Reviews
Many Threads of a Story
Textiles and Weavers in South India
by Vijaya Ramaswamy, 2nd edition; Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2006;
pp 271, Rs 595.
SEEMANTHINI NIRANJANA
T
The book under review is an example of textile history that combines an understanding of socio-cultural traditions with a focus on production and trade. It examines textiles and weavers in south India during a wide temporal swathe, that is, from the 10th to the 17th centuries. The effort is to project a holistic picture of the industry, by giving a discussion of the status of weavers in medieval society as much importance as the organisation of textile production, trade and even loom technology.
An added dimension of interest is that while the primary focus of the book is on weavers, the author also engages with a number of conceptual frameworks advanced to analyse trajectories of social change. It also uses historical evidence pertaining to textiles to demonstrate critical aspects of the relations between economic power and social mobility.
Typically, the social status of weavers is seen as fixed and determined by the artisanal castes to which they belonged, as well as that group’s position in the caste hierarchy. But interestingly enough Ramaswamy uses examples of weavers’ location in local economic networks to argue that the social status of this occupational caste group was not wholly determined by its so-called ritual position in the varna framework, but more by the extent of economic power it wielded in society. The rise of the Saliyar and Kaikollar communities in the Telugu-Tamil region is cited as a case in point.
The author traces the emergence of certain regions as textile centres due to its proximity to ports, access to dye-bearing plants, etc. In recounting the work, life and products made by weavers of the jeda, devanga, kaikollar, saliyar and padmasale communities, she reconstructs from a variety of sources, including epigraphs, temple records, literature, etc.
The most instructive discussion, however, is the account of organisation of textile trade in the hands of merchant corporations, and that of sales directly by weavers in local fairs. While some inscriptions indicate the existence of a merchant syndicate that controlled the sale of cloth, the fact that they were also trading in yarn, zari, dyes, cotton, etc, suggests, as the author notes, some degree of “vertical control”. Yet, this was far from monopolistic as these items were also traded in local fairs. In drawing attention to these nuances, the author builds a fairly complex picture of weaving and trade in medieval south India.
Location of Weavers
Another key issue that Ramaswamy takes up is the location of weavers within society and their relations to state. Affirming that the self-sufficiency of village republics is a myth, she points out that service relations cut across the village and spilled beyond. Raising a moot question of whether weavers were considered part of the village community, she finds that the weaver, oilman and potter were not listed in the list of village functionaries, despite the centrality of their products to the life of the village. She builds on this to indicate that this “renders invalid the concept of self-sufficient village units” (p 37). The implications of this for the weaver, however, are something that is not probed at length. What does it say about how the weaver was integrated into the village and its economy? Did this define the way in which production was organised in the handloom industry? This does not come out very clearly in the reconstruction attempted in the book. Instead, the author suggests that the place of weavers in the local system of power relations should be excavated to understand how they were linked to governance and power. She argues that weavers did indeed have a considerable economic position (and hence social status) using as indicative evidence aspects such as the nature of weaverscorporate organisations, the size of donations they made to temples, the extent of land rights (both individual and collective), etc. The interaction between weavers and other social groups of the time (for instance, as reflected in what are termed as “left-hand-right-hand” conflicts), state patronage in terms of grant of privileges, the ritual role of weavers in temples and their participation in a number of important heterodox movements of that time are developed as a way of throwing light on the distinctive position of weavers in the Vijayanagar society of that period.
Spanning across the 14th and 16th centuries, she finds that there was an increase in internal demand for handwoven textiles due to changes such as urbanisation and enhanced state-temple patronage. Export markets continued to be important as a result of which the artisanal classes and volume of textile trade grew. During this period, textile trade was in the hands of indigenous merchant guilds. Alongside these merchant guilds, the system of weavers selling their own merchandise locally continued, and this marked the genesis of the weaver merchant
Economic and Political Weekly December 9, 2006
or “master weaver”. As she puts it: “the rise of individual weavers to the status of merchants is indicative of a very significant development – a growing differentiation in the ranks of the weavers” (p 84). She also identifies temple records which for the first time begin to record references to the operation of several looms at a single weaving site belonging to a rich weaver, indicating that this was a commonly prevalent practice. By the 17th century, of course, the master weaver’s role altered: on the one hand, they were used by the East India Company to access weavers (developing into exploitative relations between the opportunistic master trader and poor weaver) and, on the other hand, the close ties these traders invariably had with weavers meant that when their trade interests were threatened by textiles from Britain, they identified with handloom weavers in India.
