Continuous lean patch for the Lalgopalganj ‘rangrez’
PRAYAGRAJ: Colourful block print chunris and Ramnami chadars no longer flutter in the lanes and bylanes of Ibrahimpur, Khanjahanpur and Ahlaadganj areas of Lalgopalganj, a town area 40 km west of Prayagraj city. Nor are yards and yards of coloured thread left out to dry in the sun.
The area which once bustled with activity and where Muslim dyers or ‘rangrez’ were seen engaged in their ancestral trade of making Ramnami gamchhas, chadars and dhotis, along with the revered cotton thread ‘kalainaras’ used in Hindu rituals, is strangely quiet, following the corona crisis. Needless to state, the resulting lockdown has hit the Rs 15 crore cottage industry and the 2,000-odd dyers of the area associated with it, very hard.
In fact, it is a continuous lean patch for the community already fighting to survive in this era of machines and trying to keep alive the age-old art of fine hand dyeing. The word ‘rangrez’ may have been popularized by many a Bollywood song, but Lalgopalganj’s ‘rangrez’ is staring at a bleak future, even contemplating manual labour.
For the past almost two months, around 150 to 200 families of dyers, including men, women and even teenagers, are sitting idle with no demand for their creations and no payment for products already supplied, owing to the ongoing nationwide restrictions. “We have been dying ‘kalainaras’, block print chunris and Ramnami chadars and dhotis for the past many decades, just like our forefathers. Our products go to various temples all over the region, including
Sheetla Dham, Kalyani Devi temple, Ayodhya, Kadadham, Vaishno Devi temple and Kalka Devi temple, among others. We are well aware of their religious importance and therefore prepare them with full devotion and reverence,” said Mohd Shahid, a dyer and a devout Muslim involved in the trade for the past over two decades.
“However, suddenly the coronavirus and the lockdown brought everything to a standstill and we are incurring losses as new orders have stopped coming, payments remain pending and already prepared products of old orders are lying dumped as no trucks are plying to take them to different bulk suppliers and markets,” he rued.
Traders Nafees Ahmad of Khanjahanpur and Mohd Idris of Ahlaadganj, who produce these items and trade in them, said block printing work had completely stopped in the area and the past two months without work had eaten up all their savings. “Ready goods are lying dumped,” the duo shared.
“But in a double whammy, this time while the bulk order supplies went undelivered, even retail sale got hit hard due to lockdown that coincided with the Navratri festival, when demand of the goods produced here witnesses their peak sale,” he lamented. Traditional dyers of this region’s other villages like Adharganj, Rava, Umraoganj, Idiya-ka Pura, Lala-ka-Pura and Afzal Mohalla, including Sharief Ahmad, Anwar Ahmad, Neesam, Pappu, Mohd Abdul and Idris Bari said that unless orders started coming and the trade regained its old form, they and their families would have to turn to manual labour to survive.