Crafting The Nation in Colonial India PDF

Crafting the Nation
in Colonial India
This page intentionally left blank
Crafting the Nation
in Colonial India
Abigail McGowan
crafting the nation in colonial india
Copyright © Abigail McGowan, 2009.
All rights reserved.
First published in 2009 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States -

a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the
world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers
Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills,
Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.
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Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,

the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN: 978-0-230-61267-9
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
McGowan, Abigail.
Crafting the nation in colonial India / Abigail McGowan.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-230-61267-9
1. Decorative arts—India. 2. Industries, Primitive—India. 3. Cultural
awareness—India. 4. India—History—British occupation, 1765–1947.
I. Title.
NK1047.M38 2009
306.4'70954—dc22 2008055761
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
Design by Macmillan Publishing Solutions
First edition: August 2009
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America.

In memory of my father.
Contents
List of Figures ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction 1
1 Demanding Knowledge, Documenting the Body 23

2 The Culture of Difference: From Colonial Knowledge
to the Problem with Crafts 67
3 Developing Traditions: Preservationist Design and
the Independent Artisan 103
4 Modernizing Artisanship: Rationalization, Efficiency,
and the Cult of the Craftsman 149
Conclusion The Long Life of Difference: Gandhi and
the Politics of Crafts after 1920 187
Notes 205
Bibliography 245
Index 261
List of Figures
1.1 The Indian Court at the Great Exhibition, 1851,

color lithograph by Joseph Nash 24
1.2 Examples of Indian ornament taken from the
displays at the Great Exhibition and published
in Owen Jones’s The Grammar of Ornament as
lessons in good design 32
1.3 Illustrations of jewelry in Birdwood’s The Industrial
Arts of India 47
1.4 Jaipur gateway to the Rajputana Courts, Colonial
and Indian Exhibition of 1886, London 59
1.5 Clay models of artisans, with details of embroiderers
and potters, Victoria and Albert Museum, Bombay 61
1.6 Metal worker from the Jaipur School of Art,
Journal of Indian Art and Industry, 1894 62
3.1 Vases prepared by students at the Sir Jamsetjee
Jeejeebhoy School of Arts in the late 1880s 113
3.2 Illustration of the ceiling from “Jodh Bai’s Palace,”
Fatehpur Sikri in the Technical Art Series, 1894 120
3.3 Pinjra designs in wood from the Punjab, drawn by Ram
Singh under the direction of Lockwood Kipling 121
3.4 Sketches for Anglo-Indian furniture, drawn by Ram
Singh, under the direction of Lockwood Kipling 122
3.5 The Bombay Room at the Delhi Durbar Exhibition
of 1903 129
3.6 Bench prepared by the Ahmedabad Wood Carving
Company, late 1800s 135
x LIST OF FIGURES
3.7 Lockwood de Forest home, East 10th Street,

New York City, early twentieth century 137
4.1 A weaver working D. C. Churchill’s improved handloom 172
Acknowledgments
I have been lucky, while writing this book, to draw on the warmth,
support, and intellectual vigor of a wide range of people. Without them,
this project would never have been possible. Countless formal and infor-
mal conversations with mentors and colleagues have helped me develop
my ideas, sharpening some arguments and forcing me to give up others.
Just as importantly, the unflinching support provided by friends and
family has helped me survive the process intact, often even in good
humor. I thank all for their encouragement and interest.
The research for this book was made possible by a Fulbright-Hays
Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad grant and both the Dean’s
Fund and the Department of History at the University of Vermont.
During my research in India, London, and the United States I have drawn
on the resources of many libraries and archives. I am grateful to the staff
and authorities at the following institutions for generously providing me
access to their collections and for assisting me in my research while I was
among them: Maharashtra State Archives, Mumbai; Mumbai University
Library, Fort campus; Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics,
Pune; B. J. Oriental Institute, Ahmedabad; Gujarat Vidyapeeth, Ahmedabad;
Gujarat University, Ahmedabad; Calico Museum, Ahmedabad; National
Institute of Design, Ahmedabad; the offices of the Sandesh, Ahmedabad;
Baroda Public Records Office, Baroda; National Archives of India, New
Delhi; Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi; India Office
Library and Records, London; Houghton Library, Harvard University; the
University of Pennsylvania; the University of Virginia; and the University
of Vermont.
Along the way I have benefited from conversations with scholars
working on similar areas and issues, including Catherine Asher, Susan Bean,
Timothy Burke, Ashoke Chatterjee, Vidya Dehejia, Deepali Dewan, Eiluned
Edwards, Judy Frater, Sandy Frietag, Pika Ghosh, Jyotindra Jain, Don
Johnson, Manjiri Kamat, Mani Kamerkar, Prashant Kidambi, Michelle
Maskiell, Shirin and Makrand Mehta, Mridula Ramanna, Satadru Sen,
and Haruka Yanagisawa. I owe particular thanks to the two anonymous
xii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
reviewers of the manuscript who offered invaluable suggestions on revi-

sions and refinements; thanks also to my editor at Palgrave, Christopher
Chappell, and to his assistant Samantha Hasey for carefully shepherding
this project through to publication. Sudha Mehta provided invaluable
help with translations. Many thanks to my colleagues in the Department
of History at UVM—particularly Jim Overfield, Kathy Carolin, and Kathy
Truax—for providing a welcoming working environment. At the University
of Pennsylvania, David Ludden provided an inspiring example of critical
engagement with South Asian history while Lynn Lees provided unflag-
ging support and a steady supply of good fiction. Both at Penn and else-
where, Sumathi Ramaswamy has been crucial to the development of this
project, offering timely interventions that have refined my thinking tre-
mendously. I have also benefited from working with Douglas Haynes and
Tirthankar Roy who have provided unfailing encouragement as I explored
areas they know much better than I; thanks in particular to Doug for read-
ing drafts, sharing ideas, and collaborating on new research in this pro-
cess. Finally perhaps one of my earliest academic debts is to Eleanor
Zelliot whose love of Indian history and fierce dedication to teaching has
inspired many to find careers in academia; I’m honored to count myself
among her students.
Just as important as the scholars I have worked with are the friends I
have made and learned from along the way. In India I was sustained by
the hospitality and generosity of Arvind Bhandari, Meena Chandavarkar,
Anjali Ghate, Doug and Lucia Gurung, Mani Kamerkar, Sunil Mehra,
Sudha Mehta, and Mridula Ramanna. Thanks to the Dhruv family in
Ahmedabad for their ready and constant welcome; I owe a lasting debt
to the late Janaki Druv for being both a wonderful friend and a font
of knowledge on all manner of things related to Indian textiles and
crafts. I am always grateful to Raju, Swati, Ranjana, Jaideep, and Kalyani
Kumbhare for providing me a home away from home for more than
fifteen years. Thanks to Liann, Andrew, Becky, Ellie, and Julia Eden
for welcoming me into their family in London. More broadly, thanks
to Paulina Alberto, Sarah Betzer, Shefali Chandra, Sheila Crane, Paul
Deslandes, Sue Dickman, Aiden Downey, Eiluned Edwards, Daniel
Hartzog, Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof, Joe Kable, Adriana Katzew, Jen Nix, Ian
Petrie, Shelly Rayback, Peggy Senter, Alison Mackenzie Shah, Dan Shah,
Lorrin Thomas, Saadia Toor, and Yanna Yannakakis, all of whom have
challenged, supported, entertained, and diverted me at various stages as
I figured out how to be a historian.
Finally, my family has been wonderful, ever trusting that I can and
would do better than their already high expectations. I thank them all for
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xiii
their interest and their love, now and always. My mother, Mary McGowan,
willingly listened to the seemingly endless trials of academic life, stepping
in to provide moral support and sound advice whenever needed. My
sister Molly McGowan and my aunt Frances Strayer kept me grounded
in who I was, while also encouraging me to be whatever I wanted to be.
And finally my love and thanks to Jon Kohn for nurturing me through
this process with patience and good humor, even as it kept dragging me
away from him and back to my computer; I cannot imagine having done
this without him.
Introduction
W riting in May 1919 in the pages of his weekly paper Young India,
Mohandas K. Gandhi complained that not enough attention was
paid to Indian crafts: “The industrial arts and handicrafts, considered as
inessential luxuries, are practically ignored even by recognised authorities
on economics.” Because such authorities “never attempted to interpret
national wealth in terms of life,” they “found it impossible to realise
the connection between art and industry and to appreciate the value
of quality or a high standard of workmanship.” Misled in turn by the
“discredited misconceptions of the so-called economists,” consumers then
embraced “unlimited machine industry” in the name of market superior-
ity. Education might have revealed the follies of such trends, if only it was
properly directed. Instead, the “distinctly anti-national” school system
furthered the embrace of modern industrialization. That was perhaps
inevitable, given that, according to Gandhi, schools were “directed and
controlled as it is by those who have no first-hand knowledge of indig-
enous arts and crafts or of hereditary skill.” The result was that “public
taste has been progressively deteriorating and the public demand is not
for genuine articles but for cheap and gaudy knick-nacks imported from
foreign countries.” Degraded taste led, in turn, to a decline in the quality
of crafts themselves. Here, “the result is both obvious and inevitable. We
are deliberately pushing our unique industrial arts and the hereditary
craftsmanship to extinction.”1
Despite these dire warnings, Gandhi held out hope for Indian crafts by
offering various ways to reverse the decline. The first and most profound
was simply to give India’s “rare industrial arts and handicrafts” their “due
recognition and encouragement.” Once that happened, industrial activists
would no longer advocate only mechanized production. They would begin
to recognize that the crowded mills, polluted cities, alienating machines,
2 CRAFTING THE NATION IN COLONIAL INDIA
and degraded working populations of Western industrialization offered

dangers to be avoided, not successes to mimic. India would then be able to
“benefit by the mistakes of the West” to forge its own path of development
based on hand craftsmanship. It was not enough, of course, to merely
hope for this change of direction. To encourage progress down that path,
Gandhi suggested concrete steps to promote crafts: permanent and travel-
ing exhibitions to demonstrate high standards of work, sales agencies to
bring fine products into permanent public notice, state-sponsored collec-
tions of crafts to document product diversity, and collaborative programs
to bring designers in closer touch with artisans.2
In this 1919 article Gandhi relied on an assumption that would have
been familiar to his readers: crafts mattered. Indeed, their worth—as
understood by a new kind of economics defined not by national effi-
ciency and productivity but individual happiness and morality—was so
self-evident that Gandhi only had to call for due attention to it, without
actually explaining its sources explicitly. He did, however, hint at some
possibilities. For one, crafts were part of national culture; although made
by diverse artisans, individual objects when taken together were “our
unique industrial arts” (emphasis added). For another, crafts were central
to national economics; a mode of production rooted in India’s past, they
provided an indigenous alternative to Western industrialization. Third
and finally, crafts were reflective of national society; ignored by those
raised to love all things foreign, ridiculed by outsiders who knew nothing
about them, rejected by those in pursuit of cheap amusements, and pros-
trated in the face of capitalist exploiters, crafts suffered the fate of many
valued, ancient elements of Indian society and culture.
The assumed importance of crafts helps explain the responsibility
Gandhi assigned to the public for their decline. It was not artisans alone
who had brought about the progressive decay of crafts under colonial rule;
nor was it just the British who had destroyed India’s past industrial glory.
Instead, all of India was to blame. Since everyday Indians chose imports
over local goods, embraced “anti-national” education, let their taste dete-
riorate, and worshipped modern machinery, they were responsible for the
consequences. Writing inclusively, Gandhi urged readers to understand
their role, arguing that, if no action was taken, “we shall then be guilty of
strangling them with our own hands” (emphasis added).3
This emphasis on the national, public importance of crafts directly
informed Gandhi’s famous campaign to encourage hand-spun, hand-
woven khadi cloth, his commitment to the use of swadeshi, or Indian-
made, goods, and his promotion of Indian culture and traditions.4 All
of these mixed economics with culture, tradition with development, and
INTRODUCTION 3
national progress with personal austerity. By spinning and weaving their

own khadi, patriotic Indians learned to appreciate manual labor while
helping atone for the deterioration of the Indian handloom industry. By
replacing foreign goods with swadeshi ones, Indians built up local industry
while striking a blow against the underlying profitability of the colonial
enterprise. By embracing indigenous styles of clothing, Indians expressed
pride in their national culture while rejecting British claims to the supe-
riority of the West. By giving up machinery to return to hand production,
Indians forged a new path to economic development while remaining
rooted in tradition and committed to fundamental social transformation.
For all their power in his khadi campaigns, however, it is important to
remember that Gandhi did not invent these assumptions of the cultural,
economic, and political importance of crafts. Those ideas had emerged
earlier, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; indeed,
Gandhi’s success with khadi rested in part on his ability to mobilize pre-
existing understandings of crafts. Crafts were central both to critiques of
British rule and to constructive programs to rebuild India’s strength long
before Gandhi. In protest movements, politicians promoted the use of
Indian crafts and the boycott of foreign goods to underline dissatisfaction
with colonial policies. In newspapers, journals, books, and official reports,
writers documented traditional designs and techniques and offered solu-
tions to the problems facing artisans. In international and domestic exhi-
bitions and museums, organizers displayed crafts as the summation of
Indian indigenous industry, past and present. In schools, laboratories, and
roving demonstrations, teachers sought to develop and disseminate new
technologies to make crafts more efficient. In workshops and stores, mis-
sionaries, private entrepreneurs, and industrial activists introduced new
styles of goods designed to secure wider markets for artisanal products.
All of these initiatives represented a totally new public debate about
traditional industries that emerged in the late nineteenth century.
Suddenly crafts were not just the private concern of individual arti-
sans and merchants anxious about their own economic survival, or of
individual consumers trying to satisfy personal material desires. Instead,
crafts stood in for India as a whole: economy, society, culture, and politics.
That they did so is somewhat surprising. Why did crafts, which the British
used to demonstrate the backwardness of the subcontinent, come to be at
the heart of the nationalist movement—a movement that strove to put
Indians on equal terms with their colonial rulers? Why, in a period of
intense competition to replicate the industrial achievements of the West,
did Indian nationalists so thoroughly embrace crafts—the very opposite
of modern industry?
This book argues that the politicization of crafts was the result of
struggles by Indian elites and British officials to establish authority over
the lower classes as well as the state itself. Crafts were not a natural or
inevitable focus of politics; instead, they had to be rendered that way over
time. Emerging ideas about crafts—as national culture, economics, and
politics—made that rendering possible and allowed outsiders to define
core categories of economic thought in ways compatible with their own
power. This process had parallels elsewhere; the late nineteenth century
witnessed movements around the world promoting crafts as expressions
of national culture and resistance to modern industrialization, inspired
by the Arts and Crafts Movement ideals of John Ruskin, William Morris,
and others.5 But the new public interest in crafts in India was not merely
the derivative expression of metropolitan arts and crafts ideals. Instead, as
I will argue, it represented a creative project within colonial society to use
global ideas to negotiate Indian realities.
Crafting a New Narrative of Development
In pursuing the cultural politics structuring crafts development, one of

the objectives of this book is to insert culture into studies of the economy.
Economists and economic historians have paid close attention to the sta-
tus of crafts under colonial rule, moving from early attempts to define the
nature, extent, or even fact of “deindustrialization” under the British6 to
more recent efforts to explore how structures of production, distribution,
and consumption changed in the colonial era as artisans initiated exten-
sive reorganizations to suit market developments.7 Such scholarship is
crucial to understanding the contours of the colonial economy and, par-
ticularly, the role of crafts within the larger whole of Indian production.
My objective, however, is quite different: to examine how knowledge was
created about crafts during British rule and how this knowledge helped
shape development efforts at the time.
In an excellent recent book, Manu Goswami offers one model for
doing this. She notes the central role that economic issues played in the
development of nationalist politics and asks for close attention to how
ideas about the economy are developed in particular places and times
through particular material means.8 Extending Goswami’s example, this
book explores new ideas about crafts both in the writings of the era and
through a close analysis of specific interventions into craft production.
In doing so, I build off a long-standing interest emerging from the work
of Michel Foucault in both the construction of knowledge and the inter-
section between knowledge and power. In South Asian studies, scholars
INTRODUCTION 5
inspired by Foucault have explored how the basic terms of local soci-
ety—caste, gender, language, religion, art, nation—took new forms under
colonial rule.9 Crafts were no different. For one, the sources and types of
knowledge shifted dramatically. Unlike in Europe, where artisans them-
selves created modern, dense information networks in print to share ideas,
technologies, and strategies,10 in India artisanal communities tried to keep
technologies and designs private within kin or caste networks. Responding
to the absence of artisanal initiative, the colonial state assumed a primary
role in gathering and codifying public knowledge about crafts. Reflecting
that colonial origin, knowledge about crafts came embedded in strict ori-
entalist hierarchies that separated the intellectual, individual fine art and
scientific, modern industry of the West from the instinctual, communal,
archaic crafts of India.11
More broadly, the power of that knowledge expanded dramatically
in the late nineteenth century. In that period crafts came to stand not
just as a set of products or a type of production but as a larger snapshot
of Indian society itself, representing its visual culture, social organiza-
tion, intellectual traditions, and engagement with the larger world. Or,
as Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya put it in a pithy 1964 formulation, “to
understand Indian life is to understand Indian handicrafts, or vice versa
to understand Indian handicrafts is to understand Indian life.”12 The read-
ing of India through its crafts meant that any problem in the field took
on national dimensions. And problems there were, of all kinds. For some
the crisis was cultural; whether or not potters used traditional wheels was
a matter not of individual choice or personal convenience but of national
heritage. Thus, many crafts activists of the period—men such as Dr. George
Birdwood, Ananda Coomaraswamy, and E. B. Havell—interpreted any
Westernization in design, slip in quality, or loss of market share for crafts
as a sign of India’s political, aesthetic, spiritual, and moral decline in the
face of modernization. As Saloni Mathur puts it, “the actual physical body
of the craftsman—ruined, disfigured, and enslaved by colonialism—
became a powerful metaphor in the work of these writers for the state of
the national body itself.”13 For others, the crisis was economic; whether
or not carpenters made tight joints was a concern not merely for one
consumer hoping to get value for money, but for India’s competitiveness
in global markets. Thus, industrial reformers such as Mahadev Govind
Ranade, Romesh Chunder Dutt, and Alfred Chatterton saw the destruc-
tion of traditional industries under colonial rule as threatening India’s
national viability. Since, as of 1900, crafts made up more than 95 percent
of Indian industrial employment, with “modern” industry responsible for
only a very small segment of overall production and employment, those
concerns were real.14 Indeed, Arindam Dutta argues that attention to arti-
sans emerges as a key trope in the reconfiguration of labor and capital and
the global economy, as the British tried to make India more productive
on imperial terms.15
This twin importance in cultural and economic terms made crafts
central to debates about India’s future; they were simply too important to
ignore. But it also shaped the approach taken to crafts in those debates.
Since crafts represented national culture, their development could never
be measured purely in terms of efficiency and productivity; conversely,
since crafts involved a large section of the national economy, their pres-
ervation could never rest on aesthetic appreciation alone. Attention to
crafts, therefore, brought together markets and tradition, heritage and
progress. Those who tried to preserve traditional design and craftsman-
ship tackled the problems of colonial capitalism; hoping to find a better
coincidence between production and consumption, traditionalist reform-
ers encouraged more “authentic” design as a means of restoring national
taste and thus markets for artisanal products.16 Those who advocated
modernization did so in full knowledge of the many problems attached
to industrialization in the West, including dangerous working conditions,
exploited labor, crowded slums, and polluted cities; activists promoted
new technologies and forms of artisanal organization to prevent such
evils in India and find a development path better suited to Indian needs.
Whatever the solutions offered, almost everyone involved with crafts
argued that local conditions made an exact replication of Western-style
development impossible. The question was what elements should be
appropriated for a more national economic and cultural modernity.17
Both sides, therefore, can be seen as part of the emerging field of Indian
economics, which, as Goswami argues, in attempting to fashion a “political
economy attentive to ‘indigenous’ institutions represented a sharp riposte
to authors of Eurocentric frameworks who homogenized and repressed
forms of historical difference.”18
In terms of crafts at least, Britons and Indians offered similar ideas
for that new political economy. This fact points to an important caveat
about the politics of crafts in the nineteenth century: they did not neces-
sarily follow the racial lines of colonial society. Nationalist historiography
has long argued that British colonial rule distorted the Indian economy
by increasing India’s dependence on agriculture, turning a manufactur-
ing nation into a source of raw materials for the imperial economy, and
hobbling the development of large factory industry.19 I am interested
here not in the opposition between destructive policies set in place by
the British and heroic resistance offered by Indian nationalists, but in the
INTRODUCTION 7
shared ideas that made the opposition possible: how Indians and Britons
alike began to use common understandings about crafts to debate the
economy. More Britons than Indians, to be sure, embraced an oriental-
ist vision of timeless village craftsmanship as India’s natural form of
production. And indeed, this vision often carried explicitly imperialist
connotations, intertwined as it was with arguments that India could
best be protected from the evils of modernizing times by a benevolent,
paternalistic British government. But Gandhi offers an obvious example
of an Indian who romanticized the virtues of traditional artisanal pro-
duction, albeit for very different political ends. On the flip side, Indians
were prominent advocates of industrial modernization who criticized the
British government’s failure to introduce and support change. And yet
here too, modernization was not racially exclusive, as seen by the dedica-
tion with which men like Alfred Chatterton or D. C. Churchill worked
to develop traditional industries in full support of the existing structure
of colonial rule.
Indeed, rather than focus on diverging policies, I want to emphasize
a converging agenda. Indians and Britons alike put crafts development
at the heart of the state’s duty to promote the welfare of its people; both
sides agreed that crafts offered a way either to preserve popular happi-
ness via traditional structures or to build up industrial diversity and ease
national poverty. They also agreed that artisans were subjects, not agents,
of that development. British officials and Indian elites alike used claims of
artisanal backwardness to assert control over crafts communities; ignor-
ing artisanal innovation, they preferred to see all progress as coming from
outside and thus argued that they—Western educated, scientific-minded,
and thoroughly imbued with ideas of progress—were the ones to direct
it. British claims to authority in crafts rested on the larger justification for
colonial rule; since artisans/Indians were unable to embrace modernity on
their own, the British would step in and lead the way. Power over artisans
thus was but one expression of power over the subcontinent as a whole.
Arguments by Indian elites for their right to leadership were also about
power, but in different ways. On the one hand, such claims were part
of the still ongoing process of political consolidation by which certain
groups fashioned themselves as intermediaries between the colonial state
and native society, defining their own political importance to the British
by establishing their ability to speak for lower classes, castes, and commu-
nities.20 On the other hand, Indian elites also used authority over crafts
to contest the power of the state. As recent work by Gyan Prakash and
Sanjay Seth has demonstrated, Indian elites used their thorough incorpo-
ration of the discourse of progress—whether through science or Western
knowledge, more broadly—as the grounds from which to claim one of the
key functions of the colonial governmentalist state: the ability to care for
its people.21 As such, offering leadership in industrial matters was a potent
means of establishing legitimacy in the eyes of the state at a time when
Indians otherwise were shut out of political power.
Emphasizing the shared use of crafts to claim power is not meant to imply
that there were no differences between British officials and Indian elites on
questions of crafts. Those differences were real, even if the language and cate-
gories deployed were often the same. As Partha Chatterjee has argued, Indian
nationalists drew heavily on the conceptual frameworks of colonial rule,
even as they resisted its exercise.22 Specific to crafts, Saloni Mathur points out
that under Gandhi’s leadership Indian nationalism “rejected foreign domi-
nation, but it did so by asserting some of the most naive essentialisms of the
colonial paradigms that preceded it: the ancient purity of the Indian village,
the timeless dignity of the indigenous craftsman, and the ‘infinite superiority
of the Indian artisan,’ in [Ananda] Coomaraswamy’s terms, ‘both physically
and spiritually’ to the English factory worker in the West.”23
Ideas about and interventions into Indian crafts thus emerged out of
the particular politics of colonial society. As such, this book offers a use-
ful counterpart to two recent, excellent studies by Dutta and Mathur that
explore the imperial side of this story: how ideas formed in England about
India—and specifically about Indian crafts, artisans, and design—shaped
British perceptions and interests in the subcontinent.24 Both focus, in
different ways, on what Mathur calls “the cult of the craftsman”: British
fixation on the bodies and practices of Indian artisans at the high noon
of empire. Whereas Mathur explores how Indian artisans appeared in
exhibitions and department store displays in Britain, Dutta follows the
wide reach of British design bureaucracy into India tracing the global
extension of British aesthetic ideas in ways supportive of colonial power
and international capitalism. These remain, however, imperial stories,
in which Indians appear largely as recipients of ideologies forged in the
metropole. To complement that British narrative, this book explores
the Indian side of things, arguing that ideas about crafts in India served
distinct ends within colonial society. Part of that novelty is visible in the
wide range of actors involved in crafts. Alongside government art schools
or British design reformers, native states, nationalist organizations, private
entrepreneurs, and independent industrial reformers all took an active
part in craft development, articulating their own interests and agendas.
That broad interest reveals another reason why efforts in crafts took their
own direction in India; crafts had a deep political salience. Historically
rooted in the importance of artisanal production and markets to state
INTRODUCTION 9
power,25 that salience also rested on the contemporary possibilities crafts

