INDIA :
Unpacking the politics behind the Indian fashion industry’s biggest—but unsung— shareholders
Photo: Bikramjit Bose
At first glance, Indian jewellery brand Olio’s Instagram feed looks like any other of its kind: a visually resounding moodboard of sorts, chock full of Bollywood references, 90s nostalgia, and whimsical photos of its maximal, statement jewellery that is unforgettably cool.
But dig just a little deeper and you’ll find that beyond the beautiful aesthetics and jewellery accents, Olio isn’t afraid to make a cultural, social, or political statement. Case in point, when user ‘Shreya’ left a review for Olio’s website accusing them of ‘misinformation’ for attributing the origins of the haath phool to the Mughals “who brought it to the country by way of Persia,” as per Olio. But ‘Shreya’ claimed that the haath phool “is a Hindu jewellery that has nothing to do with Mughals”. So, Olio dedicated a post as ‘a history lesson for Shreya’ on how the Mughals played a pivotal role in shaping the art of jewellery-making in India. More on that later in the story.
In a country with over 5,000 years of history, the rise and fall of countless civilisations, the reign of rulers from all over the world, and 200-year-long colonisation, to deem something purely from one cultural corner is an abject erasure of aspects of the history of one the world’s oldest civilisations. “It’s just so crazy that people just want to rewrite history. We are so multicultural, and it comes from our history; there’s beauty in this diversity,” exclaimed Aashna Singh, one-half of Olio’s founding duo.
This might seem like any other incident of someone confusing their facts about history, but the erasure of the part of history that Singh is referring to is specifically that of Mughal and Islamic influence on India.
As represented by ‘Shreya’, there seems to be an increasingly divisive and communally charged sentiment amongst people bent on homogenizing what is a polychromatic amalgamation of cultural influences on our clothes, jewellery, art, culture, culinary history, among others, and in effect, risking the oblivion of its colourful tapestry of heritage, something Singh witnessed first hand with her brand. “That was the first time we took a strong stance about something, and it was very interesting to see the reaction to that. I mean, you also get a lot of love, and people who appreciate it appreciate it a lot. But then there have been customers who wrote to us saying they’re not going to shop with us again because they were just so upset by it, which is scary.”
But what does jewellery, and its design history, have to do with the country’s current inflamed state of religion-based viewpoints? According to Umair Shah, co-founder of a creative studio that works with lifestyle brands, and an amateur historian, a lot. “We need to understand that most of the ancient craft we cannot simply call ‘ours’ because everything has a nuanced historical aspect.
If you talk of silk that is used to adorn idols in the temples, it came through the Silk Route from China.
If we talk of carpet weaving in Kashmir, it came with Shah Hamdan, a Persian saint, scholar, and religious leader of the 14th century AD.
Zardozi came with the Safavid empire in Iran; what Suzani is in Central Asia just became Sozani in India.
All of these arts and crafts that are now celebrated in India have a cross-cultural, cross-boundary relation or derivation. And you will find that often the people who are carrying forward these traditional skills today in India may have ties that originated from those regions.”
“It serves as an element of forming your identity. One of the biggest reasons behind that was the absence of a caste system that could be related to any profession, whereas a majority of the population in medieval times were working as per their caste. But with a lot of Muslims, they were doing any kind of job that was fitting for them. Incidentally, one of the most important industries for India happened to be textile.” Shah further added that when we erase the association of religious identity, its ensuing history and heritage, with the karigars, we risk losing the identity and the history of the craft itself.
Make no mistake, India appreciates, celebrates, and continues to buy what is commonly known as ‘Mughal’ art and design, but Shah pointed out that’s only the case until something starts looking “too Muslim”. “A lot of crafts that we see in the market are popular because we have a tendency of fetishising anything that’s ‘Mughal’, so to speak. But the fetishisation is for the craft only, and not for the karigar. You don’t want to be associated with their religious identity.”
Last year in October, an Indianwear brand was forced to remove its ad after online outrage poured in over using an Urdu phrase, ‘Jashn-e-Riwaaz’, meaning ‘celebration of customs’ for their Diwali campaign. “Deepavali is not Jash[n]-e-Riwaaz. This deliberate attempt at abrahamisation of Hindu festivals, depicting models without traditional Hindu attires, must change. And brands should face economic costs for such deliberate misadventures,” tweeted a political leader. A year prior to that, in October 2020, a prominent jewellery brand’s ad faced similar outrage, this time for supposedly promoting “Love Jihad” in an ad that showed a pregnant Hindu woman escorted by her Muslim mother-in-law for her baby shower ceremony. The jewellery giant eventually took the ad down from all its digital platforms.
