a chance. Given both retailers' and consumers' preference for high volume and competitive pricing, which subsequent technological development has allowed for, the longstanding tradition of handloom and artisanal cotton textiles have continued to be overshadowed by mass-market produced synthetic clothing.

These synthetics play a critical role. While Varanasi was once equipped with a historical advantage in procuring silk given its geographical connection to the Silk Route, it has seen silk prices rise dramatically in recent years due to the influx of synthetic fabrics from other countries. Whilst China once traded silk, it now offers inadequate alternatives like nylon thread. Now, silk is mainly sourced from southern India, where its production is limited.

By Silk Kothi, some of the major types of Banarasi silk. From left to right: Kora Organza (a thin, sheer weave made from silkworms), Tussar (also known as Ghicha or Kosa, a rich and breathable fabric made from the larvae of several species of silkworms living in wild forests), Katan (a soft, light and durable bridal silk made from twisting filaments of silk together).

Given these factors, weavers are increasingly abandoning their practice for alternative jobs. Today, Varanasi has lost the majority of its silk-weaving artisans, ensuring that Banarasi sarees and sherwanis have become both more exclusive and more expensive for consumers. More importantly, the weavers whose families have clothed generations of Indians and created some of the most significant art India has to offer have suffered immensely, as their profit has drastically plummeted. Driven out of their practice and living in abject poverty, their condition is devastating.

A 2014 Invisible Photographer project by Rohan Juierie in India highlights the struggle of a community of unemployed weavers. Here, the Rajbhar family resorts to making incense sticks for a living. Juierie later learned that two of the children photographed in his visit had died soon after of factors like malnutrition and poor healthcare.

Even more devastating are the conditions that those who continue to work on handlooms must tolerate.

Juierie depicts a loom system partially embedded into the ground, with a pit for the weaver's lower body. This has resulted in serious damage to the weaver's legs, who remarks: "Handlooms today are the graves of living people."

Thus, the assertion of a slow death, both for the practice and the people.

However, this might be something of a misnomer in that it implies an inevitability surrounding the decline of Banarasi, a sentiment the weavers themselves would certainly disagree with. This could be looked at from a different perspective: a machine cannot compare to an artisan, at least in the eyes of modern producers and consumers, particularly brides, who continue to recognise the value of handwoven cultural wear and support weavers like those in Varanasi. A weaver interviewed by the Deccan Herald reaffirms this, stating "the handlooms can dwindle, but they will never go away".

Certainly, it would require a herculean effort to both encourage the practice of handweaving and reform it. It would have to begin with sufficient government intervention, at the very minimum, to pull this skipping stone from the air before it hits the water. These could include an increase in the wages of workers as part of a larger protectionist initiative, which would encompass measures like fixing the price of silk thread for weavers. This should be combined with efforts to modernise the handlooms and studios used by weavers to ensure a humane working environment. Additionally, the export of Banarasi sarees should be encouraged, assuming that weavers will profit sufficiently. There are millions of Indians living outside of India who will surely be willing to purchase ethical, authentic handwoven sarees for a fair price. Fundamentally, action is both necessary and possible to prevent the slow death of handweaving in India.

In striving to ensure that Banarasi continues, as it has for centuries, weavers make an effort that transcends lifetimes. They create to achieve a kind of immortality that is apt for the city of Varanasi. Yet, weavers can only act within their lifetimes. They weave while they can, and hope that someone picks up the threads afterwards. To weave is to create, and to create is all they can do. It's what they will do.

Sources

AFP. “How Banarasi Sari Weavers Are Toiling to Keep Tradition Alive.” Deccan Herald, 11 Apr. 2022, www.deccanherald.com/business/how-banarasi-sari-weavers-are-toiling-to-keep-tradition-alive-1099734.html.

Gurmat, Sabah. “The Silk Weavers of Varanasi.” AFAR Media, 23 Feb. 2023, www.afar.com/magazine/the-silk-weavers-of-varanasi.

Juierie, Rohan. “Spotlight: The Dying Lives of Varanasi Weavers - Invisible Photographer Asia (IPA).” Invisible Photographer Asia (IPA), 8 Apr. 2014, invisiblephotographer.asia/2014/04/08/dyinglivesofvaranasiweavers/.

Roni, Ahosanuzzaman. “The Resurgence of Muslin and the Decline of Banarasi Sarees.” TextileToday, 13 June 2023, www.textiletoday.com.bd/the-resurgence-of-muslin-and-the-decline-of-banarasi-sarees.

Silk Kothi. “Types of Banarasi Fabrics - Chanderi Silk Saree.” Silk Kothi, 2024, www.silkkothi.com/pages/major-types-of-banarasi-fabrics.

Tilfi Banaras. “History of the Banarasi Textile - Tilfi.” Www.tilfi.com, 25 Aug. 2021, www.tilfi.com/blogs/perspective/history-of-banarasi-textile.