offered to Indian elites in negotiating their own authority vis-à-vis the
lower classes and the state.
If one goal of this book is to insert culture into economics, another is to

insert economics into culture. Aside from the economic history mentioned
earlier, scholarship on crafts in the colonial period has focused either on
colonial art policies or on changing styles within particular industries.
From the policy side, many historians emphasize the role of the state in
promoting traditional styles, depicting efforts in government art schools,
publications, and displays as a traditionalist coating that masked the trans-
formative goals of the modernizing Indian state.26 Crafts here often appear
as a side issue to other, more central topics. Thus, in Partha Mitter and
Tapati Guha-Thakurta’s insightful work on art and nationalism, art school
efforts in crafts appear as part of a British refusal to recognize and validate
Indian fine arts; in this view, crafts classes diverted attention and resources
from painting and sculpture, impeding development in those two key artis-
tic fields.27 Scholars who focus on stylistic changes, meanwhile, often do so in
isolation from concerns about politics, with the notable exception of work
on clothing.28 More broadly, the recent outpouring of work on histories of
visual culture has focused largely on the two-dimensional arts of photog-
raphy, popular posters, and film—items that, since they played little role in
economic development in the colonial era, are rarely discussed in terms of
economic policies for that period.29
None of this work takes the economic problems of culture—whether
crafts or otherwise—seriously. Addressing crafts in terms of only chang-
ing styles or colonial institutions amounts to accepting the terms of the
largely British art officials who promoted traditional designs in India.
But these officials were only one small subset of a much larger group of
people across colonial society engaged in redefining artisanal production,
including economic nationalists, missionary organizers, technical experts,
industrial educators, and store owners, most of whom saw crafts as a
key economic issue for India’s future. More pointedly, ignoring the eco-
nomic challenges crafts posed means ignoring the way crafts fit into elite
attempts to define their own leadership in colonial society—a key reason
why crafts figured so prominently in national debates.
Attention to elite leadership in shaping the debate about crafts helps
to make sense of later iterations on the theme of difference, whether in
the hands of Gandhi or in the policies of new craft organizations after
Independence, in 1947. In C. A. Bayly’s classic article about the origins
of swadeshi politics, Gandhi’s use of clothing as a key tool in nationalist
politics rested heavily on precolonial understandings, specifically the

power of cloth to capture and retain moral essences.30 More recently, Lisa
Trivedi has explored the roots of Gandhi’s campaigns to promote khadi in
the metropolitan ideas of John Ruskin, William Morris, and Leo Tolstoy,
on the one hand, and the specific activism of the swadeshi movement in
Bengal, on the other. 31 Both emphasize how cloth provided Gandhi with a
tool to oppose Western domination—a tool forged out of precolonial ideas
and anticolonial activism. Crafts had, however, a more complicated history
before Gandhi, one that divided Indians along lines of class and education
as much as it united them against the British. That complicated history, in
turn, had a much longer influence than is usually assumed. In particular,
the content and scale of the massive development efforts in crafts after
1947 make little sense if Gandhian khadi campaigns were their only point
of origin. Indeed, as I argue in the conclusion, Gandhi was more of an
interruption than an inspiration for post-1947 craft policies—policies very
much rooted in the ideas and power politics explored in this book.
The Scope of the Study: Definitional Practices
In this book, I trace conversations about crafts and the nation’s future as
they were forged in and around local institutions and groups particular to
western India. Combining national focus and local action, this is both a
national and a regional story. Viewed one way, this is a national story that
is specific to western India. Gujarat in particular—defined as it was then
with its intellectual capital in Bombay—boasted both relatively advanced
modern industrial growth and unusually vibrant traditions of artisanal
production. The result was an unusually vibrant engagement with crafts
as compared to other parts of India. As such, as Svati Joshi points out,
Gujarati-speaking elites paid close attention to questions of technology,
industrialization, and the changes in traditional production from the
1850s on, drawing heavily on Indian leadership in industry to define their
political activism.32 Viewed another way, however, this is a regional story
with national ambitions. For, when educators opened industrial schools,
entrepreneurs inaugurated craft factories, and researchers experimented
with new artisanal technologies in the cities and towns of western India,
they did so with the idea that their efforts would improve crafts elsewhere
in British and princely India. Trying to use local achievements to shape
national goals, such efforts participated in the wider debate about crafts.
Indeed, it could hardly be otherwise, since the nation was, as Goswami
has argued, the privileged site of economic imagination and—through
the collection of statistical data on the national level—political economic
INTRODUCTION 11
processes.33 In the end, the question of crafts emerges in the interplay

between the region and the nation; debates about the present and future
of crafts operated at the national level, even as specific interventions had a
more local scope, depending on the presence of particular artisanal com-
munities or specific industrial activists.
If that suggests where this history is located, the question of what the
topic of crafts includes still requires explanation. For all of the evident
economic, political, and cultural importance attached to crafts, the cat-
egory of crafts is not a natural one. What binds “crafts” together as one set
of goods? On a material, physical level, nothing; brass vessels, Kashmiri
shawls, and carved wooden balconies use different materials, require dif-
ferent skills and working techniques, and serve very different purposes of
carrying liquid, adorning bodies, and supporting houses. Or, to look at
it from the opposite side, in functional terms, nothing separates a hand-
woven, intricately patterned silk patola34 sari from a machine-printed
polyester one; both share the same designs and colors and are worn in the
same style. What, then, connects some things and separates off others?
Where do crafts end and other types of products begin? What distin-
guishes artisans from other types of workers?
In the examples just cited, the answer is hand labor, the absence of
heavy machinery, and adherence to some sort of traditional designs. This
category of crafts had achieved naturalized form by the time Gandhi
wrote his 1919 Young India article on the neglect of Indian art. And yet,
the boundaries of that category varied significantly during the period
under study. Three examples of different definitions in action suggest
the problems with assuming otherwise. The first is drawn from the his-
tory of the Sir Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy School of Art (or the JJ School as it
was and is still known) in Bombay—what came to be the preeminent art
and craft school in western India. From its founding in 1857 down to
the 1930s, the school taught both ornamental crafts and what are now
considered “fine arts.” Within the crafts program, a wide range of sub-
jects were proposed over the years, ranging from gem cutting to tapestry
weaving, glass glazing, embroidery, and house decoration.35 And yet, the
crafts that actually made it into the curriculum were only things familiar
to the region. When the crafts program at the school expanded in 1890,
for instance, six new ateliers taught enameling, wood carving, silver- and
goldwork, carpet weaving, brasswork, and copperwork; except carpets,
all were crafts with deep historical roots in western India. The preference
here was both aesthetic and material; in the eyes of those in charge of the
JJ School, artisanship involved the creation of craft objects of traditional
production and style.
More industrial-minded reformers often disagreed with this almost-

exclusive emphasis on artistic objects. In light of industrial concerns with
increasing production overall, crafts were seen more as a means of pro-
duction—by hand with minimal tools—than as a particular set of objects.
In 1903, for instance, the Government of India appointed the Clibborn
Commission to investigate how education could better serve both tra-
ditional and modern industries. In their report, Lieutenant-Colonel J.
Clibborn and the other commission members rejected the narrow vision
of crafts as decorative arts in place at the JJ School. Instead, they called for
a wider definition, one that reflected the role crafts played in the national
economy. Thus, as part of their recommendations, they urged industrial
schools to work with the crafts that provided employment to the largest
numbers of people: oil pressing, leatherwork, fishing, and pottery.36 Here
crafts seem to be defined almost exclusively as unmechanized, hand labor
done in small-scale settings outside the realm of formal industrial devel-
opment; whether specific objects were produced or not was immaterial.
A third and more recent example of the problem of trying to define the
boundaries of crafts and artisanal labor can be seen in the special reports
on handicrafts published as part of the 1961 Census of India. In Gujarat,
the director of Census Operations R. K. Trivedi selected thirty-one local
handicrafts in 103 different craft centers for special study. In retrospect,
some of Trivedi’s choices seem obvious, some not. Included on his list
were some of the most famous of the state’s local art manufactures: agates
from Cambay, pataras37 from Bhavnagar, mashru38 from Patan, zari39 work
from Surat, lacquerware from Sankheda, and blocks for cloth printing from
Pethapur. Added to these more predictable artware, however, were some
things that now would fall more in the category of small industries rather
than in that of crafts: padlocks, scales, crochet work, soap, glass, and
snuff.40 The implicit definition of crafts in the 1961 census was of artistic
or more purely utilitarian objects, produced primarily by hand among
hereditary artisan families. This compromise between the definitions
offered by the JJ School and the Clibborn Commission emerged out of the
particular needs of a developing country saddled with limited capital and
surplus labor. As the registrar general of the Indian Census Asok Mitra
put it in his foreword to the individual craft surveys, the importance of
handicrafts for the Indian economy lay in
the fact that the tools employed are often timeworn and rudimentary, the
pools of skill narrow, highly specialized and hereditary, being limited to
certain communities or castes and not infrequently to a few families, and
the capital labour ratio associated with these products is favourable to a
INTRODUCTION 13
large population base experiencing large absolute increments which build

up large reservoirs of underemployed and therefore cheap labour.41
These examples offer three different definitions of crafts and artisanal

industry in action: artistic goods vs. hand labor vs. traditional processes in
a particular ratio of capital to labor. The problem is, of course, how to rec-
oncile these differences for the purposes of this study. Are crafts particular
objects, a means of production, or a sector of the economy? Could they be
all three? My objective here is less to create some comprehensive definition
than to point out that the variations rely on different definitions of Indian
society and economy, each of which comes with its own politics. The artistic
focus of the JJ School, for instance, was based on a limited sense of India’s
development potential; art industries in this view were all that India could
contribute to globally competitive markets. The Clibborn Commission,
by contrast, took a more optimistic view of future development, seeing
potential in a range of skilled and unskilled, processing and manufacturing
industries; the commission members argued, however, that all of Indian
hand industries had to be reoriented to make such growth possible. Finally,
the Census of India combined a sense of industrial limitations with hope
for the future by embracing crafts as a path for growth given the reality of a
cash-starved developing society. Those three definitions represent, in other
words, different arguments about India’s place in the world. One of the
goals of this book is to trace the politics of how and why those definitions
changed over time and in various institutional settings.
Having established the complexity of the definitional problem in the

historical record, there is still the question of how the terms “crafts” and
“artisanship” will be used within the space of this book. In what follows,
I explore the discourse on crafts in general, using interventions in specific
areas—furniture, handlooms, carpets, and so on—as examples of how
this discourse affected material practices. In doing so, I reflect the tenor
of the debates of the period, in which industrial activists both in and
outside government treated all crafts as a single sector, bound together
by common characteristics and concerns. Government surveys, for
instance, carefully tabulated comparable information for each industry
on average wages, total employment, and changing product ranges in
order to create standardized reports. With diverse processes occurring
across wide geographic areas in disparate industries all distilled into
common categories of analysis, it became increasingly possible to see
all crafts as experiencing similar sets of issues. Indeed, critics tended to
use experiences within one craft as evidence of larger trends. The fact
that Ahmedabadi woodworkers were shifting from carving to building

construction, for instance, was no longer merely a local change within a
particular artisanal community. Rather, it provided evidence of a wider
movement of castes and communities in or out of artisanal employment
for the Bombay Presidency and India as a whole. And indeed, many
studies revealed that similar things were happening in different crafts.
One report after another noted competition from new types of goods,
whether mill cloth in cotton weaving or chinaware in pottery; author
after author traced the geographic reorganization of production, as ivory
carving became increasingly concentrated in Poona, while more and
more of Gujarati block printing was done in Ahmedabad, both at the
expense of more diffuse production earlier.
A sectoral approach that identified shared problems across crafts led to
hopes for common solutions. Government officials, for instance, praised
a late-nineteenth-century carpet factory started by the American Marathi
Mission in Ahmednagar as a model that could be adapted for produc-
tion in other media.42 Meanwhile, as discussed in Chapter 3, organizers
in the 1910s tried to replicate the success of weaving cooperatives among
leatherworkers on the basis of the idea that cooperative principles could
be implemented among any artisanal group.43 Or, to give yet another
example, the industrial schools discussed in Chapter 4 offered instruction
in carpentry and metalwork in part to train a new generation of workers
in those crafts but also to establish general skills thought to be needed
across crafts: principles of accuracy, precision, and efficiency as well as
more material abilities in interpreting drawings, measuring, caring for
tools, and documenting work for customers.
Honoring the vision of those involved in industrial reform who saw
crafts as a common field of shared processes and changes—a singular
economic sector, type of production, and unitary aesthetic field—I draw
on the examples of multiple crafts to build my arguments, using wood,
pottery, printed and woven cloth, dyeing, carpets, brassware, and more.
The discussion of crafts throughout the book is thus amalgamated, draw-
ing together a range of diverse products and processes under the common
label of crafts. It is also, however, oppositional, with crafts forever coun-
terpoised to their perceived opposite: modern industry. This opposition
is, indeed, central to the emergence of the idea of crafts. It is only in the
context of industrialization that the definition of crafts as a certain kind
of hand labor and limited technology—as a particular kind of labor
process—becomes possible. Before the rise of modern machine produc-
tion and mills, hand production was all there was; it is only when another
type of production develops that certain things get defined by their origin
INTRODUCTION 15
in hand labor. Crafts thus emerge at the end of the nineteenth century as
the negative of modern industry, in terms of the values attached both to
individual goods and to the possibilities for growth.
This does not mean I have included everything that could possibly
fall under the label of crafts in this period. Debates over the nature and
future of crafts in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries never
embraced the full spectrum of artisanal industries; in keeping with those
debates, I too omit some possibilities. The definition of crafts at work in
much of the literature on the subject during the period of this study is
perhaps closest to that offered in 1936 by N. M. Joshi, an economist who
conducted research at the Gokhale Institute in Poona under the direction
of D. R. Gadgil. In his study Urban Handicrafts of the Bombay Deccan,
Joshi addressed the problem of how to define handicrafts directly. First
he rejected earlier definitions as being either too narrow (excluding any
workers who were not economically independent of middlemen or traders)
or too wide (including all hand-based work, skilled or unskilled, devoted
to the production of objects or not) so as to render the category analyti-
cally useless. Joshi insisted that what mattered to the definition was not
the economic situation of producers, but the structure of production. In
his own definition, handicraft was then something “in which there is a
transformation of material substances by workers who possess manual
skill and work with hand tools or machines or with small power-driven
machines, which are used for one or more but not for all processes.”44
Joshi’s definition is useful for clarifying the ideas operating at the core
of debates over crafts. On the one hand, crafts are to be distinguished
from hand processes that do not transform material substance (such as
fishing), while, on the other, they are distinct from hand processes that do
not involve skilled labor (such as stone breaking or street sweeping). And
yet even this narrower definition included a far wider range of goods and
activities than actually appeared in colonial-era literature on handicrafts
or as subjects of development. Indeed, despite regular acknowledgment in
this period of the diversity of the field, in practice most attention focused
on relatively few crafts.
Government officials, industrial reformers, art lovers, and missionar-
ies alike seemed to have had several closely interconnected, if unstated,
criteria in selecting crafts for development, reorganization, or promotion.
First, they focused on specialized workers whose primary occupation was
production of objects, mostly by hand. Thus the JJ School of Art taught
men and boys to be professional artisans, devoted to the practice and
perfection of their art. The numerous industrial schools started by local
government boards and missionaries similarly trained boys to become
full-time carpenters or smiths, thereby diverting students from compet-

ing for either clerical or agricultural employment. This focus obviously
excluded crafts that did not offer full-time employment, most notably
those done by women. Indeed, the focus on professional work wrote
women out almost by definition, whether they specialized in preparatory
stages like preparing warps for weaving or reeling silk or did all stages of a
craft as in embroidery. In either case, the fact that women’s work involved
relatively little technology and could be put down and picked up around
domestic duties rendered it largely invisible to public planning.
Second, crafts advocates focused on specialized skills. Training pro-
grams rarely bothered with crafts that required less than a year’s training
for competent practice. Instead, they taught skills that were either unavail-
able or difficult to come by—skills that would generally be handed down
from artisan to artisan in a more traditional learning environment, or
acquired over years of application to the craft at hand. Hence the focus
on carpentry, for example, which required detailed knowledge of geom-
etry, precise use of tools, and careful, exact execution of plans—all things
presumably impossible without formal instruction and specialized study.
Such training not only supplemented skills then seen as lacking in tradi-
tional industries but also provided an alternative non-caste-based path to
knowledge that could be controlled by the state.
A further unstated criterion of interest was that the crafts be primarily
used for secular rather than ritual purposes. In the brassware industry of
Poona, for instance, it was the production of brass vessels and utensils that
interested outside observers concerned with the industry’s future—not
the manufacture of images of gods or goddesses for worship, even though
that was perhaps equally important from an economic point of view.45
Interestingly, this focus on the secular over the spiritual was one of use,
not design. Thus, students at the Reay workshops at the JJ School often
integrated Hindu gods and goddesses into designs for doors, ceremonial
plates, formal furniture, and decorative paneling; they rarely, if ever, made
objects suitable for use in religious worship itself.
Finally, all of the crafts noted in industrial surveys or selected for
technological improvement were easily commodifiable. This focus on
crafts for and in markets, combined with the emphasis on specialized
production mentioned earlier, effectively deflected attention from crafts
that intersected more rarely, if ever, with markets: for example, women’s
personal embroidery or traditional domestic wall painting. Indeed, it was
only as such crafts began to enter markets more regularly that they caught
outside attention. The phulkari46 embroidery done by the women of the
Punjab, for instance, became the subject of serious outside interest only
INTRODUCTION 17
in the late 1880s.47 This interest was based on and helped to further two
parallel changes: first, the movement of traditionally worked veil cloths
onto the open market, and second, the application of phulkari stitches to
new products like tablecloths, napkins, and handkerchiefs, as rural women
increasingly produced piecework embroidery.48
Taken together, Joshi’s definition and the further criteria of specializa-

tion of production, skill, secular use, and commodity status help to clarify
the ways in which late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century activists
narrowed down the diversity of crafts. We are left, however, with what
is still a wide field encompassing everything from the most basic village
pottery production and crude basket weaving to the most sophisticated
weaving of luxury cloth or fabrication of elaborate silver vessels. What
holds these things together, besides a common definition as crafts? Is there
any utility in such a definition that lumps together rural, unorganized and
urban, specialized industry, objects for personal use and objects for mar-
ket sale, production by amateurs and that by professionals, and the most
basic utilitarian objects like wooden cart wheels with the most luxurious
decorative pieces like fine gold jewelry?
Many scholars have argued that the answer is, quite simply, no.
Tithankar Roy and Douglas Haynes have done much to point out the very
different experiences of different crafts, of crafts in different parts of the
subcontinent, and of different practitioners within a single craft. They and
others argue that rather than assume single, unitary categories, scholars
must pay attention to specific, local experiences to see how particular
artisans fared in the context of changing economic circumstances. Roy’s
work in particular is invaluable for disaggregating crafts to point out how
some traditional industries (as he prefers to call them) had more success
than others in adapting and reorganizing in the face of those changes.49
Even with the more familiar example of handlooms—always at the heart
of arguments about the destruction of crafts in the face of industrial-
ization and colonization—Roy argues that there was no one trajectory.
Instead, closer attention to documentary evidence reveals that weavers
in western India fared far better than those in Bengal over the course of
the nineteenth century. On a more local level, handloom production not
only survived but expanded in towns like Sholapur in the early twentieth
century, while it all but stopped in other centers like Poona and Thane.
Moreover, within a successful weaving town like Sholapur, as Haynes
notes, the differences within the industry could be profound, making it
difficult to talk about a single artisanal experience; some artisans moved
into positions of wealth and dominance as small factory owners, while
others lost their relative independence and sank to the status of wage labor
or left weaving altogether.50
More generally, various scholars have questioned the validity of writ-
ing history through categories that assume unitary experiences for large
groups—whether subaltern as opposed to elite, or artisans as opposed to
industrial workers, middlemen, or traders. As Rosalind O’Hanlon and
others have pointed out in critiques of the subaltern studies approach to
the history of India, such categories do as much to elide differential access
to power as they draw attention to the fundamental fact of power in social
life.51 To take the example at hand, artisans may have been subaltern vis-
à-vis the colonial state or vis-à-vis the emerging professional Indian elite,
but this does not mean that they were either internally undifferentiated or
subaltern in all contexts. Within the category of artisan, males exercised
power over females, older men over younger ones, rich karkhandars52 over
wage laborers, skilled workers over unskilled ones, and so forth.
Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson have suggested that one way forward
is to pay attention to the formation of categories themselves. They argue
that scholarship that engages with discrete categories—whether cultural,
national, or otherwise—only render differences between such categories
natural and inevitable, when in fact they are historical and contingent.
Instead of lapsing into such essentialisms, they argue for turning “from
a project of juxtaposing preexisting differences to one of exploring the
construction of differences in historical process.”53
Responding to that charge, this book examines the construction of
crafts difference in India in the late nineteenth and early twentieth cen-
turies. Part of my argument is that a whole series of interventions by
different agents—government officials, local and provincial government
bodies, missionaries, artisans, reformers, nationalists, and industrialists—
reified the category of crafts in opposition to modern industry. This was
an essentially creative process. Emphasizing difference and not similar-
ity was an interpretative choice, made in spite of much evidence to the
contrary. Indeed, Roy and Haynes have shown that radical restructuring
in this period rendered crafts more like modern industry—that is, more
centralized, specialized, and commercialized.54 This choice had real mate-
rial consequences, as reformers directed development efforts at some arti-
sans and some types of production and not others. It also had ideological
ones, as the repetition of the “fact” of difference rendered it common
sense. Finally, it also had political consequences, as outsiders claimed
authority over the field of crafts and, more specifically, Indian elites used
crafts to contest the power of the state. This is not to say that the idea of
crafts difference had absolute power. Indeed, it is important to remember
INTRODUCTION 19
the limitations of the idea of crafts difference; while it structured public