Kallol Datta, a Kolkata-based clothes-maker and finalist of the Jameel prize, is of the opinion that the root of the problem doesn’t lie in the lack of awareness of Persian and Mughal design influences. The problem is in a different ballpark and, as Datta predicts, is set to snowball into something of a different scale in the future. “Right now, you have fascists posting instructions on social media on how to do away with Urdu words in your vocabulary and substitute them with Hindi words. This could soon also include instructions on design language.”
Amidst Indic and Mughal influences, and the black and white of what’s ‘our’ history, and what’s not lies a line that is extremely blurred. The line being of who influenced what, and at exactly what point in time, or if a ruler’s reign affected change in the architecture or design of the era. When an idea is inspired by somewhere else it is often transformed into something new.
That’s why Pramod Kumar KG, who is the managing director of Eka Archiving Services, founder director of the Anokhi Museum of Hand Printing, and the first director of the Jaipur Literature Festival, emphasizes the importance of looking at the history of design, in all its forms, from a much more nuanced lens. “We look at something and we assume that this is Mughal design. We don’t realize that this is an assimilation of different things over the centuries which has come down to us in a certain form. We have brilliant portraits of, say, Jahangir wearing a bandhani patka waistcloth, bandhani being a technique that is more indigenous to the country or to the subcontinent. So this constant moving back and forth existed. Sometimes it’s convenient for us to look at something and say, ‘That’s Mughal, this is Rajput, this is Hindu, this is Muslim’. But the fact of the matter is that all of them are incredibly layered – designs, motifs, and even garments. It’s not a blanket answer and I really wish people would look at it that way and realize that we are far more than just one or the other.”
When I asked Sarthak Kasliwal, the youngest partner at Jaipur’s iconic jewellery institution, The Gem Palace, what he makes of such ‘influence’, he replied with a much more simplified version: “Artists always get inspired from different places. There’s no originality in anything in the sense that the first was also created by getting influenced by something else. So no one can actually own it. You date back in history, you say it because you know that part. You can trace it back. But to what date? And what about before that?”
Beyond debates and discussions of history, heritage, and lineage of craft forms, something much more tangible lies at stake – the livelihoods of generational Muslim karigars if their art is disassociated from their identity. But why should the fashion industry care? As per Datta, “The pattern cutters, sewing machinists, hand embroiderers, weavers, dyers and printers – a majority of people engaged in fashion production are Muslims. Fashion gets to profit off of culture and craft. But you cannot profit off the labour of an entire community and stay quiet when the same community is subject to intimidation, diminished access to education and livelihood.”
But as Kumar pointed out, “Everybody’s just too scared to speak up at all, to say anything contrary that’s also important. Be it celebrities or designers, nobody wants to toe that line. But by being silent, you’re equally a party to the problem.” That is why Shah thinks that designers and design houses hiring Muslim karigars need to step up. Beyond fair pay and regular work, Shah insists that they need to be given assurance that they work in an unprejudiced environment. “Beyond getting their work done by the karigars, designers need to be aware of the situation in the country and the realities of the lives of the people who are working for them. All these people don’t have a voice today. If they are getting humiliated or threatened, they will likely not know what to do about it. They need reassurance that the brands they’re working with will at least be their voice if something untoward happens.”
The way ahead is, undoubtedly, a more inclusive and diverse design and cultural sentiment wherein every influence is celebrated as part of the country’s fabric, agreed Kasliwal who envisions the same as a young businessperson and the heir of a prestigious design institution.
Singh and her partner Sneha Saksena, too, shared that they intend to use their privilege and Olio’s platform “to do the right thing”, even if it costs the brand a few angry customers or negative reviews. “ Fashion can be very frivolous sometimes. It’s just jewellery at the end of the day. Like, what am I doing? I’m just trying to sell jewellery. But if we can have an impact by using our privilege and our platforms to protect the most vulnerable, then why not? Because otherwise, what’s the point of it all?”
source: http://www.vogue.in / Vogue India / Home> Fashion / by Shubhangana Das / September 23rd, 2023