Colonial Period
These shifts in the power centres in textile trade tell an interesting story of opportunity, enterprise and realignments. Several changes impacted handloom weaving and trade in the 17th century, the most important ones being the entry of the Dutch, Portuguese and English into textile commerce. Textile centres got consolidated, where a few early weaving factories were set up. Though there was an internal market and demand that was met through local weekly markets, centres were set up for production of export varieties in particular. This led to a partial shift in the places where weavers lived, from temple town premises to company settlements that were largely on the coast. India continued as the major exporter of textiles to England and other European countries in the 17th and 18th centuries, a position that changed by the 19th century, after the industrial revolution.
The strategic significance of master weavers grew during this period. Often, they acted as middlemen on behalf of the East India Company, investing their own or company capital and procuring products. The factory weaving did not really succeed, and master weavers found a way to keep the weavers active at their own homes under their control by advancing money for raw materials or other social expenses. Ramaswamy indicates that the emergence of these merchant middlemen of the company accounts for the decline of the medieval merchant guilds, since merchants opted either to work on their own or in tandem with the company. Ramaswamy writes:
In a region like the Coromandel where weavers were widely scattered, merchants and other intermediaries were needed to purchase cloth and act as links between weavers and the company; second, they supervised weavers and minimised the companies’ risks by taking on bad debts; third, they ensured quality control by providing weavers with musters and seeing that they “worked to the perfection of the pattern”; and finally merchants even saved the companies the necessity of laying out vast sums of money by making initial advances themselves (p 147).
The book thus examines the contexts and forms of textile production, uncovering both economic and social patterns (and shifts) in the activity that makes for a holistic picture. The book is valuable in showing how these organisational frames in the industry got consolidated. Many of these functions continue even today. But a key development to trace will be the cooperative structure under which production happens in south India, the continuities and breaks with older traditions. A brief account is provided at the end of the book, where contemporary developments especially through state policies and support institutions are mentioned. However, this journey into contemporary spaces is mediated largely through tracking policy shifts in the sector. While this is one way of “retrieving the present”, perhaps, this needs to be placed alongside accounts of conditions and shifts in the industry with other registers as well.
The cooperatives were introduced in the handloom sector as an alternative way of organising production and marketing functions. It was hoped that weavers would have a better bargaining power under this form of organisation than when working under master weavers. Typically, under the cooperative structure, weavers become members of a cooperative and get access to raw materials and working capital (credit) through the cooperative, often through links with state institutions. The final product (or a part of it) is also supposed to be marketed by the state-owned apex marketing bodies. However, there have been several problems along the production-marketing chain in this model. All weaver members do not have continuous employment, either due to the lack/inefficient use of working capital within the cooperative or due to irregular yarn supplies, and even due to the collapse of the marketing agencies. This compels weavers to turn to master weavers as well.
Post-independence Period
It is also true that the present-day structure and profile of the industry has been influenced by state policies. The perspective of planners in the immediate postindependence period was dominated by the nationalist emphasis on economic self-reliance. This is evident in the way the artisanal sector was approached in the Five-Year Plan documents and other reports. The potential of employment and the value of preserving the cultural heritage played an important role in guiding policy formulations. Until the mid-1980s policies continued in the direction of protecting the small-scale dispersed industry from the centralised industrial sector. But a crucial shift towards the issues of increasing productivity came with the textile policy of 1985, a point mentioned by Ramaswamy through her interactions with weavers. The emphasis came to be on efficiency and improving productivity, while paying only lip service to employment generation. The proliferation of powerlooms during this period did nothing to improve the situation of handloom weavers. The succeeding policies of the 1990s and in 2000 further undermined the validity of the industry. While addressing allegations of low productivity through some of its “schemes”, the government continued to propound schemes that were a mix of welfarism and a seeming concession to the employment potential of this sector. The articulations, however, denoted the clear shift from an industry with future prospects to that of a temporary income generation model especially in rural areas. Despite voicing the employment potential phraseology, little was done by way of investments in infrastructure or creating the right conditions for business development in handlooms. To work with the unique and specific structures in the handloom sector and to come up with facilitative support requires immense creativity in policy processes. A historical understanding of this traditional industry can provide the grounding needed for such creativity.
EPWEmail: seemanthinin@yahoo.com
Economic and Political Weekly December 9, 2006