interventions into crafts, it had relatively little effect on artisanal choices
or strategies, as traditional industries struggled to meet the challenges of
new technologies and markets.
Chapter Outlines
Before anyone could intervene to change production or use crafts to

advance a political agenda, more had to be known about traditional
industries: what was being made, by whom, how, where, and for whom.
In Chapter 1, I explore how late-nineteenth-century British officials
launched a series of attempts to translate the scattered practices of indi-
vidual artisans into standard, universalized accounts of crafts as a whole.
Taking material form in exhibitions and museums—including most
famously at the 1851 Great Exhibition in London but also at the Victoria
and Albert Museum in Bombay and local exhibitions in Broach, Nagpur,
Bombay, and Baroda—these accounts outlined both the contours of
local production and the status of local goods in comparison to global
manufactures. Taking textual form, these accounts explored the methods
and processes involved in crafts, carefully documenting for public con-
sumption just how artisans did their work. Whether material or textual,
much of the emphasis in these documentation efforts came to focus on
the artisanal body. Via the physical presence of artisans at exhibitions or
the endless discussion in print of kinship networks, marriage practices,
and religious traditions, observers defined crafts as fundamentally rooted
in unscientific, tradition-bound artisans whose productive abilities were
overdetermined by cultural environment. This definition reflected the
Arts and Crafts Movement’s emphasis on the culture and process of crafts,
but with a colonial twist: here the artisanal body was orientalized, express-
ing the fundamental difference of India from the West.
In Chapter 2, I explore how that culture-bound artisanal body shaped,
in turn, attempts to understand the problems facing Indian crafts. Late-
nineteenth-century industrial activists explained both the distinctive
achievements of the past and the striking problems of the present in
terms of cultures of work: how artisans understood and approached their
crafts. Reformers argued that artisans across different media shared com-
mon, conservative attitudes toward new technologies, education, inde-
pendence, and occupational mobility; they also argued that it was these
attitudes that prevented crafts from developing toward Western-style
factory production—indeed, that defined crafts in opposition to modern
industry. And yet, this was precisely the period in which artisans moved
into new working relationships, adopted novel technologies, and subdi-

vided work processes in ways that narrowed the gap to factory produc-
tion. The assumption of difference reigned despite these changes, setting
India’s traditional crafts in opposition to colonial modernity. It did so in
part because of the absence of artisans from the conversation. Artisans
launched their own changes in this period by reorganizing production
and introducing new technologies. But they rarely played an active role in
public debates about crafts; objects rather than subjects of the conversa-
tion, they—like women in debates about sati55—provided the grounds
on which arguments about development took place. If artisans found
themselves shut out of leadership in their own field, Indian elites did
not. Indeed, craft development represented for Western-educated Indian
industrial activists a play for power—power over artisans now defined as
unable to direct their own future, power over a national future increas-
ingly seen to hinge on economic success, and power over the colonial
state that bore primary responsibility for economic development. One of
the reasons for the longevity of ideas of artisanal difference is thus their
political utility in struggles by Indian elites to claim equality with the
British.
Colonial knowledge emerged in tandem with practical interventions;
the same men who wrote about crafts proposed changes to existing pro-
duction, while attempts to introduce new technologies provided the basis
for assumptions about artisanal conservatism. In Chapter 3, I turn to
one example of the interpenetration of discourse and practice: projects
designed to preserve traditional crafts. Such projects highlighted the
things that most set artisans apart from modern factory workers: tradi-
tional design and individual autonomy. Thus, the JJ School, the Journal of
Indian Art and Industry, museums, and exhibitions tried to reinvigorate
ossified styles by rebuilding individual design abilities. For their part,
the Indo-American Ahmedabad Wood Carving Company (AWCC),
established in 1883, and early-twentieth-century cooperatives tried to
restore artistic and economic independence to artisans then in the grips
of exploitative markets. All of these initiatives advanced innovations of
various kinds: in control over design, new styles for distant markets, and
financial cooperation among artisans. And yet all disguised change in the
name of preserving the traditional difference of crafts.
Not everyone was content to return crafts to precolonial models. As I
discuss in Chapter 4, even modernization efforts like industrial schools and
handloom improvements, however, put strict limits on change to preserve
the ideal of artisanal difference. Emerging in western India in the 1850s,
industrial schools offered up-to-date, systematic classroom instruction in
INTRODUCTION 21
place of conservative, idiosyncratic traditional apprenticeships; by offer-

ing training on hand tools and not machines, targeting artisanal castes,
and keeping strict limits on the literary education provided, however, they
perpetuated the separation from modern industry. Similarly, inventors
like D. C. Churchill at the American Marathi Mission developed new loom
technologies to help handweavers compete with mills; by preserving hand
power and individual independence when engines and factories would
have been more efficient, however, Churchill and others also solidified
the idea of artisanal difference. In other words, activists structured even
modernizing efforts around the idea that crafts were not—and should not
become—like modern industry.
In conclusion, I examine the long life of the idea of crafts difference,
first in Gandhi’s khadi campaigns and then in new efforts to promote
traditional crafts after Indian Independence in 1947. As suggested earlier,
Gandhi’s striking engagement with artisanal industries in the 1920s was
itself made possible by nearly seventy years of work documenting, under-
standing, preserving, and modernizing crafts. In his deployment of khadi,
Gandhi was an innovator to be sure, mobilizing incredible political power
to spread the message of crafts to much wider levels of society than ever
before. But in those innovations, Gandhi built on much earlier work that
had created value for the categories of the artisanal and the hand-made
and that had made crafts a way of negotiating authority within colonial
society. Those continuities operated after 1947 as well, in an era that
is usually thought of as marking a decisive break with British policies.
Independent India did witness a dramatic expansion in public attention
to crafts, with new programs to help artisans access raw materials, adopt
new tools, introduce modern designs, and reach wider markets, as well as
new attempts to build consumer interest. And yet, as I argue, these efforts
continued the trends laid down before 1920 in terms of isolating artisans
from modern industry while confirming artisanal dependence on outside
leadership—now in the hands of the Indian state.
1
Demanding Knowledge,
Documenting the Body
I n the Great Exhibition of 1851 at the famous Crystal Palace in London (see
fig. 1.1), the East India Company brought together a lavish assemblage of
goods intended to represent British holdings in the subcontinent. Composed
of “such specimens of the products and manufactures of that country as
may tend to illustrate its resources,”1 the prominently placed Indian Court
combined very disparate things into a single display. One section detailed
the raw materials, vegetable, and natural resources of the subcontinent, with
cases filled with samples of iron, copper, tin, lead, and other minerals, on
the one hand, and crops suitable for export, on the other. Another section
was devoted to the tools and machines used in agriculture and manufac-
ture and contained models of plows and harrows, an oil mill, a pottery
wheel, looms for weaving cloth and carpets, and models of various artisans
at work. Some cases near the transept displayed richly decorated clothes
and ornaments: a coat with pearl epaulettes, an emerald and diamond-
studded gold girdle, ruby-encrusted armlets that had once belonged to
the Mughal emperors, and various necklaces of gold and precious stones.
Other cases were draped with plain and patterned fabrics in cotton, silk, and
wool, with woven, printed, tie-dyed, and embroidered designs. Counters
lining one of the bays offered up the weapons of the subcontinent—
everything from inlaid silver matchlocks to swords with enameled hilts,
leather shields, chain mail, bows and arrows, and battle axes. Another bay
displayed assorted carved, lacquered, and inlaid wooden goods designed to
Western tastes, including inkstands, cigar boxes, pen holders, and card cases.
And finally, a massive tent lined with rich shawls and carpets enclosed a
room furnished in the style of an Indian palace, featuring a massive ivory
throne presented to Queen Victoria by the Rajah of Travancore that was
surrounded by intricately carved wooden furniture from Bombay.2
Figure 1.1 The Indian Court at the Great Exhibition, 1851, color lithograph by
Joseph Nash
Source: Dickinson’s Comprehensive Pictures of the Great Exhibition of 1851. Courtesy of the Columbia
University Libraries.
By 1851, Britain’s political suzerainty in the subcontinent was clear.

And yet visitors to the Crystal Palace knew relatively little about the full
range of Indian raw or manufactured goods. As Carol Breckenridge has
argued, previous access to Indian things came only from cursory descrip-
tions in written sources or limited exposure to small collections.3 For
those who saw the exhibition, the Indian section thus presented a unique
opportunity. As the French political economist M. Blanqui put it,
The great value of this portion of the English Exhibition is, that it is impos-
sible to find it elsewhere, either on a large or a small scale. The greater por-
tions of the Indian articles, not being in conformity with European taste,
very few are generally imported into Europe. . . . This is an entire industrial
world, new to us even from its antiquity . . . and which, from its perfectly
original character, resembles no other.4
One of the many novelties of the Great Exhibition was its attempt to
present the “entire industrial world” of India comprehensively and logi-
cally. Indeed, the 1851 exhibition represents a major milestone in one of
the key colonial projects of the late nineteenth century: the centralization
and systematization of knowledge by the state. Earlier eras offered little
DEMANDING KNOWLEDGE, DOCUMENTING THE BODY 25
precedent for such an effort in crafts. That is not to say that there was no
foreign knowledge about India’s products. As part of growing trade to
the subcontinent in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, European
trading companies and travelers accumulated what information they
could about specific goods, most notably India’s prized textiles. Part of
this knowledge was personal, practical, and local: where to find the best
weavers in an area, what those weavers could produce at a given price, and
how best to get cloth dyed and printed to company specifications. But
part of the knowledge was also general: how, as a whole, Indian weavers
produced unusually fine cottons and complexly patterned silks, printers
and painters created intricate designs, and dyers rendered those designs
in vibrant, permanent colors.5 Practical and general knowledge obviously
overlapped a great deal. When in 1678 Georges Roques prepared a 333-
page manuscript on cotton printing in western India titled “La manière
de nègocier dans les Indes Orientales” for the Compagnie des Indes, he
offered his documentation of the stages of printing, the care to be taken to
ensure proper quality at different steps, and the contractual terms under
which work could be done all as a means of encouraging French cotton
exports from the area.6
As the British consolidated their control over India in the early nine-
teenth century, they began to assemble earlier case studies of particular
industries into more systematic knowledge across the economy as a whole.
Usually appearing as part of surveys of new territories, such information
represented a broad effort to understand the inner workings of local
communities. Perhaps the most detailed effort was Francis Buchanan’s
monumental survey of the Bengal Presidency conducted between 1807
and 1814. Buchanan investigated the state of manufactures as one of his
seven topics of inquiry, alongside topography, natural resources, the state
of agriculture, divisions within communities, religious habits, and com-
merce.7 That effort to situate individual crafts within local and regional
economies was relatively unusual for a period in which Europeans tended
to focus only on export-oriented industries. And yet, his study was both
geographically confined and relatively idiosyncratic, unable to comment
on production processes elsewhere or even to offer the same level of
analysis to all crafts within that area. A regional expression of the totaliz-
ing drive for information visible in 1851, Buchanan’s survey did not come
close to the Great Exhibition’s attempt to survey all of India’s products, let
alone collect them into a single display of India’s material wealth.
Nor, for that matter, had earlier Indic states attempted anything
similar. Indic states had long histories of interest and patronage in
crafts. Rulers competed to attract the best artisans to their courts to
encourage the best possible production for royal consumption.8 At the

same time, such rulers accumulated exotic goods from far and wide
as expressions of kingly ambition; as C. A. Bayly has argued, possess-
ing iconic foreign goods—Chinese porcelains, Persian silks, Malaccan
pearls, Kashmiri shawls—allowed kings whose practical authority was
limited to lay claim to more global influence.9 In neither case, though,
did Indic rulers attempt to encourage, catalog, or accumulate all things
from a region. Instead, they focused materially on fine objects suitable
for courtly grandeur, and intellectually on things most important for
regional competition or trade.
Before 1851, then, neither Europeans nor Indians had comprehensive
knowledge of the full range of Indian goods, let alone how, by whom, and
for whom they were produced. This was typical of early colonial knowl-
edge economies. As Bayly notes, within the subcontinent, information
on all topics—from political threats to agricultural markets—had been
inevitably fragmentary before 1800, in part because control over knowl-
edge was socially decentralized; no one actor claimed or even aspired to
universal knowledge.10 With British power still fragmented and—in some
cases—unstable, and with direct access to the countryside only growing
slowly, more was neither possible nor necessary for state needs. Nor did
nonstate actors have the ability or desire to synthesize information on all
crafts.
By the middle of the nineteenth century, however, things had changed.
They did so for two reasons, one based in new forms of state power and the
other rooted in international aesthetic trends. Politically, as British power
consolidated in the early 1800s, officials increasingly justified colonial rule
in the name of progress, arguing that they were replacing past systems of
resource control—now denigrated as exploitative—with rational policies
designed by enlightened rulers. As David Ludden has argued, claims to the
rationality of those policies rested on the use of standard, centralized knowl-
edge. This knowledge was partly appropriated, as Europeans took informa-
tion previously confined to a range of Indian specialists and converted it
into systematic, scientific forms subject to abstract truth testing. It also was
created, as the British colonial administration gathered new data that had
never been produced by Indian rulers—what Ludden calls “new kinds of
facts for a new kind of regime.” The resulting empirical reorganization of
India helped make possible the political reorganization of the subcontinent,
with new, more detailed data allowing evermore precisely tailored policies.11
The revolt of 1857 only increased the need for better knowledge. Unable to
understand how their subjects could have risen against them in such num-
bers, the British blamed the event in part on inadequate understandings of
local conditions. With more and more detailed information about different
groups in society and how they fared under colonial rule, officials hoped to
be able to better predict political loyalties.
The push to define the legitimacy of the state through progress, com-
bined with a real fear of unknown political threats lurking in local society,
resulted in a massive documentation process after 1857 driven by what
Bernard Cohn has called different “investigative modalities”—archeology,
the census, mapping, photography, and more.12 Many of these modalities
specifically explored the productive elements of society. Within the all-
important agricultural sector this meant minute attention to soil types,
soil productivity, crop patterns, and agricultural methods. More broadly,
it also resulted in new attention to labor supply and productivity, raw
materials, local industries, and skill levels across society and how those
added to or detracted from overall growth. In 1872 the Reporter on the
Products of India for the India Office, John Forbes Watson, defined this
need in the following terms:
Much has already been accomplished in respect of opening the country by

means of information. The trigonometrical, topographical, revenue and
geological surveys have been undertaken on a scale of perhaps unprec-
edented magnitude. It remains to complete the industrial survey which shall
take stock of all the various productions of the country, agricultural, forestal,
pastoral and mineral, of manufactures, of the localities of production, of
the varieties, qualities and values of the produce, its supply and mode of
distribution and consumption.13
As Watson’s statement suggests, pleas for greater information about

India’s products reflected a growing sense of economic integration, so
that regional products in Gujarat or Bengal mattered not just for local
markets but also for Indian and imperial economies. As Manu Goswami
has argued, such economic knowledge helped create the geographic space
of British India, thereby naturalizing the nation as the space of economic
planning.14 That knowledge also, however, created the internal contours
of the economy. For, as state planners slotted regional manufactures into a
subcontinental grid of national economic capability, they simultaneously
divided that economy into distinct sectors of activity: manufacturing,
agriculture, and mining; Gujarat, the United Provinces, and Bengal. State
officials hoped to measure each against the others to create a thorough
picture of the entire economy. Systematic understanding was slow in
coming, though, in part because the colonial state never did conduct a
comprehensive industrial survey. Indeed, industrial knowledge accumu-
lated fitfully through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by way
of occasional overviews of particular provinces, government gazetteers,

and craft surveys.
The statist desire to map the country’s productive resources was not,
however, the only motivation for growing documentation of artisanal
production. Another inspiration was the international appreciation
for Indian design sparked by the Great Exhibition. Suddenly exposed
to a wide range of Indian manufactured goods, influential midcentury
British art figures such as Henry Cole, Richard Redgrave, Owen Jones,
and Matthew Digby Wyatt declared Indian ornamentation and use of
color unsurpassed. Enshrining Indian goods at the heart of the British
design reform movement, these men ensured evermore elaborate dis-
plays of Indian crafts at subsequent European exhibitions and museums.
This exposure helped create sustained public interest in Indian crafts that
lasted into the early twentieth century. Among those swept up in this
appreciation for Indian styles were members of the international Arts
and Crafts Movement like William Morris and C. R. Ashbee, who saw
contemporary Indian artisans as embodying the artistic, ennobled labor
to which they were striving. Whether concerned with the design prod-
ucts of Indian artisanal industries or the craftsmanship that produced
them, international fans wanted to know more about India’s art crafts.
This global interest sparked new efforts to document designs, identify
regional traditions, and describe skills.
In all these efforts—economic and aesthetic, productive and artistic—
outsiders tried to render knowledge about artisanal production public,
exposing private practices to general understanding. While those involved
saw themselves as bringing to light what had previously been hidden, it
is important to note the essential creativity of this public documentation.
It defined categories of analysis; by isolating crafts as a single type of
production and artisans as a particular subset of workers, documentation
helped to give conceptual unity to those labels. It established significance;
by describing crafts as contemporary manifestations of ancient, inherited
practices, studies defined artisanal objects and skills as embodiments of
Indian traditional culture, poised in opposition to modern technology
and thought. Finally, documentation efforts identified a rationale for
intervention; by exploring both the dangers of cultural Westernization
and the promises of economic development, surveys situated crafts within
the purview of a governmentalist state committed to the welfare of its
people.
Perhaps the most obviously creative aspect of this process was the
increasing emphasis on the difference between Indian crafts and modern,
Western industry. Initially, this difference operated through craft objects.
At international exhibitions, the glories of Indian patterning, ornamenta-

tion, and coloring stood in opposition to the failures of Western industrial
design. Within India, exhibitions and museums displayed handmade local
goods next to machine-made imports in order to demonstrate India’s
material weakness and encourage demand for new technologies. Over
time, though, the articulation of difference increasingly shifted from
products to producers. Part of a larger colonial project to map and dis-
cipline the bodies of colonial subjects—through health, hygiene, fitness,
labor habits, and more15—documentation efforts defined crafts via the
culturally bound, ethnographically defined artisanal body, rooted in local
practices, traditions, and communities. In the 1880s, for instance, govern-
ment gazetteers began presenting products as defined by the distinctive
features of caste and community: marriage customs, gods or goddesses
worshipped, and general attitudes toward thrift. Efforts in subsequent
decades to document crafts perpetuated this intimate connection between
economics, society, and culture. Indeed, industrial surveys down into the
1960s continued to feature detailed information on the religious, famil-
ial, and personal habits of artisans as part of the explanations offered of
production systems. In doing so, such studies operated on the idea that
production was intimately connected to culturally constituted artisanal
bodies—making those bodies central to crafts in ways that marked off
distance from mechanized, factory production.
Documenting Material Production: 1850s to 1870s
The first steps toward building knowledge about Indian crafts involved
gathering basic information about regional specialties: what things were
made in particular areas and how those differed from comparable prod-
ucts from other regions. Crafts already circulated widely across western
India and indeed across the subcontinent as a whole, with Banarasi bro-
cades finding ready markets in Surat, and Ahmedabadi paper popular in
the Central Provinces. And yet those markets tended to operate in isola-
tion from each other; traders specializing in textiles had little knowledge
about brassware, while those involved in gold knew little about ironwork.
After 1851, the demand was for synthetic understandings of all crafts;
only that would allow public assessments of each region’s overall pro-
ductive capacities. Such knowledge built up over time, albeit unevenly.
Exhibition organizers, for instance, grew increasingly confident of their
ability to name the particular manufactures of Junagad compared with
Surat or to identify the distinguishing characteristics of Indian as opposed
to Egyptian art. But they were less sure about why Surati brocades were
better than those from Junagad, or what prevented growth in some crafts
and encouraged it in others. Overall, expertise developed relatively rapidly
about objects, while knowledge of production lagged behind. Indeed, not
until the 1880s did either production or producers become serious objects
of investigation.
The Great Exhibition of 1851: Defining “Indian design”
The Great Exhibition of 1851 constituted not only one of the first but
also one of the most influential attempts to gather Indian crafts into a
common frame of reference.16 As noted earlier, the 1851 Indian Court
featured a diverse collection of manufactured goods, raw materials, mod-
els of agricultural and artisanal tools, and other miscellaneous objects.
One stated goal for the collection was to stimulate trade with India. As
reporter on economic products for India at the India Office in London,
John Forbes Royle, put it during the planning stages for the exhibition,
“A more extensive knowledge among European manufacturers of the
Raw Products of the Indian soil could hardly fail to increase its com-
merce; while an exhibition of its manufacturing skill may still extort
admiration.”17 More broadly, the Indian Court helped domesticate India
in the metropole by rendering recently conquered territories known to
the public and demonstrating the material contribution the colony could
make to the British Empire.18
As his quote suggests, in planning the Indian section, Royle had
assumed that the raw materials would attract the most trading interest.19
Once the Crystal Palace opened to the public, however, attention focused
on the manufactured goods. Echoing Royle’s own admiration for the
“wonderful delicacy of hand,” “purity of taste,” and fine patterns exhibited
in Indian crafts,20 many critics were enraptured with Indian design. One
of the leading industrial design reformers, Owen Jones, called the oppor-
tunity of studying the Indian exhibits “a boon to the whole of Europe” and
noted that all of the artists he knew shared his opinion that “the Indian
and Tunisian articles were the most perfect in design of any that appeared
in the Exhibition.”21 Indeed, Jones used the Indian section at the Great
Exhibition as the starting point for his discussion of design in his book
The Grammar of Ornament—one of the most important publications of
the British design reform movement and a book that was to be a mainstay
in all British design schools down to the early twentieth century.22 For
his part, M. Blanqui wrote that the Indian Court had “produced a great
sensation amongst all connected with art and manufacture”—an effect

