Mohammad Siddik was a master craftsman from Kachchh. His Khatri community is known for its dyeing and block-printing. In the 1970s, Siddik took part in a scheme of the Gujarat State Handicrafts and Handlooms Development Corporation (GSHDC) to revive traditional crafts. Designers from the National Institute of Design (NID) helped craftspeople develop products for urban consumers. Siddik’s foresight helped rescue his fading craft. An excerpt from a book by UK researcher Eiluned Edwards.
From the 1950s onward, like most Khatri dyers, Mohammad Siddik had used chemical dyes; unlike many of his peers, however, he also retained a passion for the older practice of natural dyeing. Already aware that the only way to sustain his craft was to find a new clientele, he had determined to specialise in block-prints dyed with colours derived from plants and minerals and to revive production of handmade ajrakh which his forebears had supplied to the cattle-herders of Banni for several generations. Knowledge of dyeing was central to his identity as a Khatri, a legacy to be nurtured and passed on to his three young sons, Razzak, Ismail and Jabbar, then barely teenagers. [He] described this essential link: “As I savour the alum on my tongue, my eyes visualize the corresponding shade of red. The son of a Khatri can never get a girl in marriage until he passes this test of being able to judge the right proportions of ingredients by using his senses and not gadgets.” The collaboration with GSHDC and NID [...] provided him with the opportunity to develop his business, to revive the use of natural dyes and to restore the status of ajrakh. As he summed it up, “Allah smiled at me and changed things.”
With the help of professional designers, Mohammad Siddik and his family adapted the designs of ajrakh and other block-prints for bedspreads, table cloths and cushion covers, suitable for a modernising society. As the second son, Ismail Khatri recalled: “When I was about 14 or 15 [...] some NID students and their teachers came here to use our cloth for fashion design and soft furnishing. Those people would live in our home for a few days and they enjoyed our hospitality... I was interested in looking at the new [modern] world.” The products sold well. [...] As a result of this exposure, Mohammad Siddik attracted international attention and his small workshop at Dhamadka drew design historians, dyers, designers, textile collectors and entrepreneurs alike — the business flourished and the village became a tourist destination for anyone interested in handicrafts. Mohammad Siddik was in demand to give demonstrations of his craft in India and around the globe and to contribute [to] debates about craft development in India [...]. His own skill in printing earned him the honour of a National Craft Award in 1981.
As his business expanded, Mohammad Siddik hired local workers to help his sons with dyeing and printing [...]. At the time of his death in 1999, his son inherited the largest block-printing concern in Kachchh which employed fourteen workers in addition to members of the extended family. Moreover the company’s success had demonstrated the commercial viability of natural dyes, with the result that an increasing number of dyers and printers in Kachchh have since started using vegetable dyes for at least a part of their production. Acknowledging Mohammad Siddik’s influence, M B Khatri, whose family produces tie-dyed textiles in Bhuj, also identified the rise of “green consumption” among foreign customers as crucial to sustaining the craft: “Our cultural demand was satisfied with the chemical dyes. But gradually, environmentally, people from Western countries started clamouring for vegetable dyes... Mohammadbhai Siddik — he, I think, revived these vegetable dyes...”
Excerpted with permission from Mapin Publishing
TEXTILES AND DRESS OF GUJARAT
Author: Eiluned Edwards
Publisher: Mapin
Pages: 248
Price: Rs 2,500
