CRAFT-INDIA: Future is Bleak for Delhi’s ‘Walled City’

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Sudhamahi Regunathan

NEW DELHI, Jun 11 1996 (IPS) - New Delhi: India’s capital. Teeming, hot and dusty metropolis of nine million people.

But there is another side to Delhi that is not readily visible. A city of ancient ruins where a series of cities dating back to the seventh century B.C. built by past empires left their architectural marks.

In that respect, Delhi has a lot that reminds a visitor of Rome. Magnificent ruins that mark milestones of India’s history: soaring ramparts of ancient forts built with red sandstone, elegant Central Asian-style domes with colour tile roofs and palaces with a distinct Persian aura.

One of Delhi’s ancient cities is bustling Shahjehanabad. Constructed in the 17th century by the Mughal emperor who built the stunning Taj Mahal, it was once gracious and dignified.

Today, Shahjehanbad is the ‘Walled City’ where arts and crafts of ancient India cling precariously to survive.

There is a whisper of history here in the narrow streets and ramshackle buildings. It is here that Delhi’s once-vibrant traditional crafts live on among families who were patronised by the Mughal aristocracy, and whose skills have been handed down from one generation to the next for centuries.

The craftsmanship survives, but only just. “It is different now,” says Mohammad Zamir, who learnt zardosi or gold thread embroidery at his grandfather’s knees. “It used to be such fine work.”

Traditional crafts have been eclipsed by machine-made goods. “Zardosi was delicate work: very expensive since gold was used and very intricate since the designs were delicate motifs designed to enhance the splendour of royalty,” says Zamir.

The loss of aristocratic patrons has meant hard times for these artists, whose skills are priceless.

Zamir lives with his wife and three children in one room of the ‘haveli’ or mansion built by his great grandfather, who was a zardosi artist. Various uncles, aunts, cousins and their sons and daughters live in the other rooms.

The house overlooks Asia’s biggest wholesale market, which is a jumble of shops, trucks and people. The noise is deafening, but when the window is closed, there is silence in Zamir’s room. Every member of the family is bent over their ‘karchob’ or frame, embroidering. Zardosi is a family business.

Cramped quarters have forced zardosi artists to work on small frames — a fact which has affected the craft, says Charu Smita Gupta, deputy director of the Crafts Museum who has studied Delhi’s crafts.

“With the reduction of space available to them, their karchobs have become smaller, and men and women sit on the floor and work,” she says.

Most zardosi artists work at home, and often the room is poorly lit and so small that there is no space for both cooking and work; the embroidering is halted at meal times and the ‘karchob’ takes pride of place when the stove is stoved away.

Diagonally across from Zamir’s home lives Mohammad Bashir whose family has been making a fine silver paper which is used to wrap traditional ‘mithai’, Indian dairy confectionary.

Beating silver into thin sheets of 0.1 mm thickness is a skill. In the old days, Bashir’s family used to also make sheets of gold to wrap betel leaves and the more expensive kinds of ‘mithai’. But they have had to close the factory, as there is work enough only for Bashir and his two sons. “Today there is little demand for even the silver paper,” he says.

Zamir agrees. There was a time when he used to work to the rythmic pounding of Bashir’s hammer. “Today we hear it only occasionally,” he says.

Not far from Zamir and Bashir’s home lives another family who make paper lanterns. Their home is littered with paper — and the family sits cross-legged on the floor cutting and pasting, creating lanterns of all shapes, sizes and colours. The lanterns are for festive occasions, but with people preferring electric lights, it’s a shrinking market.

Two streets away in a tiny shop sits Sultan, one of four ‘minakari’ artisans in the ‘Walled City’. Minakari is the art of embossing silver jewellery with paint to make it look like it was studded with precious stones.

Shahjahanabad was famous for its minakari, but with the decline of the Mughal empire a number of artisans are believed to have migrated to the neighbouring state of Rajasthan.

The artisans who went south, to the city of Hyderabad, were the ‘lac’ bangle makers. Now a lone seller sits at the corner of a busy crossing in Chandni Chowk, opposite Shah Jahan’s Red Fort, waiting for little girls in pigtails to patronise his art. “Their mothers prefer lac,” he says matter-of-factly, “it does not cut like glass bangles do when they break.”

Then there are the erstwhile ivory carvers. In Dariba, where many tiny, jewellery shops are squeezed in side-by-side on a single street, show windows display an assortment of jewellery and curios. “These are fashioned out of bone,” says shopkeeper Khan. “Ever since ivory was banned, we have been working on bone, and we have a large market in the west.”

The ‘Walled City’ was renowned for its ivory craftsmanship, unrivalled during Mughal times. The skill survives in the intricate and delicate carvings on camel bone.

A growing number of Kashmiri craftsmen have moved into the old Shahjahanabad. They had always come to Delhi in the winter months to sell their wares, but since the escalation of a separatist war in the northern Indian state some have settled here. They’re weaving bags and carving woodden chests, which are being sold in the city’s big ‘bazaars’ and tourist shops.

Because of over-crowding in the ‘Walled City’, some artisans have moved across the Yamuna River to the squalor of Delhi’s suburbs.

Most adversely affected are the weavers in Sundernagari, which contrary to what its name suggests is a far from beautiful place (sunder is beautiful in Hindi). Rising yarn prices have forced many of the women to supplement incomes by working as construction workers at building sites.

Then there are the incense stick makers. They now stand at busy traffic crossings, pleading with car drivers to buy the boxes of incense before the light turns green.

Craft Museum’s Gupta thinks Delhi’s traditional artisans may survive another generation. Then, skills refined over the centuries will disappear forever.