he attributed to the excellence of Indian woven goods, which he called
“capable of themselves revolutionising the fashions” of the age.23
Not everyone praised Indian design.24 But those who did focused
on two specific points: color and ornament. Writing for the Official
Descriptive and Illustrated Catalogue, Royle argued that “Indian patterns
. . . please multitudes of admirers, due no doubt, in a great measure, to
the command which the natives of India have of colours, and the admi-
rable taste with which they harmonise complicated patterns.”25 Color
and pattern were closely related. It was not just that Indian textiles and
lacquerwork featured vibrant hues; their colors were combined skillfully,
with proper balance between foreground and background and pleas-
ing arrangements of ornamental detail. To the architect Matthew Digby
Wyatt, the “especial value” of the Indian goods at the Great Exhibition
in 1851 thus “consisted in the admirable illustrations they furnish of the
possibility of obtaining repose and quiet beauty by the right employment
of the most brilliant colouring when broken up into minute and properly
contrasted forms, and arranged for flat surfaces.”26
The enthusiasm critics showed for Indian color and ornament stood
in striking contrast to their relative lack of interest in Indian forms. The
shape of lacquered boxes or the sweeping lines of an enameled vase did
not interest Jones or Wyatt. Rather, as printed attempts to summarize
design lessons from the Great Exhibition reveal, the crucial contribu-
tion of Indian designs—and thus, in part, what made those designs
“essentially” Indian—was the decoration on the boxes and vases. Thus,
in Wyatt’s two-volume set The Industrial Arts of the Nineteenth Century27
and Jones’s The Grammar of Ornament, Indian examples rarely appeared
in full form. Instead, ornamentation on small sections of objects stood
as lessons on patterning and color harmony, with no information on the
context in which the examples might have appeared (see fig. 1.2). Indeed,
for many critics form seemed not to matter at all to the “Indian” nature of
an object. Blackwood furniture from Bombay, for instance, excited much
admiration at the 1851 Exhibition for its distinctively Indian designs,
even though the forms of that furniture—including dining tables and
divans—were clearly European.
Observers saw the fine colors and patterns on view in the Indian
Court as not only particularly beautiful but also particularly Indian,
providing an essential unity to the diverse goods from across the subcon-
tinent. Indeed, virtually every commentator treated all the Indian manu-
factures as part of a singular aesthetic field, bound by common artistic
principles. This was a particular solution to a more general problem
Figure 1.2 Examples of Indian ornament taken from the displays at the Great
Exhibition and published in Owen Jones’s The Grammar of Ornament as lessons
in good design
Source: Jones, The Grammar of Ornament, plates XLIX, LII, LIV. Courtesy of the Anne and Jerome Fisher
Fine Arts Library, University of Pennsylvania Libraries: Gift of Geo. C. Mason.
visitors faced in 1851: how to accommodate “the monstrous volume and

variety of objects on display” within Victorian desires for order. Larry
Lutchmansingh argues that, for the exhibition as a whole, the constitution
of all objects as commodities “disabled the differences between otherwise
radically unrelated objects in the interest of an abstract and universal law
of exchange.”28 A more particular strategy for making sense of heteroge-
neous objects was to emphasize the unity of national displays. Thus, in
a lecture to the Society of Arts, Royle called attention to “the beauty and
variety of patterns” of the whole range of Indian goods. He argued that
that beauty was visible
as well in the carved or engraved, as in the painted, printed, woven, or

embroidered works. . . . This we see, whether we examine a production
of Dacca, or one from Delhi, Benares, or Ahmedabad, Rajpootana, or
Hyderabad, from Madras or from Mooltan, Cashmere or Khyrpoor, and
whether in a common chintz or in a fabric of silk, or one enriched with
silver or gold, or with imitations of gems.29
Whatever the media represented, or from whatever part of the subconti-

nent they came, to Royle all were equally Indian in design. For Blanqui,
that unity set “Indian art” apart from all other arts. Praising it over the arts
of China, Greece, and Rome, he wrote that “Indian art, in truth, is deserv-
ing of this preference—it resembles no other. It . . . is a special art, more
simple than is generally believed, even in its digressions, and which never
appears to have varied nor borrowed anything elsewhere.”30
Appreciation for Indian design operated largely independently from
any real interest in either the people or processes involved in its cre-
ation. The omission of people was hardly particular to the Indian Court;
as Jeffrey Auerbach and others have noted, the exhibition as a whole
obscured labor.31 But the elision of processes was more particularly
colonial; after all, one of the central features of the exhibition was the
thundering equipment of the Industrial Courts, where steam engines,
huge multispindle spinning machines, massive mechanized looms, and
even a machine to make envelopes demonstrated Europe’s—and more
particularly Britain’s—industrial achievements. The Indian Court did
present some models of artisans at work along with a few artisanal tools,
including pottery wheels, cloth and carpet looms, and tools for carpentry
and blacksmithing.32 Overall, however, observers gave Indian artisans lit-
tle credit for their own productions. Virtually none of the commentators
treated the items on display as expressions of individual genius; instead,
praise was meted out on a national level. The Official Descriptive and
Illustrated Catalogue, for instance, attributed the superiority of Indian cot-
tons to a “matchless delicacy of taste.” Who shared this superior taste? An
undifferentiated mass only described as “native spinners and weavers.”33
Indistinguishable in the present, Indian artisans were no different from
those of the past. Thus, according to The Crystal Palace and Its Contents,
“The Hindoos of the present day seem to have had handed down to them
an unbroken legacy of the agricultural and manufacturing arts of the
ancient Egyptians.”34 Mere recipients of earlier abilities—which were not
even particular to India but part of collective human knowledge—Indians
had not managed to add anything to their hereditary practices. As Royle
put it, India’s
present inhabitants continue to venerate sciences which they know only by

name, and practise arts of which they know not the principles; and this with
a skill not only remarkable for the early period at which it attained perfec-
tion, but also for the manner in which it has remained stationary for so
many ages. This can be explained only by the fact, that the son was unable
to add to the manual dexterity of his father, and could not improve an art
which he knew only as a routine process.35
Even in their acknowledged areas of superiority—ornamentation and

color—Indian artisans were not active creative agents but passive vehicles
for primitive, universal instincts. A common theme in European accounts
of the Great Exhibition was that Indian artisans only produced such fine
designs because they were unsullied by reason, science, or technology.

Indeed, according to the German architect Gottfried Semper, who was
in London for the Great Exhibition, Europeans were now too civilized to
match Indian design skills:
We possess a wealth of knowledge, a never-surpassed technical virtuosity,

a profuse artistic tradition, recognized artistic images, and a proper view
of nature, all of which we must certainly not abandon for half-barbaric
ways. What we should learn from people of non-European cultures is the
art of catching those simple melodies in form and color—that instinct
granted to human works in their most primitive formations, which we,
with our more extensive means, always find more difficult to grasp and
retain.36
John Ruskin agreed, declaring in 1856 that “the Chinese and Indians, and
other semi-civilized nations, can colour better than we do. . . . It is their
glorious ignorance of all rules that does it; the pure and true instincts have
play, and do their work.”37
Compared with their products, Indian artisans thus held little inter-
est to European audiences. On the one hand, they offered no unique
skills, but stood merely as human museums of ancient, universal arts.
On the other, the very thing that allowed Indian artisans to excel—their
instinctual, primitive practice—was seen as fundamentally incompat-
ible with European scientific rationalism. Nor were visitors to the Great
Exhibition much interested in the tools those artisans used. In his
Society of Arts lecture, Royle described only products without any refer-
ence to producers or their technologies. Apologizing at the outset of his
lecture for “being himself practically unacquainted with the working of
these arts,” he claimed that that weakness was actually a strength, argu-
ing that it allowed him to discuss Indian goods more generally, as he put
it, “disencumbered of manufacturing details.”38 Those who did deign to
notice the pottery wheels, looms, and other implements that appeared
in the Indian Court mostly expressed wonder that such rude tools
could produce such fine results. Ignoring several centuries of attempts
to appropriate Indian skills and designs—particularly in textile weav-
ing, printing, and dyeing—to raise the quality of European industries,39
observers now claimed that Indian technologies offered no contribution
to global knowledge. Compared with European inventions, they were
“of so peculiar a nature, and of so limited an application, that they can
scarcely be considered as bringing into play any principle of general
competition or comparison.”40 Instead they provided useful proof of the
essential stasis of Indian culture, particularly when counterpoised against
the countless machines of the European Courts that revealed the relent-
less progress achieved in the West. 41
Archaic relics of a bygone age, Indian tools did not facilitate high-quality
or fine designs. Instead, those tools only held Indian artisans back from
greater progress, revealing their ultimate weakness in a world of global
competition. As the Official Descriptive and Illustrated Catalogue put it, “it
is remarkable that the faculty of invention and the desire of improvement
should for so many ages have remained stationary, for there is no doubt
that many of the tools and machines might be improved, friction dimin-
ished, and yet their simplicity retained.”42
Whether in terms of explaining tools, identifying the particular skills
of artisans, or merely presenting objects themselves, overall the Great
Exhibition generated enormous new knowledge about Indian crafts. At
the most basic level, the exhibition exposed Europeans to a wide range
of goods from across the subcontinent; Europeans now knew there was
enormous variety among India’s manufactures. At the same time, com-
mentaries on the exhibition drew some common lessons out of those
manufactures, identifying a unitary style of Indian design marked by
particular skill with color and ornament, while defining artisans and
their methods as primitive. Of course there was never just one set of ideas
about the exhibition or its Indian Court. But some core understand-
ings did emerge from 1851 that helped shape later approaches to Indian
crafts—both in Britain and in India itself.
The exhibitionary complex in India
For all its ephemeral nature as a temporary exhibition, the Great Exhibition
had a profound influence on the production of knowledge about Indian
crafts. The most obvious impact was on subsequent international exhibi-
tions. Throughout the nineteenth century, these followed the 1851 model
of highlighting Indian crafts while steadily expanding Indian Courts to
offer evermore comprehensive views of manufactures from all parts of
the subcontinent.43 But the influence of 1851 was also felt within India.
Inspired by their European counterparts, organizers put on an impressive
series of exhibitions across the country in the course of the nineteenth
century; in western India these included events in Bombay (1854 and
1873), Broach (1868), Baroda (1882), Jaipur (1883), Bhuj (1884), Poona
(1880, 1888), and Surat (1891).44 At the same time, others tried to ensure
more permanent displays of local raw materials and manufactures by
creating provincial economic museums.
As Gyan Prakash has argued, the desire to first classify the material
world and then put it on display was central to Western modernity,
defining not only modern superiority over the premodern past but also
present-day Western superiority over colonial peoples. In the nineteenth
century, colonial officials shared a “conviction that India needed a new
form of knowledge” to bring it into the modern world. Museums and
exhibitions emerged to provide that knowledge, ordering the chaos
of local materials and rendering the subcontinent more productive.45
Prakash notes that such institutions faced a fundamental challenge in
making their displays legible to native audiences. Whether emphasizing
classification in museums or function in exhibitions, officials struggled
“to make objects rise above their concreteness and their native particu-
larity to reveal something more abstract and universal.”46 The universal
Prakash explores is science; another option was the economy. Indeed,
just as different pumps and plows revealed the inevitable superiority of
Western technology, so too Indian cottons, wooden boxes, and brass ves-
sels revealed the relative weakness of the local economy within a wider
imperial framework. Museums and exhibitions, in other words, displayed
local goods, but to change as well as expand knowledge.
All three venues—international exhibitions, Indian exhibitions, and
Indian museums—inherited much from the Crystal Palace. First, they
shared common classificatory strategies, dividing displays into sections
on the raw materials, tools/machinery, manufactures, and fine arts and
identifying materials by their scientific categories. Second, they all shared
a similar desire to stimulate progress in the subcontinent—something
considered woefully absent even by the most ardent proponents of colo-
nial rule. Third, they shared common personnel to gather, process, and
interpret materials, whether for presentation within India or overseas.
Fourth and finally, down to the 1870s they all shared a common focus on
products rather than producers, doing little to document how things were
made in favor of collecting information on what was available. Together,
exhibitions and museums helped to deepen and widen knowledge about
Indian crafts, but increasingly they did so in response to conditions within
India.
The East India Company assembled its collections for the 1851 exhi-
bition through a series of regional committees composed of local offi-
cials, informed European nonofficials, and a few native gentlemen. The
regional committee in turn relied on local committees in smaller centers
to actually survey products, submit lists of possible items for inclusion,
and eventually gather exhibition materials through loans, donations,
or outright purchases. Whether at the regional or the local level, those

involved did not necessarily have personal knowledge of local crafts. It
was a real challenge for many, therefore, when committees received their
instructions from the East India Company. Prepared by Royle in London,
the instructions listed only broad categories of goods for collection—silk,
cotton and wool fabrics, brass utensils, lacquered toys, paper—and gave
no indication of where such goods could be found or whether one region’s
goods would even stand up in comparison with those from somewhere
else within India.47 Part of each committee’s assignment, therefore, was to
create that knowledge: where and what things were made locally and who
the best manufacturers were.
All subsequent exhibitions—international as well as domestic—relied
on the same collecting structure, reforming committees every time a new
collection was required for another event. Exhibitions were frequent; the
nineteenth century featured more than twenty major international events
and at least as many more within India.48 As a result, committees operated
almost constantly, often with the same people involved for years in a row.
Museums were comparatively more rare, with only twelve in the sub-
continent as a whole as of 1857. In western India Bombay’s Government
Central Museum—referred to here by its eventual name, the Victoria
and Albert (V&A), which it acquired as of 1872—was the only one of its
kind for more than thirty years; not until the 1880s did other cities open
museums, including the Watson Museum in Rajkot (1888), the Lord Reay
Industrial Museum in Poona (1890), and museums in Baroda (1894) and
Bhavnagar (1895).49 Isolated and chronically underfunded, the V&A drew
heavily on the systems established to gather materials for international
and Indian exhibitions. Within the Bombay Presidency, for example, one
of the first curators of the V&A, Dr. George Birdwood, was also in charge
of preparing displays for exhibitions in Paris in 1855 and 1867, London
in 1862, Jubbulpore in 1866, and Agra in 1867.50 When Birdwood left for
England in 1868, he continued to oversee Indian contributions to inter-
national exhibitions into the 1900s from his position at the India Office.
Meanwhile, his replacement at the V&A, JJ School of Arts superintendent
George Terry, likewise served both as museum curator and as head of vari-
ous exhibition coordinating committees. Both Birdwood and Terry made
the most of their dual roles, regularly using the system of local committees
to solicit duplicate samples for permanent display at the V&A.
Thanks to both the regularity of the work and the constancy of staff
involved, the 1850s to the 1870s witnessed a steady accumulation of
knowledge about Indian crafts. The Paris Exhibition of 1855, for instance,
included virtually no manufactured goods from Kathiawad; after looking
through the list of specimens desired by the Bombay committee, the

Kathiawad committee had decided that “there is nothing of sufficient
Interest (Raw products being excluded) in the manufactured articles of
the Province to warrant their transmission.”51 By the time of the 1886
Colonial and Indian Exhibition in London, by contrast, it would have
been inconceivable to leave out the fine bandhani, embroidery, and
other products of the region. Indeed, exhibition organizers recognized
Kathiawad’s wood traditions as not only sufficiently interesting but also
original enough to be represented by two separate screens carved in the
distinctive styles of Junagad and Bhavnagar.52 Similarly, for the 1851 exhi-
bition Royle only issued a general request for Indian jewelry—anything
within that broad rubric was apparently acceptable. For the 1872 London
exhibition, the secretary of the organizing committee, Henry Y. D. Scott,
knew exactly which types of ornaments he hoped to include, going so
far as having photographs prepared to exactly illustrate the appropriate
styles.53
Greater knowledge emerged from focused attention on local environ-
ments. Exhibitions, for instance, usually aimed to closely document the
particular resources of a region, even while also trying to demonstrate
the region’s position within the larger imperial economy. To give but one
example, one of the first large exhibitions in western India was held at
Broach in late December of 1868 and early January of 1869. Open for
nine days, the exhibition drew large numbers of European and native
visitors from across classes, including virtually all of the native chiefs
from Gujarat as well as native troops, police officers, local schoolgirls, and
more than 1,000 native women and children who came during mornings
set aside for ladies only.54 Those visitors got to see the usual raw materi-
als, machinery, manufactures, and fine arts exhibits, along with separate
displays of livestock and agricultural produce. Within the latter, organiz-
ers displayed locally grown grains, pulses, vegetables, and cotton, along
with samples of dyes, oilseed, and tobacco. For its part, the manufactures
section—which Broach collector T. C. Hope called “perhaps one of the
most complete and satisfactory in the whole Exhibition”55—offered a still
wider range of goods from western India, including cottons, silks, embroi-
deries, carpets, hardware, native-made furniture, paper, harnesses, and
conveyances. Finally, “by far the most popular and constantly thronged
part of the Exhibition”56 was the fine arts section, which featured jewelry
worth several lakh rupees—including the personal jewels of the Gaekwar
of Baroda—along with silver and gold-hilted Kutchi weapons, Cambay
stonework, and a large collection of carved and inlaid blackwood and san-
dalwood work from Ahmedabad and Surat. For purposes of comparison,
each section featured regional goods alongside ones from farther afield.
Thus, local agricultural implements in the machinery section stood next
to new bullock-powered pumps, an improved sugar mill, a European
threshing and winnowing machine, and tube wells—a limited display of
what organizers assumed could “be safely recommended” to local agricul-
turalists.57 In the manufactures and fine arts sections, European cottons,
wools, glass, china, and watches appeared along with Cuttack filigree
ornaments and Vizagapatam workboxes to demonstrate the relative worth
of local artisanal skills.
The Broach exhibition presented much more detailed information
about the particular resources of Gujarat than would have been pos-
sible or appropriate at a larger international exhibition, where Gujarati
goods competed for space with other parts of India, as well as the rest
of the world. That level of detail was also visible at the V&A. In response
to complaints about “how little is known comparatively of the natural
productions of this country,” the museum took on a similar goal of docu-
menting the productive capabilities of western India.58 Thus early curators
Dr. George Buist (1856), the Reverend Dr. Alexander Fraser (1856–1857),
Dr. George Birdwood (1858–1868), George Terry (1868–1871, 1876–
1879), Dr. Wellington Gray (1871–1876), and Dr. D. Macdonald (1880–
1898) tried to identify natural resources available in the region, their
industrially useful properties, and their relative cost. The goal of the col-
lection was economic development; as an early request for contributions
put it, with information on local resources the museum would “ultimately
be the means of increasing the produce and sale of these articles alone
which can add to the wealth of this part of India.”59 Without it, growth
was impossible:
As with the study of any subject of science not a step can be taken in
advance with certainty until an acquaintance has been obtained with every
thing that has been made public on that subject, so no new step can be
taken with confidence in the successful development of the resources of a
country, until it be known what that country up to the time, is capable of
producing.60
Whatever their goals to offer comprehensive displays, neither the

Broach exhibition nor the V&A actually encompassed the full range of
local products. Instead, organizers of each shaped exhibits to reflect their
own ideas about the regional economy. At the V&A, this meant empha-
sizing raw materials at the expense of manufactures. By the time the
museum permanently opened its doors in 1857, it already boasted a col-
lection of more than a thousand samples of regional minerals, resins and
oils used in pharmaceutical products, food products, and vegetable and

animal substances used in manufactures. The entire collection of regional
crafts, by contrast, consisted of only scattered samples of textiles, local
ceramics, Bombay inlaid woodwork, artificial flowers, fans, Cambay agate
beads, and lacquerwork.61 That emphasis on raw materials remained
throughout the nineteenth century; down to the 1890s, curators simul-
taneously congratulated themselves for relatively complete collections in
that category even while they complained about the piecemeal nature of
displays of local manufactured goods.62
In part the focus on raw materials reflected the scientific rather than
industrial training of museum curators; many were medical doctors
and amateur botanists who took great personal interest in classifying
the plants and natural resources of the region. It also, however, reflected
nineteenth-century British assumptions about India’s role in the imperial
economy. Hobbled by out-of-date technologies and primitive industrial
organization, India could not hope to compete with the manufactured
goods of Britain’s modern mills. Presented as description of an existing
reality, this was at the same time colonial policy; the colonial state offered
few concrete interventions to promote industrial growth until the 1920s
and failed throughout the nineteenth century to offer adequate protection
for young industries struggling to compete.63 Instead, colonial railway
construction, shipping charges, technical expertise, research monies, and
import and export duties all worked to promote India’s production of
raw materials for industrial use elsewhere in the empire. The museum did
its part to towards that end by regularly documenting and investigating
industrially useful minerals and vegetable products. Thus, in 1872–1873
and 1875–1876, the V&A curator Dr. Wellington Gray prepared samples
of first all the gums and gum resins produced in the presidency and then
all the different woods; he then sent both collections to Britain for the use
of manufacturers there.64
The limited collections of crafts at the V&A fit within this larger ori-
entation toward imperial rather than local needs. Curators talked about
trying to widen markets for regional crafts; at the same time, however,
they also worked to document demand for British manufacturers hop-
ing to replace local goods. As early as 1858 George Birdwood had sug-
gested making a representative collection of European and Indian goods
available in regional markets. The hope was that, with such a collection,
“hereby at a glance, the British Merchants of Bombay would learn what
were the goods for which the inhabitants . . . had a natural appetite.”65
The V&A never had the funds to undertake that project itself, but seems
to have benefited from other attempts to do so. In 1861, Birdwood
reported that a Captain L. Pelly had donated a collection of Asian and

