How China is destroying our textiles
And that is the issue.
India is as prone to losing its textile crafts to another country as the others. It only needs to look at its past. The British brought down India’s share in textile exports to the world from 25% to 2%, taking over the production of Indian-inspired cloth from the 18th to the 20th century. By a miracle, Indian textiles have survived through the efforts of revivalists in the post-independence era, such as Kamala Devi Chattopdhyaya and Pupul Jayakar.
We are already seeing Chinese inroads in the Benaras sari markets, where there are jacquard copies of the Benaras-bordered tanchoi saris selling in the market for a song.
China is predatory. It has always been known for its sericulture, as India has been for its unusual silk yarns, which were hand twisted and woven with a great deal of expertise to keep the saris pliable, soft and easy to pleat. I have done wardrobes for the Miss Universe and Miss World pageants for many years. I always would propose they wear the Benaras sari to a function, but gave up as I could not find a sari which draped softly and looked the way the Ravi Verma saris looked in his paintings.
I then studied Benaras silk saris for a few years in an effort to find out what had changed the saris radically from exotic, sexily-contoured unstitched garments to the present, stiff totally unwearable, saris which balloon out. It was incredible to discover that the reason was that the original yarns from Bhagalpur which were hand-spun, with no twist, called paat- baana, without which the beautiful masterpieces of Benaras could not have been woven, had been substituted by Chinese yarns. This changed the structure totally and made them unattractive to wear. The tragedy of the silence of the looms of Varanasi is that people continue to weave this imported yarn because it is cheap.
Benaras could survive and sustain itself adequately. We have indigenous mulberry silks from Karnataka, which are softer, finer, lighter and allow for more pliability when woven and have a wonderful texture. Organic ahimsa silks from the terai regions, India’s tussars and mogas, are an intrinsic part of our heritage. If even one family in India owns one good Benaras sari in their wardrobe, which a young bride would like to possess, the city will have no problem keeping its weavers employed.
China dumped silk yarn in India at prices a fraction of their costs initially, and then slowly raised the prices to set up a lucrative business. The business, unfortunately, is run by middlemen, ignorant of the fact that they are producing goods which are unwearable and at the same time enhancing dependence on Chinese silk yarn. A ban on imports of this yarn will perhaps affect production for a while, but we have the resilience in our textile techniques and as a country that taught the world the beauty of producing textiles, can easily find alternatives.
Covid-19 is a wake-up call. India must preserve its textiles. The beauty of the peacock must not succumb to the fire of the dragon.