Afghan women st itch future with vivid past
Through small businesses and initiatives in India, they challenge Taliban’s dour dress code
Some weeks ago, Arifa (name changed on request), an Afghan student in Delhi, saw poignant images from her homeland on her Instagram feed. “It was full of photographs of women from my country, proudly wearing traditional dresses from different provinces,” she says emotionally, scrolling through the online campaign by Bahar Jalali, a former history professor at the American University in Afghanistan, against the Taliban’s strict new dress code.
Arifa points out details in the photographs of exquisite Afghani clothes embellished with embroideries and mirror work, hash-tagged #Donottouchmyclothes and #Afghanistanculture, on Instagram, saying that the anonymising black coverall the Taliban is seeking to impose is alien to Afghan culture and identity. “My mother and grandmother, expert embroiderers like most traditional Afghani women, would shudder in horror at the idea of wearing plain black,” she says.
For people like her, the social media campaign is more than a celebration of their vibrant textile heritage or a reclamation of their culture. The weaves and embroideries that are their link with their homeland now offer them opportunities for a dignified livelihood.
“When I fled to India from Kabul in 2013 with my husband, a reporter for whom living there was no longer safe, we had neither identification papers nor bank accounts here,” recounts 45-year-old Razia Assa. The former schoolteacher put her needlework skills to use, eventually landing a job at Silaiwali, a Delhi-based social enterprise that employs Afghan refugees to manufacture handstitched products from upcycled fabrics.
“We employ about 80 women in our workshop in Delhi’s Khirki extension, which is a walking distance from a large Afghan refugee settlement,” says Bishwadeep Moitra, who founded Silaiwali with wife, Iris Strill, in 2019. “Here, they use their fine needlework skills to create tassels, hangings, tote bags, keychains and, of course, our trademark rag dolls.”
Assa says that each woman here earns between ~25,000 and ~35,000 a month. Silaiwali exports between $150,000-175,000 worth of goods a year to international buyers like Cost Plus, Bed Bath & Beyond and H&M. Their current bestseller? “Nargis,” an Afghani rag doll in traditional dress.
Many women at Silaiwali have also participated in a collaborative project between the Migration and Asylum Project of Ara Trust, that works with refugees to enhance access to mainstream legal systems, and Dastkar, the nongovernment organisation that promotes Indian crafts and craft producers. Here, these skilled seamstresses were trained to adapt their skills to the Indian market. Together, they developed new layouts, colourways, products and styles that would appeal to Indian buyers.
Laila Tyabji, chairperson of Dastkar, says she was moved to see how for them, their traditional embroidery was a link with Afghanistan, to the families and lives they had left behind.
“In Afghanistan, most had been young professionals, working in offices or small businesses; in a couple of cases, homemakers and mothers,” she says, adding that embroidery connected these refugees with their lost home. “Their colours and patterns evoke nostalgic memories; they tell stories of a land that is as vivid to them as the motifs they stitch.”
The project, says Roshni Shanker of Ara Trust, was well received. Perhaps because the jewel tones and delicate embroideries resonate well with Indian tastes. Over 80 per cent of the products they had created sold out within the first few days of Dastkar’s Basant Bazaar where they were exhibited in late 2019.
Tyabji says that in recent times, there has been an influx of Afghani sellers at Dastkar ’s bazaars, who bring carpets, kilims, embroideries, silver jewellery and dry fruit from Afghanistan. “Among the new items we’ve seen are old family pieces, sold out of necessity,” she says, pointing to the economic toll continued unrest has taken on them. Yet, their livelihood options in India remain limited.
“Many of us would love to go into businesses of our own,” Assa says. “Unlike my colleagues and I at Silaiwali, most Afghan refugees in India do not have bank accounts and ID papers.” This makes it impossible for them to do the paperwork needed.
Few are able to access insurance and other social benefits. This makes enterprises like Silaiwali, supported by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and Geneva-based organisation Made51, which is mandated to market refugee products globally, crucial.
“I believe that by helping refugees find viable livelihoods, we can help them bring value to the local economy,” says Moitra. “Over time, this will go a long way in perhaps encouraging the local populace to get over their xenophobia — and help these brave refugees, already traumatised by the violence in their country, to get on with their lives in peace.”