European goods available in the markets of Afghanistan and Persia—
a collection that served to document local demand in those areas.66 On
a more ambitious scale, the museum probably received a copy of John
Forbes Watson’s monumental The Textile Manufactures and the Costumes
of the People of India. Compiled in London in the early 1860s, the project
consisted of 700 actual specimens of different fabrics in use across India
assembled into a series of eighteen-volume sets to illustrate consumer
demand. Watson was explicit that his goal was to help British manufac-
turers capture Indian markets. Thus, in the introduction he explained,
“The 700 specimens . . . show what the people of India affect and deem
suitable in the way of textile fabrics, and if the supply of these is to come
from Britain, they must be imitated there. What is wanted, and what is
to be copied to meet that want, is thus accessible for study.”67 Unable to
keep the original fabrics together in London, Watson devised the textile
volumes as a portable trade museum capable of reaching wide audiences.
In the end, twenty sets of volumes were distributed, thirteen within
England and seven in India, with the set sent to Bombay likely going to
the V&A.68
At the V&A, then, curators presented crafts less to celebrate local
skills than to identify opportunities for future development—possibly
by Indian artisans, but more likely by British merchants and industrial-
ists. This attempt to situate Indian crafts within a competitive imperial
economy, in which they suffered from distinct disadvantages in terms
of style, price, quality, and availability, carried over to exhibitions as
well, even when the latter offered much larger displays of manufactured
goods. In 1868, Broach was at the heart of a productive region boasting
vibrant artisanal and agricultural communities—many of which were
flourishing in midcentury. And yet exhibition organizers operated on the
principle that Indian artisans were always, inevitably backward. In his
speech opening the Broach exhibition, governor of Bombay Sir William
Fitzgerald argued that there was no point in exhibiting “specimens of
the most perfect ingenuity as applied to industry or art” because Indians
were too uneducated to appreciate the very finest technical achievements.
Instead, he only hoped that displaying Indian and European things side
by side would “teach our native fellow-subjects the advantage, not only of
industry, but of applying all the sciences, and all the newest machinery to
the improvement of the productions of the country.”69 On the one hand,
this meant introducing European machinery considered appropriate for
local conditions, including joiners, saws, and printing presses, along with
agricultural technologies like cotton gins, clod crushers, sowing, threshing
and winnowing machines, sugar mills, and hand flour mills.70 On the
other hand, it also meant emphasizing modern goods. Thus the exhibi-
tion committee gave awards for things like cotton piece goods made by
steam looms, hill tents, flannels, saddlecloths, embroidered tablecloths,
brocade handkerchiefs, European-style furniture, iron chairs, boots, and
fancy baskets.71
That this represented less than a complete picture of local abilities
can be seen by the example of brassware. At the exhibition, brass objects
could only be displayed as a subcategory of hardware and cutlery. Jurors
E. Jones and W. J. Addis awarded the Rs. 25 prize in that category to
Messrs. W. Nicol & Co. for “a fair collection of Brass work, such as door
and window fittings, also steam-pressure gauges, taps, boiler fittings, &c.,
&c.”72 The fact that a European firm won the prize is hardly surprising.
Western India had a dynamic brass industry centered at Poona and Nasik,
but its artisans did not turn out much hardware or cutlery and certainly
did not specialize in boiler fittings. Instead, local production focused on
ritual objects as well as utilitarian cooking and storage vessels—all things
excluded from the exhibition category by its very definition as hardware
rather than simply metalwork.
This sense of relative failure is but one of the many ways that Indian
exhibitions and museums differed from events overseas. In Indian Courts
at international exhibitions, organizers used crafts to reveal the distinctive
riches of the subcontinent, displaying silks, cottons, metalwork, furniture,
and jewelry as evidence of India’s famous design achievements in rich
colors and intricate patterning. Giving up on complete thoroughness,
collecting committees simply left out weaker goods to create a stronger
display. To the head of the Bombay committee for the 1872 London exhi-
bition, George Terry, this selectivity was the whole point. He argued that
a responsible committee would
give a tone of unity, a fixed principle, to the whole exhibition, which it

seems to us, it does not yet partake of, & would select such objects only
as represented truly the arts, art manufactures, & produce of the Country,
rejecting all spurious articles either imitations of European styles or
European reproductions claiming to be Indian.73
In India, by contrast, exhibitions and museums assembled local goods to

show not competitive advantage but comparative weakness. Indian venues
thus presented a much fuller sense of local products, representing a wider
range of skills. And yet they did so in a spirit of crisis rather than celebra-
tion. As C. Bernard wrote in a report on an 1865 Nagpur exhibition, “If on
this occasion the representatives of these districts and communities were

awakened to a sense of backwardness, the Exhibition will at least have had
this good effect.”74 And they did so both to promote local goods and to
open them up to outside competition.
Linking Products to Producers: 1880s to 1900s
For all their differences, exhibitions and museums in India and Europe
down to the 1870s shared much in their attitudes toward artisans. All
considered existing methods of production too archaic to be worth
investigating. Instead of documenting current technologies, exhibitions
and museums displayed new machinery and better tools to revolutionize
production. Nor were the people who produced crafts themselves subjects
of study. Almost no information is available in the records from the V&A
or the Broach exhibition, for instance, about who made the individual
objects on display. Such information was not deemed necessary. Thus,
in an 1855 minute, Bombay Governor Lord Elphinstone advised that all
articles displayed at the V&A “should be marked with the name of the
place where they are produced, its distance from Bombay, the prime cost &
the probable cost of carriage, the purposes to which they are commonly
applied, & any other particulars which may be likely to be of interest.”75
He issued no instructions that information on producers be collected or
displayed. Indeed, the whole premise of pre-1880 displays was that objects
could speak for themselves, standing as evidence not of individual skills
but of regional capabilities.
In the 1880s this separation of producers from manufactures began to
break down both within India and overseas. Suddenly not just what was
made, but how and by whom it was made became crucial to understanding
Indian crafts. A rash of new publications appeared describing in minute
detail the artisanal communities and technologies involved in different
crafts; those descriptions created intimate connections between culture
and production, individual taste and objective results. Exhibitions began
to include live artisans at work demonstrating their skills; museums used
clay models of artisans to achieve the same goal. Creativity and a freedom
from machinelike drudgery became new terms of approval for crafts
production. In attempts to document crafts from this period onward,
ethnography now operated side by side with economics.
Why this shift? From the perspective of the state, a more ethnographic
approach represented a better way to understand the population. After
the revolt of 1857, British officials demanded better knowledge of local
communities to prevent future uprisings. At the same time, Queen

Victoria’s declaration in 1858 of noninterference in local customs and
traditions demanded better understanding of what exactly was to be pro-
tected. And yet those demands for better social data came to little until
the late 1870s. Only after several failed attempts to compile systematic
information did the state begin to issue comprehensive district gazetteers.
Conducted under the leadership of W. W. Hunter, the director general of
gazetteers, these investigated every detail of local society: communities,
religions, events, institutions, occupations, and physical surroundings.
These were not mere summaries of resources or manufactures. Instead
they attempted to map out the social and material structure of daily life,
emphasizing caste in particular as key to understanding networks, skills,
and loyalties. This, as Nicholas Dirks has phrased it, was the emerging
ethnographic state, one that based its rule on thorough knowledge of
local communities and justified that rule on the basis of the irreconcilable
differences between individual castes.76 Within crafts, this new knowledge
imperative meant growing attention to the nature of different communi-
ties and more emphasis on how community identity shaped production.
It also meant a particular investment in the artisanal body that reflected
both ethnography’s mapping of culture onto the biological bodies of
natives and colonialism’s use of the same bodies as key sites for the articu-
lation of imperial power.77
A second influence on this shift in how crafts were understood was
the international Arts and Crafts Movement. Emerging in Britain around
John Ruskin, William Morris, and others, the movement argued that
modern industrial production was socially and artistically evil, reduc-
ing free-thinking independent artisans to mere drudges controlled by
machines, and replacing the beautiful individuality of hand-made things
with the dead uniformity of factory goods. In place of a mechanized
society built around factory production, Morris and others advocated a
return to small-scale communities of handcraftsmen and farmers where
labor would be individually fulfilling and morally uplifting. For many
in the movement, a key model for such a society was medieval Europe;
another, however, was contemporary India. This made the influence of the
Arts and Crafts Movement in India twofold. On the one hand, it encour-
aged further investigation into Indian crafts. As an inspiration for hand
production in the West and an acknowledged source for beautiful crafts,
India’s artisanal traditions offered many possible lessons—if only more
was known about them. On the other hand, the international movement
also encouraged specific attention to production. Now crafts were not just
a form of industry, but a way of life; handcraftsmanship was not just a
means to an end, but itself a key source of value. As curator of the Jaipur
Museum of Art Thomas Holbein Hendley put it in a catalog to the 1886

Colonial and Indian Exhibition in London,
As every article is hand-painted and the designs are so rarely repeated, the
prices are necessarily somewhat higher than those charged by European
potters, but the purchaser has the pleasure of knowing, when he becomes
the possessor of a Jeypore vase, as is the case with so many other articles
of Indian manufacture, that he owns something that has required an indi-
vidual effort of mind to produce, something in short which is not a mere
mechanical repetition of the design of another person.78
With value dependent on individual handwork, it became increasingly

important to understand how and by whom that work was done.
Third and finally, hardheaded economic realism also demanded more
information about producers. Increasingly, those interested in economic
development began to insist on the importance of traditional industries,
to both the country’s present and its future. By the late 1870s, there were
growing fears that European imports were swamping Indian industries as
the volume of foreign goods was growing steadily year by year, both in new
kinds of things—umbrellas, clocks, matches—and in India’s traditional
specialties—most importantly textiles. As critics tried to make sense of this
trend, they voiced concerns about the slow growth of modern industries
and the slower transformation of traditional industries. With so few mod-
ern factories, most production was still artisanal; whatever their problems,
therefore, crafts were India’s industries. It was no use, then, to just wait
for their eventual replacement by factory production. The needs of the
present demanded thorough attention to the factors limiting development
in crafts: the composition and education of labor, access to raw materi-
als, tools and technologies, and knowledge of markets. Merely collecting
objects for comparative display, as at midcentury Indian exhibitions and
museums, had revealed the fact of local limitations; it had not revealed the
source of those limitations. For that, new information was necessary, not
just about products but also—crucially—about production.
The result of all of these influences was a fairly radical shift in the
scale and type of knowledge about Indian crafts. Down to the late 1870s,
no Indian exhibition or museum offered a comprehensive collection of
Indian crafts. Even though such collections were being assembled regularly
for international exhibitions, lack of ambition and funds kept displays
within India regional and fragmentary. Nor was such a comprehensive
view available in texts; aside from Watson’s The Costumes and Textiles of
the People of India, no study compiled existing knowledge about crafts
within a single region, let alone across regions or the subcontinent as a
whole. Finally, up to the late 1870s, few people paid much attention to
production; instead exhibitions and museums offered objects in isolation
from their makers. Again, in the 1880s all this changed. Museums, publi-
cations, and exhibitions aimed at comprehensive depictions of all Indian
crafts, in all media; publications exploded, rendering material informa-
tion into textual form; and, finally, production took center stage. All these
developments were closely integrated, with museum collections docu-
mented in journals that reported on efforts to study artisanal methods.
Together they tried to take scattered, partial details and render them into a
standardized, all-encompassing vision of Indian crafts. But they did so in
ways that simultaneously undercut the possibility of abstract knowledge,
preferring to locate skills not in science but in artisanal bodies.
First steps: George Birdwood and The Industrial Arts of India
One of the first attempts at a comprehensive textual survey was George

Birdwood’s influential The Industrial Arts of India. Prepared as the hand-
book to the Indian Court at the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1878 and
then reprinted in an expanded form for a more popular audience in 1880,
The Industrial Arts of India covered all crafts, in all media, from all parts of
the subcontinent. Birdwood was well suited to the task of compiling such a
handbook, given his efforts to document and collect Indian crafts since the
1850s. Born in India in 1832, Birdwood took up a position with the Medical
Service in Bombay in 1855, eventually becoming not only curator of the V&A
Museum but also professor at the Grant Medical College, honorary secretary
of the Royal Asiatic Society of Bombay, and registrar of the University of
Bombay. An active botanist and ardent admirer of Indian crafts, he himself
undertook investigative trips around the region and corresponded widely
with others gathering similar information. After he left India in 1868 because
of ill health, his authority over the field only grew; serving at the India Office
in London until his retirement in 1899, he gave regular lectures on India at
the Royal Society of Arts and generally acted as a clearinghouse for informa-
tion about the resources and industries of the subcontinent.79
The Industrial Arts of India opens with a long discussion of Hinduism,
which Birdwood thought essential for understanding Indian crafts.
Ignoring the central role Muslims played in India’s culture, he argued
that, since “the arts of India are the illustration of the religious life of
the Hindus,” understanding those arts required “not only the sensibil-
ity which can appreciate them at first sight, but a familiar acquaintance
with the character and subjects of the religious poetry, national legends
and mythological scriptures that have always been their inspiration, and
of which they are the perfected image.”80 The second part of the book
explores, chapter by chapter, different crafts: gold and silver plate, enam-
els, arms, art furniture and household decoration, musical instruments,
and so on. In each chapter, Birdwood discussed what different regions
produced in that media, identifying particular local specialties notable
for their unique designs, workmanship, or market dominance. Thus, in a
long chapter on metalwork, he not only noted the famous brass vessels of
Benares, Madurai, and Tanjore but also described things that were much
less known, including metal pans from Nuddea in Bengal and steel from
Tendukhera in the Central Provinces.81 Black-and-white illustrations rein-
forced the text descriptions and helped establish differences between,
say, the jewelry of Cuttack and Poona, Trichinopoly and the Punjab
(see fig. 1.3). Overall, the book established all-India rankings of different
crafts; the best tile came from Bulri and Saidpur in Sindh, the best papier
mâché could be found in Kashmir, while the best muslin was produced
in Dacca. But it also mapped crafts onto regional landscapes; if visiting
Sirsangi in the Bombay Presidency, readers would know to look for the
locally prized bullock bells.
Figure 1.3 Illustrations of jewelry in Birdwood’s The Industrial Arts of India:

“Necklace, Punjab” (left) and “Native Gemmed Jewelry of Trichinopoly, Madras”
(right).
Source: Birdwood, The Industrial Arts of India, plates 45 and 53. Courtesy of the University of
Pennsylvania Libraries.
If one of the key innovations of The Industrial Arts of India was its
composite, all-inclusive view, another was its emphasis on how cultural
environment shaped production. Drawing heavily on the international
Arts and Crafts Movement, Birdwood argued that beautiful Indian crafts
did not emerge in a vacuum; they were produced by religiously minded
caste artisans working specifically by hand in traditional villages. This
ensured not only individual contentment but also artistic success. Thus,
after a long description of the slow tempo, everyday beauty, and easy pros-
perity of village life, Birdwood argued,
We cannot overlook this serenity and dignity of his life if we would rightly
understand the Indian handicraftsman’s work. . . . He has his assured place,
inherited from father to son for a hundred generations, in the national
church and state organization; while nature provides him with everything
to his hand, but the little food and less clothing he needs, and the simple
tools of his trade. . . . This at once relieves him from an incalculable dead
weight of cares, and enables him to give to his work, which is also a religious
function, that contentment of mind and leisure, and pride and pleasure in it
for its own sake, which are essential to all artistic excellence.82
This idealization of artisanal life was a key theme in The Industrial Arts
of India and one of Birdwood’s lasting legacies on ideas about Indian crafts.
As the first comprehensive study of all of India’s crafts, the book established
a framework for comparing and contextualizing goods from across the
subcontinent. It also set out a series of principles for understanding crafts:
they were determined by the particular cultural circumstances of India,
their beauty and value lay in hand production, and they were central to the
very definition of Indian culture. Those principles had a long life well into
the twentieth century, thanks in part to Birdwood’s personal stature as a
top British official shaping craft policies, but also to the book’s wide dis-
tribution. Immediately after its publication, the secretary of state for India
sent dozens of copies to each province at government expense where they
were distributed to every school of art, scientific and literary society, gov-
ernment college and university, as well as leading newspapers and public
institutions in each district named as a seat of art manufacture.83
The ethnographic state in action: Production in government surveys
Working from London, Birdwood compiled the information for The

Industrial Arts of India on the basis of published reports. He was well aware
of the limitations of this strategy. Indeed, in the introduction he described
the book as an “index to [the] deficiencies” of existing information avail-

able through the India Museum and elsewhere.84 An eminently practical
colonial official for all his arts and crafts romanticism, Birdwood helped
resolve that knowledge deficit by calling in 1880 on the Government of
India for direct investigations into traditional methods, to be conducted
systematically and thoroughly by officials across the subcontinent.85 That
demand was met, first by the 1880s series of government gazetteers and
then by a series of government craft monographs conducted in the 1890s
and 1900s. Both sets of surveys reoriented knowledge about crafts from
products to producers. And yet they also echoed Birdwood’s ideas about
the essential connection between crafts and culture.
The 1880s series gazetteers were based both on the new statisti-
cal information from the first all-India census in 1871 and on specific
attempts to investigate traditional manufactures. Expressive of the grow-
ing desire to generate comprehensive, comparable descriptions of all
parts of the empire, these studies radically expanded the scope of data
easily accessible about local conditions. In every gazetteer, standard chap-
ters explored the geography, production, people (divided into Hindu and
Muslim, grouped into occupational groups—husbandmen, craftsmen,
fishers, unsettled tribes, etc.—and then described by castes), agriculture,
capital, trade and crafts, history, land use, justice, finance, instruction,
health, subdivisions, and places of the district. As an important part of
local economies, crafts received their due share of official scrutiny, with
attention directed specifically to manufacturing processes, tools and
technologies, artisanal communities, objects in regular production, and
markets. To give a sense of scale, the craft section of the 1885 Poona dis-
trict gazetteer ran almost forty pages with separate discussions of twelve
different crafts, including tape weaving, wood turning, the making of cop-
per and brass vessels, cotton cloth, silk cloth, gold and silver thread, glass
bangles, ivory combs, clay figures, iron pots, felt, and paper.86 By compari-
son, the General Report on the Administration of the Bombay Presidency
for the Year 1871–1872 devoted only four pages to the crafts of the entire
presidency, giving only a brief summary of distinctive manufactures.87
Compared with earlier attempts to document crafts, the 1880s series
gazetteers presented far more information on all levels. One area of par-
ticular expansion was production. In The Costumes and Textiles of the
People of India, Watson had offered no description at all of how silk was
made, but merely listed different silk products according to their use.
Indeed, it could hardly have been otherwise; since Watson compiled his
information in London from fabric samples already in the collection of
the India Museum, he had no opportunity to see production firsthand.88

Nor did the V&A or Indian exhibitions document existing manufacture,
preferring instead to introduce improved machinery. The 1885 Poona
gazetteer, by contrast, included over five pages on all the different stages
of silk making, from sorting and reeling to twisting, bleaching, dyeing and
sizing yarn, warping, and weaving fabric.89
Alongside details about processes, gazetteers also offered extensive
descriptions of producers: their economic standing, social reputation,
attitudes towards education, gods worshipped, types of rituals, and mar-
riage customs. The 1883 Nasik district gazetteer, for instance, noted not
only the specific tools used in brass- and copperwork but also the con-
dition and habits of the Kasars and Tambats—the two principal castes
involved. That cultural information actually appears twice: once in the
chapter on individual castes and then again in the chapter on manufac-
tures. In the latter, descriptions of specific processes were interspersed
with such details as the fact that the Kasars worshipped Khandoba,
Bhairaba, and “the Devi,” took no animal food or liquor, and allowed
widow remarriage, while the Tambats worshipped Pavagad, Mahakali,
and Khandoba, held marriages only once every four or five years, lived
in “rich, strongly built houses and are a clean, orderly, hardworking and
prosperous class.”90
By interweaving cultural characteristics with production and market
information, the district gazetteers firmly linked individual objects to
the artisans who made them. Whether or not the Kasars worshipped the
Devi was not at all extraneous to their work in copper; according to the
gazetteers, it helped shape how, why, and when artisans did their work. In
some cases, this influence was direct, as in stories of a Hindu caste in Bhuj
who, after taking refuge in the temple of Maha Kali some 200 years ago,
took up copperwork at the instruction of the goddess.91 In other cases,
however, the influence was more indirect, appearing not in injunctions
to stay in a craft or leave it, but through attitudes toward work: honesty,
thrift, diligence, and so forth.
The 1880s series of gazetteers proved foundational for later attempts to

investigate crafts. As the first detailed studies of local production carried
out all over India, the gazetteers both established the model for under-
standing production through people and processes but also supplied the
core information on which all later investigators built. Indeed, surveys
down to the present have quoted extensively from the 1880s gazetteers,
often using them as a benchmark by which to measure later changes.92
The gazetteers did, however, have their limitations. First, space constraints
kept entries short; no matter their local significance, crafts remained only
one topic among many, neither more nor less important than agriculture,
irrigation, education, health, or social unrest. Second, entries were broadly
descriptive rather than precisely analytical, making them all but useless on
either technical or development grounds. In the Sholapur gazetteer, for
instance, it would have been impossible to either replicate or improve on
existing dyeing practices given descriptions like the following: “The silk is
first softened by being placed with lime and carbonate of soda in boiling
water; afterwards to dye it magenta, it is steeped six days in the water in
which cochineal has been dissolved.”93 Such details might help explain
current production, but without closer analysis of ingredients, precise
recipes, or a detailed assessment of tools, they made it difficult to suggest
innovations. Third, part of a wider official attempt to understand the
contours of local society, the gazetteers did not isolate present problems
or note promising trends that might make crafts more competitive. As
such, they were not much help in economic planning. Fourth, descrip-
tions varied enormously according to apparently arbitrary criteria. The
Sholapur gazetteer, for example, offered fifteen pages describing the vari-
ous rites of passage practiced by the 448 members of the Karanjkar caste,
who worked at a range of crafts, but only a single page on the 5,092 mem-
bers of the Sonar (goldsmith) caste, who were not only more numerous
but also more prosperous.94 Finally, these remained local studies, noting
innovations, social mobility, or decline at the district level. To compare
those trends regionally, one had to wade through entries scattered across
numerous bulky volumes, compiled by officials with different degrees of
familiarity with industrial matters.
Calls to improve on the district gazetteers came in the late 1880s from
within the government itself. The Home Department was so “impressed
with the existing want of information at hand as to the extent, character,
and circumstances of important local industries in every province of
India,” that it issued a resolution in 1888 suggesting that “in each prov-
ince an Industrial survey should be completed.” Such a survey was to be
the foundation of proper economic planning. For, the resolution argued,
it would discover those industries that were centralized, growing in both
production and trade, and capable of scientific improvement—that is,
industries suitable for development.95 The result was a series of annual
craft monographs starting in 1893 and ending in 1909. At the request
of the Government of India, each province prepared a monograph on
the same craft in a given year, thereby helping to coordinate knowledge
across the subcontinent. In the Bombay Presidency, superintendent of
the JJ School John Griffiths conducted the initial survey in 1893 of the
copper- and brassware industry. Altogether, Griffiths spent six months on

the project, visiting different manufacturing centers, compiling informa-
tion from other sources, and writing up his report, which the government
then published.96 The subsequent twelve monographs for the Bombay
Presidency examined silk fabrics, cotton fabrics, woolen fabrics, dyes and
dyeing, carpet making, stone carving and inlaying, wood carving, ivory
carving, pottery and glassware, iron- and steelwork, wire and tinsel, paper
making, and tanning and working in leather.
These monographs had a specifically developmental orientation: to
identify factors preventing or encouraging growth in different crafts and
to suggest how impediments might be overcome.97 This focus determined
the information collected. Authors analyzed not just the communities
responsible for production and the types of products, but a whole range
of factors that impacted each, including average wages, working condi-
tions, nature and sources of raw materials, markets for finished articles,
recent technological innovations, the overall expansion or decline of
employment within the craft, and the comparative strengths and weak-
nesses of different production centers. Monograph authors, in other
words, assessed not just the current state of an industry but also its poten-
tial, closing almost every study with a section on future prospects.
As part of their attention to future development, monographs offered
much greater detail on artisanal methods. They did cover products, often
pairing written descriptions with black-and-white illustrations of key
goods. But authors were more interested in how things were made. For
instance, in their respective studies, J. R. Martin analyzed the preparation
of barks used in tanning; E. Maconochie described how potters created
moulds, shaped clay, joined parts, and dried and then polished finished
earthenware pitchers; and R. T. F. Kirk detailed how to spread pulp evenly
over a screen to make paper and then how to polish dry sheets.98 In each
case, authors attempted to coordinate scattered knowledge and compile a
single authoritative description out of myriad individual practices. They
also tried to translate those individual practices into universal laws of
chemistry and mechanics in order to assess why certain processes worked
as they did.
And yet, just as the monographs helped abstract crafts into scientific
principles, the same publications also reaffirmed the intimate connec-
tion between crafts and individual artisanal bodies. Some did this by
combining descriptions of industrial organization with those of caste
characteristics, religious practices, and kinship relations99; all did this by
emphasizing the way artisans used touch, taste, smell, and intuition to
guide their practices. C. G. H. Fawcett’s Monograph on Dyes and Dyeing
in the Bombay Presidency, for instance, opened with a brief overview of

the social characteristics and status of Bhavsars, Chippas, Rangaris, and
Khatris, the main groups responsible for cotton dyeing. Only then did he
turn to the technical aspects of the craft, devoting the rest of the report to
various dyestuffs and processes—the chemical properties and efficacy of
different dyes and the methods used to produce different colors.100
Throughout, Fawcett returned again and again to two themes: first,
the primitive nature of the tools used, and second, the embodied nature
of the work. On the subject of technologies, Fawcett warned his reader
that “the appliances used by a native dyer in this country are of the sim-
plest and roughest kind,” with correspondingly inexact methods; the work
of an Indian dyer “is all hand labour; and his processes are tedious, com-
plicated and imperfect, being still carried on more or less as they were by
his ancestors before him.”101 On the subject of working methods, Fawcett
stressed that Indian dyeing could not be reduced to abstract rules. Dyers
worked with dyestuffs of constantly varying purity and strength, relied
on natural water sources whose changing mineral composition could
radically alter dyeing results, combined materials by eye rather than exact
measurement, and negotiated by feel variable weather conditions—most
importantly, humidity—to determine the exact time needed for dyeing,
drying, or other stages. With so many variables in constant flux, it was
impossible to reduce methods to exact formulas or confidently predict
results. Instead, success in dyeing was always uncertain, as it did not rely
on scientific principles but on the instinctive knowledge of an artisan jug-
gling disparate factors by the criteria of touch, taste, and smell.102 Dyeing
was, in other words, primitive and archaic in technologies and profoundly
unscientific in application and results.
Gazetteers and government monographs contributed much toward the
systematization of information Birdwood had been hoping for. Despite
his investment in production as key to understanding beauty and value,
Birdwood himself had only really been able to compile substantive infor-
mation about craft products in The Industrial Arts of India. At that point
there simply was not enough known about production in different areas
to create a synthetic picture of craft technologies or materials across all of
India. The gazetteers and then the monographs made such a picture pos-
sible, investigating and comparing the state of industries in different areas
to assemble a comprehensive idea of the factors encouraging or preventing
growth on a national scale. And yet they did so not in abstract economic
terms of supply, demand, market share, and capital needs, but in terms
of embodied, ethnographic labor. Birdwood’s generalized argument that
Indian village life was responsible for India’s fine craft production here
took on concrete form, with particular religious habits or kinship patterns

linked to specific attitudes toward skill, education, and productivity. Now
it was not the village but the artisanal body that explained production.
To make such arguments, gazetteers and monographs deployed ethno-
graphic claims to scientific objectivity. Isolating and identifying cultural
groups as discrete entities, government officials reduced individuals to
artisanal types, representative of the collective as a whole.
The ethnographic state in action: Documenting design
The push to better understand craft production did not stop at how things
were made, but also explored what things were made. Part of this interest
was economic; officials wanted to understand the range of goods being
produced within artisanal sectors of the economy. More of it, however,
was aesthetic; officials directed much of their attention toward a very
specific subset of all artisanal goods—those produced in traditional styles.
Like surveys of crafts communities and their methods, documentation
of traditional design also exploded in the 1880s and 1890s. This took the
form of a wide range of publications, new exhibitions, and museum dis-
plays, all illustrating regional styles and demonstrating the excellence of
historic decorative abilities.
This new attention to traditional styles built on the long-standing
appreciation for Indian design expressed from the 1851 Great Exhibition
onward. It also, however, emerged from a more immediate fear at the end
of the century that Indian design was dying out in the face of Western
influences. This sense of decline prompted the government to gather
together art school and museum officials in Calcutta in 1883 to debate
what could be done for “the encouragement of good design and work-
manship” and “the prevention of degradation” in industrial arts.103 The
result was the Government of India’s “Draft Scheme for the Promotion
of Industrial Art,” a series of proposals to promote crafts in general and
traditional design in particular, including regional art experts to advise
artisans, expanded museum displays to highlight local manufactures, and
new publications to document the best in traditional arts.104
One result of the new 1883 initiative in the Bombay Presidency was
an attempt to expand the craft collections at the V&A and the JJ School
of Arts. At the latter, teachers had been using historic and contemporary
regional arts in classrooms since the mid-1870s; in addition to items
bought in local bazaars, teachers led annual trips to draw and make
models of key architectural monuments in the region.105 In 1881 the JJ
superintendent John Griffiths assembled all those materials into a formal
school museum and secured an annual grant of Rs. 500 from the govern-
ment to further build up the collection, which was later raised to Rs. 1,100
a year.106 Although the museum remained too limited to truly represent all
the manufactures of western India—gathered as it was out of items pur-
chased by individual instructors from artisans or regional exhibitions—it
did present an abbreviated picture of India’s artistic past and present,
serving as a source of ideas for students working in both the fine and
industrial arts.107 That collection was in turn supplemented by efforts
at the V&A in the 1880s to finally expand its crafts collection. An initial
boost came at the 1883 Calcutta Exhibition, where Griffiths purchased
Rs. 8,000 worth of artware largely for the V&A.108 By 1886 the museum
had enlarged its holdings of local fabrics, carpets, jewelry, hornwork, san-
dalwood carving, soapstone, lacquerware, pottery, and porcelain; it also
now boasted a series of models of artisans at work, including complete
depictions of a silk weaving workshop, copper- and goldsmith shops, and
an iron forge.109
Bombay-based museum collections paled, however, compared with
those assembled elsewhere in India. One of the most successful attempts
to thoroughly represent regional artware was at the Jaipur Museum of Art.
Organized by Thomas Holbein Hendley largely around items displayed
at an 1883 exhibition in Jaipur, the museum explicitly set out to present
“selected examples of the best art work of India,” including “specimens
of local manufactures, in order that strangers might see what could be
obtained in the neighbourhood.”110 That curatorial strategy guided not
only the content of the displays but the very building in which they were
housed. Colonel Swinton Jacob, then the supervising engineer of Jaipur
state, conceived of the museum building as a record of local skills and
styles. Thus, while he drew up the overall plan for the museum, Jacob
left ornamental details up to local masons, who drew their ideas from
traditional buildings in the area.111 Indeed, the museum had no collec-
tion of carved work aside from what was on its walls, where, according
to Hendley, “almost every pillar and almost every inch of wall space is
a copy of, or an adaptation from some well-known and admired native
building.”112
An even more influential result of the 1883 scheme was the Journal of
Indian Arts—later renamed the Journal of Indian Art and Industry (JIAI).
Launched in early 1884 under the editorship of Lockwood Kipling (prin-
cipal of the Mayo School of Arts in Lahore and father of the more famous
Rudyard), the journal quickly became a key forum for documenting
design.113 According to the government resolution, it had two objects: to
present the history of different crafts, “especially with reference to designs
and forms,” and to help the economic advancement of the crafts.114 To the
former end, many articles documented a particular regional art, briefly
outlining centers of manufacture, types of products, methods of produc-
tion, and artisans involved. Early articles in this vein included “Punjab
Wood Carving (1884), “Thana Silks” (1885), “Jeypore Enamels” (1885),
“Bidri Ware” (1885), “Indian Ivory Carving” (1885), “Mooltan Pottery”
(1886), and “Burmese Silver Work” (1886). In each, authors supplemented
economic details with information on typical or particularly excellent
designs, which were then lavishly illustrated in color plates.
JIAI editors linked together separate articles on individual crafts in
different ways. One method was to devote a single issue to several differ-
ent regional studies of the same or related crafts. The January 1903 issue,
for instance, contained articles on silk fabrics in the Bombay Presidency,
Central Provinces, and the Punjab, respectively; this was followed in the
April 1903 issue with articles on silk in Burma, wool fabrics in Bombay,
and cotton fabrics in Bombay, Assam, and the Northwest Provinces and
Oudh. Another way to create linkages was to locate particular crafts
within an all-India “art census” presented through a series of surveys
briefly listing manufactures by region. Conflating, as Deepali Dewan
notes, stylistic regions with political boundaries, the census aimed at
“stereotyping in this journal the peculiar features and forms of each local
art while it yet remains distinct, and in preserving a detailed account of
the practices and methods adopted at each place where a manufacture is
conducted.”115 In the first survey, “List of the Arts and Industries of the
North-Western Provinces and Oudh,” this stereotyping took the form
of a tabular summary of regional manufactures that indicated types of
products, where made, prices, and distinctive features of the craft. Thus
under the general class of “Inlaid work,” items listed included pen-trays,
inkstands, salvers, and boxes from Mainpuri and Pilibhit. These were
“of shisham wood, into which patterns are beaten in, in brass wire and
polished. The designs are either of foliage or geometrical. Prices up to
Rs. 100. The same work can be introduced with good effect for paneling
doors, picture framing, &c.”116
Another way the JIAI tried to create a comprehensive vision of
crafts was by addressing issues common across media. On the one
hand, authors identified a universal language of Indian design, often
drawing on historic monuments as visual proof for essential lessons in
color or ornament. Articles on “Rustic Ornamentation” (1884), “Indian
Architectural Details” (1890), “Dravidian Architectural Details” (1894),
“Moghul Colour Decoration of Agra” (1902), or “The Elephant in Industry
and Art” (1904) tried to abstract common ideals from specific examples
of Indian decoration, transforming three-dimensional examples into

two-dimensional patterns suitable for application to any surface.117
Any artisan interested in authentically “Indian” design could—presum-
ably—use these lessons. On the other hand, authors established unity
across crafts through shared problems. Focusing on the difficulties created
by Westernization and commercialization, articles on the “Difficulties of
Art Manufacture” (1884), “The Parable of Indian Art” (1889), “Industrial
Art in India” (1891), and “Defects in Indian Art-Ware” (1913) argued that
artisans of all kinds faced similar challenges and must adopt similar solu-
tions to survive in changing times.
The JIAI was not the only outlet for published ideas about design.
Thomas Holbein Hendley, for instance, was a regular writer for the JIAI
who contributed articles, from 1884 down to his death in 1916, on enam-
eling (1884), metalwork (1892), bookbinding (1894), silk (1910), arms
and armor (1913), jewelry (1909), the Indian contributions he himself had
assembled for the Festival of Empire of 1911, and many other topics.118
He also, however, published a series of books documenting regional arts.
When, for instance, Hendley wanted to summarize the achievements of
the 1883 art exhibition he had organized in Jaipur, he did so via a mag-
nificent four-volume set of plates, which the Jaipur state then distributed
to select libraries throughout India as a gift from the Maharaja. The
hope was that the volumes would “secure, for the benefit of the public
and of the Indian workman, copies of the beautiful art treasures which
still exist in the country, but are being rapidly dispersed throughout the
world, with the certainty that such masterpieces will never be produced
again.”119 Throughout the 1880s and 1890s, Hendley supplemented these
four volumes with other publications also intended to show off the best in
traditional designs from Rajputana. These included books illustrating car-
pet designs from the royal collection in Jaipur, the art treasures of Ulwar,
damascene work in India, and Jaipuri enamels.
The two main types of documentation efforts in the 1880s—gazetteers

and monographs on the one hand, and design publications and exhibits
on the other—differed in significant ways. In broad terms, the former
focused on the connection between people and processes, while the lat-
ter connected visual appearance to products. Whereas gazetteers and
monographs tried to explain technologies in the exact language of sci-
ence, efforts to understand design often got rid of technical details alto-
gether. Striking examples of this difference appear in excerpted versions
of government monographs that appeared in the JIAI. B. A. Brendon
and S. M. Edwardes, for instance, both published abbreviated versions
of their studies of wool and silk in the Bombay Presidency, respectively,

in the JIAI in early 1903. The JIAI versions were much shorter; while the
original studies ran fifteen and seventy-four pages each, the excerpts were
only two and six pages long.120 Leaving out details about artisanal com-
munities or regional variations, the shortened journal articles presented a
single, standardized description of production, common to the presidency
as a whole.121 By doing so, the JIAI articles helped readers understand
the distinctive skills involved in creating wool and silk products, but did
nothing to assess the overall prospects for the industries in the region or
to reflect dynamism in production strategies from one town to another. In
other words, the JIAI articles presented little useful economic knowledge.
For that, the comparative, town-by-town analysis of the monographs and
their attention to constraints on growth were more helpful.
And yet, even though they differed, all of these new knowledge projects
were similarly concerned with production. Whether focused on design or
economic development, objects no longer appeared independent of the
labor that produced them. This was most obvious in the gazetteers and
monographs, which provided descriptions of artisanal communities as part
of the essential knowledge of particular crafts. But it was equally true of
design-oriented publications and exhibits, which not only focused on objects
and visual appearance but also paid close attention to production. In 1890,
western India’s premier design center, the JJ School of Art, opened the Reay
Art Workshops to offer more specialized instruction in crafts. According to
the then superintendent Griffiths, the Reay Workshops taught only crafts
that were “truly Indian in their treatment”—wood carving, pottery, silver-
and copperwork, embroidery, and enameling.122 For Griffiths, what kept
those crafts “truly Indian” was the fact that each workshop was run by a
native craftsperon according to the “traditional mode of working peculiar to
each craft”; under proper European supervision, traditional working meth-
ods were the necessary precondition for traditional designs. To give another
example of the same theme, in a catalog to the 1886 Colonial and Indian
Exhibition, Hendley lavished praise on an intricately carved wooden gateway
leading into the Rajputana Courts (see fig. 1.4). Like the Jaipur Museum
building, the general form of the gateway had been designed by Swinton
Jacob, but the details had been executed by Indian woodcarvers. Hendley
praised the work for “the endless variety of ornament, showing the fertility of
invention, and the true artistic sense of the carvers.”123Although the gateway
stood as a rich visual record of ornamental detail, its true importance lay
elsewhere: in how that carving came into being. The woodworkers, Hendley
wrote, “were what one could imagine the workmen who built the great
Figure 1.4 Jaipur gateway to the Rajputana Courts, Colonial and Indian
Exhibition of 1886, London
Source: Cundall, ed., Reminiscences of the Colonial and Indian Exhibition, p. 19. Courtesy of Columbia
University Libraries.
Cathedrals of Europe were—each man taking a part, not as a mere machine,

but as a creator bound down only to work on a certain frame-work.”124
Finally, for all their differences, all these late-nineteenth-century efforts
to document crafts agreed that production was a specifically male activity.
Earlier studies noted the participation of women in a range of crafts pro-
cesses, largely at preparatory stages. By the end of the nineteenth century
women’s roles had been systematically devalued. As Clare Wilkinson-
Weber notes, government monographs described women as either “helpers”
to men or part-time workers occupying their leisure hours with craftwork.
This was the result of a dual bias. On the one hand, investigators did not
collect information, since they did not see women’s participation as work;
influenced by global discourses of domesticity, studies portrayed women
primarily as caregivers and homemakers, not economic agents. On the
other hand, household producers did not offer information about the
role women played, both because that role was seen as subordinate to
male leadership and because social status increasingly rested on women’s
nonparticipation in formal work.125 Thanks to these biases, crafts were, in
the end, men’s work, embedded in specifically male bodies.
Conclusion: Crafts and the Artisanal Body
One striking demonstration of the focus on production is the need to

display artisans at work. Overseas, most major exhibitions from the 1880s
onward included live Indian craftsmen. At the 1886 Colonial and Indian
Exhibition in London, for instance, organizers erected a small courtyard
of shops in which some forty-five artisans from different parts of the sub-
continent “daily plied their trades under the eyes of the public.”126 These
men and boys attracted a great deal of attention at the exhibition; dense
crowds gathered daily to watch the artisans stitching delicate embroideries,
making inlaid wooden boxes, and weaving rich carpets, and the popular
press printed illustrations of the artisans at work. Indeed, the executive
commissioner of the 1886 exhibition, Sir Francis Philip Cunliffe-Owen,
declared that the “body of native artizans” put on display was “undoubt-
edly the most attractive feature of the whole Exhibition.”127 Within India,
as mentioned earlier, the V&A acquired models of artisanal workshops
in the mid-1880s, later adding an entire case of miniature figurines of
artisans at work—all of which remain on view to this day (see fig. 1.5).
Similarly, one of the most popular sections at an 1890 exhibition at the
JJ School featured artisans carving wooden boxes, forming silver teapots,
throwing and decorating pottery, stitching embroidery, and making
spangles.128 Even exhibitions that emphasized modern industry over crafts
followed the practice of putting artisans on display. At the 1904 Indian
National Congress’s Industrial and Agricultural Exhibition in Bombay, the
JJ School set up small workshops in which students demonstrated pottery,
stone carving, weaving, carpentry, jewelry, copper beating, silversmithing,
and house decoration.129 Other exhibitions held in connection to early-
twentieth century Indian industrial conferences regularly featured hand-
loom weavers, usually demonstrating new appliances or looms designed
to increase handloom weaving speed.130
Publications similarly depicted artisans; in the case of the JIAI, as
Deepali Dewan notes, almost every article on crafts included some image
of bodies at work.131 A short 1894 article on metalwork from the Jaipur
School of Art, for instance, featured only two images; one was of brass
vases produced at the school, the other was of an old man seated on a
mat surrounded by tools, with his hands folded in his lap, staring off into
the distance (see fig. 1.6). From the photograph, it is not clear how he
would have used those tools or how he would have produced the finished
box and cups lying before him. Not enacting work, he appeared only as
stereotype of an artisan. Other images did illustrate different stages of
production. Thus S. M. Edwardes’ 1903 article on silk production in the
Figure 1.5 Clay models of artisans, with details of embroiderers and potters,
Victoria and Albert Museum, Bombay
Source: Photographs by the author.
Bombay Presidency—excerpted from his longer monograph—offered

five images of artisans winding silk onto reels, spinning, doubling thread
onto drums, warping, and then weaving. Rough drawings rather than
photographs, these provided only a general sense of the scale and shape
of tools, with little detail about the stages of the warping process or how
the complicated two-story silk looms worked.
Such displays represent a very public expression of the growing atten-
tion to producers. By the end of the century, exhibitions that otherwise
reduced cultures to their objects and obscured labor now also tried to
offer visual evidence of production. But they did so not out of respect for
Indian technologies, but out of a sense that production in India could not
be abstracted from the male artisanal body. Gazetteers and monographs
tried to render production into the language of science; by identifying
Figure 1.6 Metal worker from the Jaipur School of Art, JIAI, 1894
Source: “Metal Work, School of Art, Jeypore,” JIAI 6 no. 48 [1894]. Courtesy of the University of
Pennsylvania.
crafts as embodied labor they also marked the fundamental impossibil-

ity of such a project. As we will see in Chapter 2, this close attention paid
to caste bodies helped establish the fundamental distance that separated
Indian crafts from modern industry. Indian artisans might make intricate
things, but only through patience and diligence, not innovation and
mechanics. The same artisans might cooperate closely in highly special-
ized labor requiring detailed experience, but only out of caste loyalties
and kinship networks, not out of logical, efficient capitalist principles. In
the end, documentation efforts rendered Indian skills ethnographic, not
industrial, rooted as they were in cultural proclivities that simultaneously
explained current production but also prevented future development.
In documentation efforts, crafts appeared as examples of indigenous

knowledge. But surveys, monographs, and exhibitions were careful to label
that knowledge archaic, offering it up as yet another example of Indians’
inability to become the proper “knowing subject who is set apart from,
even set up against, the objects to be known.” As Sanjay Seth has recently
argued, Western education in India drew on the wider Enlightenment
heritage to advance the distinction “between genuine knowledge, the abil-
ity to understand the meaning of something through one’s own reasoning
processes, and . . . having made knowledge one’s own, and being ‘stuffed’
with others’ ideas and therefore in possession of only secondhand knowl-
edge.” This was, moreover, “a distinction in which good knowledge and
failed knowledge map onto the distinction between autonomy and heter-
onomy, between an active subject and a passive one.”132 Crafts skills failed
to make the grade of “genuine” knowledge on all levels. Passed on from
one generation to another, taught by elders who expected unquestioning
obedience from their students, and mastered through rote repetition of
gradually more difficult tasks, artisanship offered no space for individual
ownership of knowledge, let alone incentive to explore the underlying
principles that informed daily work. Embodied, traditional crafts skills
appeared, in other words, as the antithesis of the modern.
That opposition to modern knowledge helped to add more coherence
to the category of crafts itself. At the same time that government surveys,
museums, and journals isolated individual castes and communities by
their cultural habits, working methods, and economic status, they also
united crafts by identifying commonalities across media and region.
Standardized reports carefully tabulated comparable information for
each craft on average wages, total employment, and changing product
ranges. With diverse processes occurring across wide geographic areas
in disparate industries all distilled into common categories of analysis, it
became increasingly possible to see crafts as a single sector, experiencing
shared trends, whether of geographic centralization, competition from
mill goods, artisanal immiseration, or innovation in designs.
Those comparisons emerged naturally from survey design; the goal
of standardizing gazetteer or monograph questions, topics, organiza-
tion, and level of detail was to produce information that could be easily
translated from one part of the country to another, one community
to another, and one industry to another. They also emerged naturally
from statistics as a form of knowledge, which, as Arjun Appadurai has
argued, both flattens out idiosyncrasies within categories and hardens
boundaries between categories.133 By categorizing artisans within a com-
mon class of workers—as opposed to other classes such as writers, traders,
husbandmen, musicians, servants, shepherds, and laborers—gazetteers

forged an aggregate identity for crafts marked by shared characteristics
and common problems. Similarly, by identifying wooden chairs, embroi-
dered bedcovers, silver tea trays, cotton saris, brass waterpots, woolen
shawls, leather shoes, and ivory combs under the common rubric of crafts,
late-nineteenth-century reformers emphasized conceptual unity rather
than material differences. Being able to see individual dyers as representa-
tives of a common class of artisans or to place individual objects into a
wider category of crafts relied on both a certain level of abstraction and
a certain level of distance from the subject of study. This process was
hardly unique to crafts. As noted earlier, the basic conceptual frameworks
of Indian society—caste, religious community, language, region—were
all undergoing a process of cultural objectification in the late nineteenth
century as Western-educated Indians began to step back from their cus-
toms, rituals, and traditions and to view them as essential elements of a
complete entity, a “thing” now consciously seen as Indian culture.134
As outside observers replaced occasional, idiosyncratic surveys of local
crafts with common, uniform accounts about industries across the whole
subcontinent, they transformed the nature and function of knowledge.
For one, the complexity of local knowledge shifted; as Fawcett compiled
a standard description of dyeing, for instance, he necessarily jettisoned
many local variations and innovations to create commonality.135 For
another, the point of local knowledge shifted; silk weaving in Poona now
represented not just local productivity or labor utilization but national
industrial skills and potential, to be judged for its contribution to the
overall economy alongside weaving in Surat, Benares, and Mysore. In
other words, as with other forms of indigenous knowledge like Sanskrit or
ayurveda, documentation rendered crafts passive objects of analysis rather
than active, living practices.136
Even more important, though, was the fact that control over knowledge
also shifted as authors of surveys, gazetteers, and monographs put into pub-
lic hands information that formerly would have been kept as the personal
heritage of individual families or caste groups. This was a striking change at
the time. Compared with the dense and wide-ranging circulation of printed
materials about production in Europe from as early as the late seventeenth
century,137 Indian artisans in the late nineteenth century generally kept tech-
nical knowledge to themselves. One key reason for this was fear of competi-
tion; as an 1876 article in the reform-minded Gujarati journal Buddhiprakash
put it, “There are many who think that if they teach their craft to others, they
may lose their own business and earnings.”138 That is not to say that no
records existed. Late-nineteenth-century Gujarati blockmakers, printers,
and merchants involved in the production of block-printed saudagiri
cottons for Southeast Asian markets, for instance, all kept paper copies
of typical designs to facilitate orders with Thai merchants.139 But such
paper copies seem to have been private rather than public documents,
kept within particular families rather than distributed for the general use
of printers as a whole, let alone all textile workers, or all Gujaratis. Thus,
the most senior saudagiri blockmaker still active in 2000, Maneklal Gajjar,
retained design samples compiled by his father and grandfather from the
late nineteenth century onward as evidence of the particular skills of his
family, not of the general state of printing in earlier eras.140
As Tirthankar Roy has pointed out, keeping information private repre-
sented a logical response for individuals struggling to retain a competitive
edge in an era with no protection for intellectual property rights.141 The
shift, then, to making knowledge publicly available through exhibitions,
museums, and publications represents a radical innovation not only in
access but also in power. By documenting crafts in print or material display,
art officials claimed their right to disrupt existing systems of knowledge
transmission and revealed their ability to do so in the face of artisanal
desires for privacy. They also declared themselves experts in the field of
crafts, demonstrating their superiority over artisans in both breadth and
depth of knowledge. In terms of breadth, art officials compiled compos-
ite histories of traditional arts, assembled coherent narratives of growth,
achievement, and decay, and distilled underlying concepts from the myriad
objects available—all of which added up to a comprehensive vision of the
field seemingly unavailable to artisans working in caste-bound isolation.
In terms of depth, officials used the language of abstract knowledge and
scientific analysis to identify underlying principles and universal truths
of artisanal work—again a view inaccessible to artisans seen as capable of
only instinctual, habitual practice. Here the definition discussed earlier of
different types of knowledge as active or passive, genuine or failed, trans-
lated into different types of leadership; those with active knowledge of the
field claimed the right to active leadership. Documentation efforts, in other
words, displaced artisans as masters of craftwork in favor of self-appointed
outside “experts”; as Deepali Dewan puts it, textual descriptions of craft
processes made the artisan’s “actual presence superfluous.”142
That displacement is visible in the very format of late-nineteenth-
century documentation efforts. Printed surveys of crafts appeared in
expensive English-language publications, which would have been inac-
cessible to often-impoverished, generally illiterate artisans. Nor were such
publications designed to serve artisanal needs. Most only documented
what artisans themselves already knew, summarizing existing working
practices rather than detailing new technical innovations, and describing
traditional product lines instead of exploring new commodity demands.
If artisans were not the presumed audience for documentation efforts,

neither were they acknowledged as the authors. At exhibitions artisans
appeared not as experts to answer questions on tools or methods to fel-
low craftspersons, but, as Saloni Mathur points out, as largely silent bodies
on display.143 To European viewers those bodies seemed so exotic as to be
hardly human; describing the reaction of the crowds that flocked to see
the Indian artisans at the 1886 Colonial and Indian Exhibition, the Bengali
museum official T. N. Mukharji noted, “They were as much astonished to
see the Indians produce works of art with the aid of rude apparatus they
themselves had discarded long ago, as a Hindu would be to see a chimpan-
zee officiating as a priest in a funeral ceremony and reading out Sanskrit
texts from a palm leaf book spread before him.”144 In print, the informants
who provided details of dye recipes, tanning techniques, or carving skills
were never named; instead they are described only as “workmen,” “dyers,”
“leatherworkers,” or “carvers.” Thus John Griffiths starts out his description
of “the operation of working brass and copper into the various shapes” in
an 1896 article in the JIAI with the following lines:
The sheet of copper or brass is placed by the workman on the floor, and
on it he traces with a pair of compasses a circle of sufficient size to form
the vessel he is about to make, and cuts it out with a pair of scissors. If the
article to be made is a small one, such as a lota . . ., it is hammered into shape
from one piece of metal, beginning from the bottom and working up to the
mouth; but if it is a large one, such as the handa . . ., then it is made of two
pieces with a joint at about the centre.145
Griffiths writes his informants out of authority in his article on several

levels; not only is the copperworker left unnamed, much of his work is
rendered in the passive tense—the sheet “is placed,” the small vessel “is
hammered,” the large vessel “is made.”
If the physical ability to put artisans on display represents one obvi-
ous demonstration of the new power dynamics in crafts at the end of
the nineteenth century, this emerging intellectual authority over crafts is
another. Outsiders now controlled the public presentation of information
about crafts even as artisans continued to circulate ideas and technolo-
gies through more private channels. As crafts emerged more fully into the
public eye, they also became subject to new public demands for change.
Indeed, as we shall see in Chapter 2, in the late-nineteenth-century British
officials and Indian elites alike asserted their power in yet another way:
by defining what was wrong with crafts and determining what should be
done to fix them.
2
The Culture of Difference:

From Colonial Knowledge to
the Problem with Crafts
S urvey compilers set out to study crafts for complex reasons. One of
the most basic was perhaps curiosity; Indian-carved agates, woven
shawls, dyed cottons, and inlaid sandalwood had long-standing markets
in Europe, and yet comparatively little was known of how, where, and
by whom they were made. Thus, museum displays and government
monographs set out to fill gaps in existing knowledge and resolve minor
mysteries of origin and technique. They also, however, did far more. For,
alongside particular attention to the chisels or resins used in wood carv-
ing, or the methods of preparing wool for shawl weaving, documentation
efforts also contributed to a much larger project of outlining the under-
lying structures of the Indian traditional economy. Indeed, it is hard to
imagine why the colonial state would regularly invest public resources
into systematically mapping—geographically, culturally, economically,
socially, and technically—craft production if there was not that underly-
ing goal. When surveys and exhibitions rendered artisanal knowledge
public, they did so not just because they could—thanks to the newfound
investigatory powers of the colonial state. They also did so because orga-
nizers thought they should—on the basis of the idea that crafts were a vital
part of the larger economy, with consequences—good or bad—for the
nation as a whole. Crafts, in other words, were not just subject to public
scrutiny but also subject to public duty.
This public commitment to crafts in India emerged as part of a much
larger concern with industrial strength as a key component in modern
nation-building. From at least the 1870s on, industrial activists worked
to convince the public that industrial production and productivity were

not merely economic concerns, tied only to narrow pursuits of profit and
individual market share. Rather, they argued, industry was an essentially
political matter, crucial to ideological claims to national reputation as well
as to material expressions of international power. On a domestic level,
writers identified prosperous and progressive areas of the subcontinent on
the basis of their production; writing in January 1877, the Buddhiprakash
warned that “any area that cannot or does not produce good things is to
be considered as good as mere forest.”1 On an international level, activists
argued that power and status rested on industrial aptitude. Thus, noting
the surprising power by which England, “placed in one corner of Europe,
much less in size than our Gujarat province even, . . . has turned so strong
and wealthy as rulers of one-third of the world,” the Buddhiprakash
offered a simple explanation: “the reason is industry.”2
Arguments that industrial strength brought international fame and
prosperity while its absence invited famine and poverty began appearing
in journals like the Buddhiprakash in the early 1870s.3 By the end of the
century even women’s magazines had taken up the refrain. Thus in 1893
the Gujarati journal Stri Bodh advised its readers that “a country’s pros-
perity and wealth is also dependent on the industry of its people. Where
the people are idle, it is easy to find poverty and backwardness. Industry,
on the other hand, lights up desolate lands with beautiful gardens and
lovely buildings.”4 Indeed, the link between industrial achievement and
national success had become so accepted by 1903 that the Buddhiprakash
could confidently state that “now everyone at least recognizes that only
such a country enjoys wealth and happiness where its trade and commerce
are flourishing.”5
This new public engagement in industrial issues worked not just to call
attention to the state of production but also to demand individual action
to improve conditions. For women, this meant a call to “leave off idleness
and take up industry and work instead” within the home, to the benefit of
house and family.6 For men, more explicitly public action was demanded:
pursuing technical training in chemistry or engineering, investing in
new factories, opening stores to sell Indian goods, or entering industrial
jobs instead of taking the easy route into government service.7 As the
1903 Buddhiprakash article put it, “If we want to improve the situation
of our poor country, and desire that trade and commerce flourish once
more, and that our goods reach all corners of the world, we must begin
to take steps for it.” What steps should those be? Among others, “provid-
ing encouragement, somehow or the other, to our artisans to increase the
production of native goods.”8
THE CULTURE OF DIFFERENCE 69
As a key sector producing “native goods,” crafts offered a compelling

area for development as public interest in economic matters increased. In
the late nineteenth century, crafts were not merely of statistical interest,
passively measured and described; instead, they became a site of active
negotiation about what the future of the Indian economy should be and
how modernization should be pursued. And yet, as the Buddhiprakash
quote above suggests, those negotiations generally excluded artisans
themselves; the “we” of the quote extended to only the educated elite
readers of the journal, those seen as capable of offering encouragement
to the possessively described, abstract entity “our artisans.” In develop-
ment debates, various outsiders competed to establish their authority over
crafts. Indeed, the more information assembled in surveys, exhibitions,
museums, and journal articles about crafts processes, the more sure the
knowledge gatherers were that artisans had little to offer in terms of lead-
ership. Seen as incapable of grasping either the scientific principles under-
lying their techniques or the macroeconomic principles shaping their
working conditions, artisans were too hopelessly mired in the minutiae of
everyday practice to offer global visions for future development. Instead it
was up to outsiders to step in and impose order and rationality. Only they
would be able to properly understand craft processes and organization;
even more importantly, only they would be able to turn local, particular
habits to national, universal development ends.
If this modernization project excluded artisans from leadership roles,
it did not exclude all Indians. Indian economists, journalists, industrial
activists, philanthropists, and social reformers all joined hands around
issues of artisanal production, offering some of the most prominent voices
for change. Interestingly, they did so not on the basis of superior knowl-
edge of the field of crafts. As Arindam Dutta has pointed out, Indian elites
based their ideas and interventions almost entirely on state knowledge as
produced through surveys and annual statistical abstracts; they rarely, if
ever, went out to gather information directly from artisans themselves.9
That shared knowledge base ensured not only common understanding
with the state of the technical and organizational needs of artisans, but
also a common acceptance of the ethnographic, culture-bound nature of
the artisanal body. Both—the documented facts of production and the
“ethnographicization” of artisans—actually served elite as well as official
interests equally. For, just as the British used the culture-bound, conserva-
tive bodies of artisans to set India off from the West, so too Indian elites
used those bodies to set themselves off from traditional ways by claiming
superior vision, commitment to progress, and rationality as demonstra-
tions of a superior modernity. And, just as fundamentally, Indian elites
and British officials alike defined that superior modernity via the devel-
opmental discourse of the colonial state, with its ideals of progress, com-
mitment to science as the basic syntax of reform, and investment in state
power as the means of achieving economic and social goals.10
This shared commitment to economic development and planning
in crafts was, as David Ludden has argued, centrally about power, “spe-
cifically state power in a development regime.”11 Public interest in and
claims of responsibility for crafts emerged in the 1870s alongside and as
part of growing Indian demands for greater political power in govern-
ment. Critiques of the Indian economy at the time, as laid out by men
like Dadabhai Naoroji, Mahadev Govind Ranade, and Romesh Chunder
Dutt, focused on the role of the colonial state in the decline of traditional
industries, the growing dependence on agriculture, and the failure of
modern industrialization. Those critiques did not question the state’s role
in the economy; indeed all assumed that the state itself could and should
become part of the solution by finally shaking off the claims of laissez-
faire economics and taking on an activist, interventionist role in fiscal
and industrial matters. And yet few Indian thinkers at the time were will-
ing to cede all authority to the state. Instead, industrial activism offered a
means of establishing Indian leadership abilities—abilities denied by the
British in political institutions. To give but one example, in a long series of
articles in 1876 and 1877 exploring the condition of Indian industries, the
Buddhiprakash suggested a number of ways the government could help:
offer more technical education, introduce new technologies, improve
public facilities for trade and travel, and create employment for the poor.
Such assistance was vital, the journal argued, since Indians “still do not
have enough strength to improve on our own.” But the unnamed author
immediately made it clear that that weakness was already almost a thing
of the past: “When the child is young the parents would feed and support
it, but when it grows up, the child has to be on his own. Similarly, now we
must learn do our own improvement independently.” In light of that new-
found power, the article cautioned readers to no longer be “dependent on
the government for each and everything.”12 In other words, involvement in
industrial development helped to declare Indians’ political coming of age.
A shared development agenda across the racial boundaries of colonial
power did not mean unanimity on the paths to progress. Indeed, reform-
ers inside and outside of government in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries offered opposing views about what should be done
with crafts. In keeping with the forward-looking tone of the swadeshi
movement, many pinned hopes for India’s future on new factories
devoted to cotton spinning and weaving, chrome tanning, chemicals and
pharmaceuticals, tobacco, pottery, buttons, soap, matches, ink, paper, and

candles.13 Within this modernizing imperative, traditional manufactures
seemed to offer little. Thus Glyn Barlow, the then principal of Victoria
College at Palghat and former editor of the Madras Times, declared in a
1904 book, Industrial India, that “India’s old-fashioned ways of working
are, as it were, bow and arrows, with which she will vainly compete with
the foreigner with his machinery-guns. India, for her salvation, must get
rid of her bows and arrows and must learn to use machinery-guns too.”14
In industrial terms, learning to use machine guns meant embracing
modern technologies: “the hope of India’s industrial future means that
India must identify herself more and more with the ways of the West. . . .
For her industrial progress she must bring in the steam-engine and the
machine.”15
Others were not so ready to give up on crafts. In a July 1904 review
of Barlow’s book in the industrial reform journal the Indian Review, the
economist and statesman Romesh Chunder Dutt argued that improving
handlooms did far more good for the nation than any increase in mills
could accomplish. One of the most respected economic critics of colonial-
ism, Dutt structured his defense of crafts in social terms, contrasting the
happiness of an Indian weaver with the suffering of a British mill worker:
The individual man is at his best, in dignity, independence, and intel-

ligence, when he ploughs his own field or works his own loom than when
he is a labourer under a big landlord or an operative in a huge factory. . . .
The Indian village weaver, working his loom with the help of his wife and
children, and selling the prepared cloth in the village market, is a more
responsible and dignified being than the Lancashire operative, working in
crowded and noisome factories, and leading a life in which all the natural
instincts of human nature are crushed out in one eternal round of factory
work. The ploughed field in India seems to belong to the cultivator; the
ploughman in England seems to belong to his field and his landlord. The
weaver’s wife in India is a domestic woman and housewife first, and an
operative afterwards; the factory girl of England is an operative first, she
may be anything or nothing of a woman.16
For Dutt, the shift from crafts to factory production thus involved consid-
erable sacrifice, entailing as it did a decline from dignified independence
to exploitative suffering.
Barlow and Dutt represent two sides of a fairly common debate
in industrial circles about crafts development. Despite their obvious
differences, however, the two men shared some key basic assumptions.
First, both wrote about crafts as qualitatively different from modern
industry. For Barlow, crafts were “bow and arrows” while modern indus-
try was “machinery-guns”; the two represented totally separate technolo-
gies, stages of civilization, and forms of power in the world. For Dutt, the
“Indian village weaver” and the “Lancashire operative” might both weave
cloth, but they had nothing at all in common in terms of how, where, and
for whom they worked. Similarly, both men also doubled the opposition
between crafts and modern industry by the dichotomy between India and
the West. For Barlow, India’s “industrial future” lay “with the ways of the
West”; crafts represented India, while futuristic, machine-based modern
production was essentially Euro-American. For Dutt, the Indian weaver
stood in contrast not to a Bombay mill worker, but to “the Lancashire
operative” and “the factory girl of England”; the culture-bound ethno-
graphic bodies of “the Indian village weaver” and “the weaver’s wife”
marked the essential nature of difference.
These shared assumptions—about the contrast between Indian crafts
and modern, Western industry—were common sense in India by 1904.
Although visible in general terms in Europe in the mid-nineteenth
century, the full-fledged dichotomy emerged in India more slowly. Mid-
nineteenth-century articles in the Buddhiprakash, for instance, detailed
the many ways in which artisans were unlike modern men of the time.
Thus, an 1856 article noted that while artisans were too conservative to
accept the latest technologies from Europe, the “learned people” of the day
had woken up to the need for change and were reading widely about what
was going on overseas, exploring science, collaborating on new ventures,
and adopting new technologies.17 Elites, therefore, had stepped in to lead
the way: “Today the quick improvement of the country is in the hands
of the intelligent people.” But artisans could be part of progress as well:
“If the people of our country imitate each other for this [i.e. improve-
ment] they will act and on account of this acting in their minds they will
change.”18 The dichotomy between modern men of learning and conser-
vative artisans was, therefore, not permanent. Modern industry was the
goal, but it could grow out of existing production and did not demand
entirely new structures of industrial organization. Thus, when a later
article in the same journal exhorted readers to “bring out the machinery
and equipment that produce such [i.e. modern] goods,” it assumed arti-
sans would be involved, arguing that new technologies would “be used by
our workers, make profits for our country and our people.”19
In midcentury, industrial reformers still held out hope that artisans
could make the transition from old to new methods by adopting modern
technologies and embracing novel forms of industrial organization to
better compete with factory goods. And, as we will see, there was a great
deal of evidence on the ground for just those kinds of changes throughout
the nineteenth century. By the 1880s, however, public leaders increasingly
ignored the possibility of an easy transition from crafts to modern indus-
try, highlighting instead the essential difference of crafts from Western-
style factory production. For those who longed for the latter, the contrast
operated largely in negative terms: whereas modern factories were central-
ized, efficient, massive concerns, artisanal production was individual, iso-
lated, and small scale; whereas modern workers were rational, disciplined,
and progressive in their working methods and technologies, artisans were
inexplicably tied to archaic traditional ways, unmethodical, and hostile
to change. For those steeped in the rhetoric of the international Arts and
Crafts Movement, on the other hand, crafts fared more positively: whereas
modern workers were oppressed, confined, and exploited, artisans were
independent, autonomous, and dignified; whereas industrial products
were lifeless in their dull uniformity, crafts embodied human creativity
through their hand-made variations and imperfections.
These contrasting ideas of artisanal difference—either as something to
be celebrated aesthetically and socially or as something to be bemoaned
materially and economically—emerged in response to the widespread
changes of the late nineteenth century. Ideas that only existed in outline
form in India in midcentury, when stylistic innovation was limited and
modern industry virtually unknown, took on new meaning over time.
More and more Indians introduced Western goods into their homes
and lives, adopting—even if only selectively—new clothes, furniture,
utensils, adornments, and comforts; styles and habits changed accord-
ingly, in terms of consumer loyalty to Indian products or desire for nov-
elty in design. Simultaneously, Indian exposure to Western science and
technology—industrial and otherwise—expanded dramatically. Although
limited in number, engineering colleges, university science courses, and
technical schools brought breakthroughs in practical and theoretical sci-
ences to Indian students. At the same time, spinning and weaving mills
in cotton, silk, and jute in places like Bombay, Ahmedabad, and Calcutta
provided a select laboring class practical experience working with modern
machinery.
These upheavals of a society in transition cemented rather than erased
the difference between crafts and modern industry. As in other parts of
the world, the possibility of another form of production initiated sus-
tained debates about crafts. In William Morris’s Britain, the daily reality
of modern industrial cities, with their smoke-filled skies, dangerous mills,
and overcrowded slums, fostered the appeal of crafts as a moral and
artistic alternative. In India during the same period, by contrast, modern
factories were rare, confined geographically in western parts of the

country to a few cities like Bombay and Ahmedabad and materially largely
to textiles. The sense of difference that emerged with crafts defined as all
that industry was not—not Western, not modern—then, was not local or
immediate, but international and theoretical. And thus, it was, by nature,
globally comparative, counterpoising Indian artisans not to Indian mill
workers—who did exist and were a visible part of the urban landscape in
Bombay and Ahmedabad by late century—but to Western ones.
Key to this opposition was the culture-bound artisanal body.
Documentation efforts noted that crafts differed from modern indus-
try in structural terms, including scale, integration, diversification, and
mechanization of production. And yet authors attributed only part of the
responsibility for these differences to market relations; more important,
they claimed, were the attitudes and habits of artisans and the culture of
work they represented. In idealized descriptions of the glories of craft pro-
duction, such as the one Dutt offered in his review of Barlow’s book, how
artisans felt about their work and their essential characteristics—their
dignity, independence, responsibility, and intelligence—illustrated their
distance from modern mill labor. Such an approach fit in snugly with the
descriptions offered in more prosaic government gazetteers and mono-
graphs, where craft processes and products appeared embedded within
dense ethnographic detail about artisanal marriage habits, diet, religious
beliefs, housing types, styles of clothing, rites of passage, and attitudes
toward work. All made economic choices the product of cultural proclivi-
ties: conservatism, religiosity, hostility to education, a desire for stability.
All therefore, implicitly or explicitly, held artisans responsible for prob-
lems in adapting to a radically changing marketplace.
And those problems were legion. Crafts idealists complained of too
much change, seeing growing commercialization, falling quality, and
Westernizing designs as evidence that Indian handcraftsmanship, with
all of its aesthetic and social benefits, faced imminent extinction. Crafts
modernizers, for their part, did not find enough change, worrying that
artisans were too conservative and stubborn to make necessary adjust-
ments with the times—a failing that led to growing poverty for individu-
als and the nation as a whole. All agreed that the changes that had come
had not improved anything; artisans had either succumbed to commercial
impulses at the expense of traditional styles or defensively retreated into
age-old habits instead of enthusiastically embracing new opportunities.
Either way, artisans had proven unable to adapt successfully to the mod-
ern world. Too conservative, backward, stubborn, or uneducated, artisans
appeared in reform literature to be in desperate need of help. The obvious
solution, then, was to bring in outsiders better versed in the structures and
requirements of colonial society: educated elites.
As discussed in Chapter 1, the artisanal body came into prominence
only in the late nineteenth century with the shift in attention from
products to producers. So too the opposition between Indian/traditional
crafts and Western/modern industry defined through culture-bound,
caste-determined artisans emerged only then. This chapter explores the
nature and development of this opposition: how crafts came at a certain
time to stand as the Other of modern industry through debates about the
nature and pace of change in India. Fears about sweeping Westernization
clarified a vision of what was apparently being lost: a traditional way of
life built around beautiful objects and independent handcraftsmanship.
Complaints about the snail’s pace of technological progress, on the other
hand, solidified an image of what the future might hold, if only artisans
could adapt to a new era of global competition. Whether rejecting or
advocating change, romanticizing an idealized past or dispassionately
describing a problematic present, activists agreed that crafts were not like
modern industry. And over time, as each attempt to describe artisanal
practices built off of what came before, enshrining earlier opinions as
established truths, they became only more confident in that assessment.
The effect was both cumulative and productive, forging a set of basic
“facts” about crafts that became, to adopt David Ludden’s words from
another context, “so saturated by excess plausibility” that they shaped all
future assumptions and interpretations.20 Through government surveys
and other writings the similarities between crafts and modern industry
progressively disappeared in the face of the “excess plausibility” of differ-
ence. And, as crafts emerged as a distinct sector, simultaneously separate
from all other parts of the economy but also internally unified across
media and regions, that sector became increasingly subject to leadership
claims by outsiders anxious to impose their own visions on the field. If the
fact of artisanal difference meant that the solutions offered could not too
closely mirror those of modern industry, it also meant that artisans could
not be trusted to direct future developments. Thus attempts to intervene
in crafts—as we shall see in Chapters 3 and 4—operated on the basic idea
of difference.
Crafting Knowledge: The Common Sense of Difference
How, exactly, did Indian crafts differ from modern industry? What was
the substance of this opposition? Late-nineteenth-century arguments
of difference revolved around two main points: crafts represented
distinctive products and craftsmanship represented a distinctive mode

of production. As products, handcrafted goods were beautiful, tradi-
tional, national, and profoundly human, shaped by unique creators
steeped in the lore of their caste ancestors and the spirit of their people,
their variable imperfections allowing consumers access to individual
creativity through material form. This rich heritage and variety was in
contrast to machine goods, whose designs drew broadly on the latest,
newest, ever-changing global styles and whose sleek uniformity replaced
human idiosyncrasy with machine precision. As a mode of production,
the contrast was even starker. Based in hereditary employment shaped
by family, caste, and community, craftsmanship was simultaneously
individualistic and creative, with traditionally trained artisans work-
ing age-old implements by hand in home workshops according to their
own desires and the needs of their customers—men and women often
personally connected to the artisan through community or more formal
patron-client ties. Again, craftsmanship stood in total opposition to
modern factory production, in which people from all manner of earlier
employment operated the latest thunderous machinery in large mills
to produce goods destined for distant, unknown markets, all for wages
granted by a capitalist-owner who determined products, schedules,
and distribution. Individualistic, human, distinctively Indian objects
opposed standardized, impersonal, denationalized ones; decentralized,
autonomous, small-scale, technologically archaic community-based
production stood in contrast to centralized, anonymous, modern, effi-
cient, global industry.
Value did not automatically adhere to one side of those dichotomies
in either products or production. Depending on how a particular writer
weighed the relative merits of things like aesthetics against efficiency,
independence against productivity, one part of the equation became
more appealing than the other. Those who insisted that life should be
beautiful and personally fulfilling rather than merely efficient and ratio-
nal argued that crafts were superior to modern factories. Those who
argued that production should provide the greatest material (if not aes-
thetic) good to the greatest number, on the other hand, dismissed crafts
technologies as archaic and inefficient compared with more up-to-date
methods. Hoping either to perpetuate or to destroy what marked crafts
off from modern industry, both sides accepted difference, but attached
contrasting meanings to that fact. Divided by their attitudes toward
industrialization rather than by race, those who advanced these differ-
ent interpretations spanned the political spectrum, demonstrating the
breadth of ideas of difference.
Defining difference positively: The production of beauty, the beauty

of production
In its most basic form, the opposition between Indian crafts and Western
industry was already visible in European responses to the Great Exhibition
in London in 1851. As suggested in Chapter 1, European commentaries
on the event favorably contrasted Indian submissions to British ones on
design grounds, praising the gorgeous ornamentation and harmonious
hues of Indian crafts while deriding the excessively naturalistic patterns
and garish colors of British industrial manufactures. The official guide
to the exhibition noted the “exquisite skill” of the Indian submissions in
general and “the elegance of its manufactured fabrics” in particular.21 The
Times went further, hoping that “by their suggestiveness” the “remarkable
and characteristic collections” from India could correct “the vulgarities in
art-manufactures, not only of England but of Christendom.” For, “from
the carpets, the shawls, the muslins, and the brocades of Asia, and from
much of its metallic and earthenware products, can be clearly traced those
invaluable rules of art, a proper definition and recognition of which form
the great desiderata of our more civilized industrial systems.”22
British interest in Indian crafts at the Great Exhibition was largely
utilitarian; critics hoped to extract new design ideas with which to reform
British manufactures, where they argued aesthetics had been all but for-
gotten in the drive for cost competitiveness.23 As the century progressed,
however, Indian crafts increasingly attracted attention on their own right,
independent of their impact on European design. In that transition,
writers expanded on the nature of difference between crafts and Western
industry to include not just visual appearance but also the wider cultural
context of production. Late-nineteenth-century writers paired the strik-
ing exoticism of Indian crafts with the distinctive social organization of
production; just as Indian pottery did not look like pottery from Britain,
so too the social context looked nothing like that of the industrial West.
For some, compared with the drudgery, exploitation, and alienation
of Western factory production, Indian crafts offered an ideal world of
material beauty and social contentment in which close-knit village com-
munities or benevolent urban patrons fostered artisanal creativity and
productivity.
These themes echoed those of the Arts and Crafts Movement, which
emerged in the late nineteenth century. Leaders of the movement such
as William Morris, Walter Crane, and C. R. Ashbee argued that beauty in
design depended on beauty in work. Highly stratified factories in which
individuals with no control over designs tended large machines could
only produce ugliness and contrivance; small workshops in which master

artisans collaborated closely with designers to produce objects using hand
techniques, on the other hand, could only result in grace and harmony.
These ideas had a profound influence on aesthetic developments through-
out Europe and North America in the 1880s and 1890s, thanks to the
translation of Morris’s writings into various major European languages,
the wide circulation of the movement’s key publication, the journal
The Studio, and trips abroad to give talks or execute commissions on
the part of key designers affiliated with the movement. By the end of the
nineteenth century, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, Norway,
most of the regions of Central Europe, and the United States had their
own active arts and crafts movements, inspired by the British example, but
rooted in their own vernacular styles and nationalist concerns.24
India was part of this international trend, thanks to what were often
quite direct ties to British arts and crafts leaders. Birdwood’s complaints
about the quality of some of the Indian goods on display at the 1878
Paris exhibition so stirred artists, designers, and intellectuals back in
Britain that they wrote a public letter of thanks for his “independent and
courageous criticism”; its signatories included Morris, Crane, and Henry
Doulton, among others.25 President of the Silk Association of Great
Britain and Ireland, Thomas Wardle, another key figure of the era instru-
mental in promoting Indian silks to international audiences, had direct
working ties with Morris, printing silks that Morris designed. Finally,
Lockwood Kipling modeled the crafts instruction at the Mayo School in
Lahore—where he served as principal from the school’s formation in 1875
until his retirement in 1893—on Morris’s efforts to revive crafts guilds in
England.26
Much as in other parts of the world, the influence of the Arts and
Crafts Movement can be seen in late-nineteenth-century India most
clearly in idealized depictions of craftsmanship. In The Industrial Arts
of India, Birdwood celebrated the traditional village artisan who had an
“assured place” in community and national life, whose limited needs
relieved him of “an incalculable dead weight of cares,” and who worked
with “contentment of mind and leisure, and pride and pleasure in it for
its own sake.”27 This vision of dignified, unhurried, artistic production
echoed in other writings of the time. In an 1888 article in the JIAI Flora
Annie Steel described the phulkari embroidery of the Punjab as “a work
of leisure—the work of women, who, after doing yeoman’s service with
father or husband in the fields, sit down in the cool of the evening to
watch their threshing floors, and . . . darn away with patient, clumsy fin-
gers at the roll of ruddy cloth upon their lap.”28 Another JIAI article the
following year similarly emphasized the context of production: specifi-

cally, systems of patronage in Indian crafts. Reviewing the Indian section
at the Paris exhibition of 1889, the unnamed author singled out for par-
ticular approval the Indian displays of the London firm Proctor and Co.,
arguing that the success of their furniture was “owing to their system of
manufacture being as near as possible that by which the great works of art
were originally produced in the palaces of Indian princes.” Not only did
Proctor and Co. employ “the best possible workmen” in their workshops
in Bombay, but those workmen were “allowed to follow their own ideas in
working out the designs.”29
Objects produced under such conditions could not help but be more
beautiful than machine-made alternatives. Thus Steel declared, “Phulkari
work is a true art, insomuch that it must be the outcome of love and
leisure, not of haste and greed.”30 In his report on Indian silks presented
at the Colonial and Indian Exhibition of 1886 and reprinted in the JIAI,
Wardle explained the glories of India’s fabrics as follows:
The Indians, like the Chinese and Japanese, have never cared so much for
what in Europe is termed excellence of quality, which means for the most
part mechanical regularity in texture and pattern, and although they have
had to weave with threads often much varying in regularity and thickness,
yet they have down to to-day managed somehow or other, if they have had
a pattern to weave, to put, so to speak, soul into it, and to raise it above the
commonplace fabrics so often produced in modern Europe.31
After praising a twenty-foot-long silk turban cloth dyed in Ulwar, Wardle

went on to dismiss an English-made imitation he saw in the same market:
“It was machine-printed, and of course bore no comparison to the taste in
arrangement of lines of the native work. The lines on the machine-printed
English specimen are exceedingly crude and hard, and the colours want-
ing in the richness of tone of the originals.” The superiority of Indian silks
lay, in other words, in the fact of their traditional, hand production, which
brought rich tones, tasteful decoration, and “soul.”32
If objects produced by hand in India were superior to their machine-
made competitors from Europe, so too the creative, inspired life of Indian
artisans was far preferable to the degraded existence of the Western mill
worker. For Birdwood, compared with the “serenity and dignity” of daily
routines that allowed the village artisan to work with “pride and plea-
sure,” the English worker faced a “desperate struggle for existence which
oppresses the life and crushes the very soul out of the English working
man.”33 Part of that difference Birdwood ascribed to capitalism, arguing
that its haste and competition and constant pressure to produce more
things at cheaper prices were essentially foreign to traditional India. But

he also explained it in terms of tools by defining machinery as anathema
to the artisanal way of life. For Birdwood “what . . . is chiefly to be dreaded
is the general introduction of machinery into India,” since it would throw
Indian crafts into “the same confusion of principles” that afflicted British
manufactures and destroyed artisanal happiness.34
This essential opposition between the aesthetic and social glories of
Indian craftsmanship and the horrors of Western industry appeared in its
most elaborate form in a short book by the Anglo-Ceylonese art historian
Ananda Coomaraswamy (1877–1947) titled simply The Indian Craftsman.
Although best known for his studies of the fine arts such as Medieval
Sinhalese Art (1908), Rajput Painting (1916), and History of Indian and
Indonesian Art (1927)35—the last completed while he was curator of
Indian Art at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts—Coomaraswamy was
also a devoted admirer of crafts. Published in 1909, The Indian Craftsman
quotes approvingly—and often at great length—from The Industrial Arts
of India, acknowledging Birdwood as an authority and inspiration.36 But
Coomaraswamy was far more involved in the British Arts and Crafts
Movement than Birdwood and other writers about Indian crafts of the
time. During a long period of residence in England between 1907 and
1916, Coomaraswamy was near neighbor, close associate, and intellectual
friend of Ashbee (who had taken over the mantle of arts and crafts leader-
ship by the turn of the century), bought Morris’s printing press in 1907,
and wrote and lectured on crafts and craftsmanship.37 Perhaps reflecting
those wider ties, Coomaraswamy went beyond his contemporaries in
celebrating the culture of crafts in The Indian Craftsman to the point of
virtually ignoring products and technologies. Birdwood inserted short
paeans to handcraftsmanship within his long survey of goods produced
in different places; Steel, Wardle, and others offered quick asides contrast-
ing crafts to Western industry. Coomaraswamy, by contrast, declared the
purpose of The Indian Craftsman as “being rather to portray the crafts-
man than to describe his work.”38 Exploring the position of artisans in
society, the patronage on which they depended, how they were organized,
and how they understood their work, Coomaraswamy returned again and
again to the alternative offered by a crafts society to the perils of modern
industrialization.
In Coomaraswamy’s portrayal, the Indian craftsman emerged as
entirely free of the competition for employment or markets that marked
the modern West. In rural areas, artisans were valued members of the
village community, “there in virtue of a perpetual contract whereby their
services are given to the husbandman, from whom they receive in return
certain privileges and payments in kind” (1). In more urban areas, artisans
relied on the benevolent patronage of wealthy elites. Thus, at the local
chieftain’s house “were to be seen craftsmen working for him patiently
and contentedly, receiving only their meals, while their families culti-
vated lands for which service was due to the chief ” (31). Nor did artisans
compete against one another in the open market, but relied instead on
craft guilds to regulate conduct within each craft: who could enter, the
hours of labor, wages, price levels, quality, and to whom one could sell.
Drawing indiscriminately on evidence from both India and Sri Lanka to
build his argument, Coomaraswamy thus noted that seventeenth-century
Ceylonese smiths had “this Privilege, that each has a parcel of Towns
belonging to them, whom none but they are to work for” (37). Taken
together, “the principles upon which they [the guilds] acted were, indeed,
altogether socialistic, and realised as an accomplished fact many of the
ideals for which the European worker is still fighting” (7).
If one marker of difference between the Indian craftsman and workers
in the West was his relationship to structures of work—employers, mar-
kets, other workers—another was his relationship to actual production.
For Coomaraswamy, caste-based divisions of labor in India made work
not just vocation but devotion, with each artisan’s inherited craft ordained
as the means “through which alone he can spiritually progress” (43–44).
This provided deep psychic and emotional roots to craft production: “the
craftsman is not an individual expressing individual whims, but a part of
the universe, giving expression to ideals of eternal beauty and unchang-
ing laws, even as do the trees and flowers whose natural and less ordered
beauty is no less God-given” (48). As a result of this ideal support for and
engagement with his work, the Indian craftsman lived with “the assur-
ance of his position, and the assurance of his purpose and value.” This
assurance led him to produce objects of real beauty, since “it is only in the
absence of anxiety as to the immediate future, that that quality of leisure
so characteristic of true works of art and craft can appear in them” (59).
India offered both an ideal and a unique setting for artistic produc-
tion; listing the material conditions and spiritual approach “which we
find expressed in the work of true craftsmen of whatever age or place,”
Coomaraswamy argued that they are found “perhaps more in India than
anywhere else” (60). He himself did not devote much space to the condi-
tion of workers or work in those places “anywhere else” that had long since
departed from the ideals of craft society. But the implicit contrast would
have been clear to readers at the time schooled on the writings of Ruskin
or Morris. In a foreword to a 1989 edition of The Indian Craftsman Alvin
C. Moore Jr. laid out Coomaraswamy’s implied opposition between the
perfect world of Indian craftsmanship and the degraded state of modern

industrialization directly:
In the one case, the craft was truly something of the man: an activity which,
when properly conceived and executed, nourished the whole man—corpus,
anima, et spiritus—in a truly sacramental way; the other has become merely
an activity which has a market and which employs only a part of the man,
that part which lives by bread alone, and which can be practiced by any-
one. . . . In the one case time was available for good work, time for entry into
the rhythms inherent in the tasks themselves, and time for rising on these
rhythms to levels above those with which the task was commenced. . . . In
the modern trade, the rhythms are determined by machines and the average
worker comes from his tasks with no benefits other than his wages.39
Taken together, Coomaraswamy’s descriptions of the individual creativ-

ity, personal engagement, harmonious organization, and human pace
of Indian crafts presented an alluring alternative to Western industrial
capitalism with the latter’s disparities of power between rich and poor,
constant competitive pressures, and widening gulfs between producers
and consumers.
Defining difference negatively: Handcraftsmanship as backwardness
Coomaraswamy’s The Indian Craftsman represents one of the fullest

expressions of the idealized vision of crafts difference in India, standing
in a class of its own as an entire book devoted to the idea of craftsmanship
rather than to practices or products. And yet not everyone who thought
that Indian crafts differed fundamentally from Western industry found
this a cause for celebration. For all those who idealized handcraftsmanship
in India, there were always just as many who found it problematic in the
extreme, arguing that crafts were inefficient, archaic holdovers from an
earlier age that should be replaced as soon as possible with more modern
forms of production. These critics were not blind to the artistic achieve-
ments of Indian artisans. In his account of the 1886 Colonial and Indian
Exhibition, T. N. Mukharji described Indian crafts as “all poetry, a fairy
dream delineated in all its picturesque sweetness,” compared with stiff,
methodical British products. Whatever its beauty, however, such poetry
was ill suited to modern times:
Prosy wakefulness thrives in this world of ours, my countrymen! not the

trance of poetry; so when prose in the shape of steam and mechanism is
the master of millions, poetry in the shape of hatchised chisel hardly gets
five rupees a month, a handful of millets or rice to stay the pangs of hunger,
and a two-penny date-leaf mat to lie down upon on a cold night. Our art is
doomed to die and it ought to die, if it cannot earn more than ten shillings
a month.40
To Mukharji, the dangers of modern Western industry in terms of crowded

cities and deadened labor did not negate its tremendous achievements.
Indeed, these results—cheap, sturdy goods of standard quality accessible
to the masses—were worth some sacrifice. And no place more so than in
India, which desperately needed to join the modern age both to to supply
national needs and to build national pride.
Like the celebration of the difference between beautiful Indian crafts
and ugly British industrial goods, the criticism of crafts difference found
early expression at the Great Exhibition of 1851. Many European visi-
tors to the Crystal Palace, even while admitting like Mukharji the beauty
of Indian crafts, dismissed those crafts as essentially inferior to Western
industry on technological and social grounds. As noted in Chapter 1, the
exhibition devoted enormous space to British machinery as part of its
emphasis on revolutionary advances in weaving, spinning, printing, and
other industries. The few basic looms, wooden plows, and simple black-
smithing instruments on display from India offered a striking contrast,
pitting archaic hand tools against the most sophisticated machinery of the
age. Noting the models of artisans at work, Tallis’s History and Description
of the Crystal Palace set up that contrast directly:
Not far from Nasmyth’s steam-hammer, the Khamar or Bengal blacksmith,

was represented with his simple bellows, forge, and anvil; and within a very
short distance from the latest refinements in agricultural implements and
machinery, were illustrations of ploughing and harrowing with apparatus
which no European could use.41
To cement the difference between Indian crafts and Western industry,

commentaries at the time portrayed Indians as technological primitives
stuck in the ancient past while the rest of the world had moved on to
the industrial present. Thus Tallis’s History went on to argue that, “The
products of India and China represent with sufficient accuracy the state
of industry as it was two thousand years ago, when France and England
were covered with forests. The Great Exhibition, therefore, does not
only present the different industries of nations, but that of centuries.”42
Bizarre remnants of past ages, Indian tools had nothing to offer a modern
age intent on technical and material progress. Indeed, some argued that
India’s aesthetic achievements had come at the expense of such progress.
In a well-publicized speech evaluating the exhibition, the Cambridge

don William Whewell expounded on the moral and material differences
between the luxurious crafts of the East and the sober manufactured
goods of the modernizing West. According to Whewell, in the West
the machine with its million fingers works for millions of purchasers, while
in remote countries, where magnificence and savagery stand side by side,
tens of thousands work for one. There Art labours for the rich alone; here
she works for the poor no less. There the multitude produce only to give
splendour and grace to the despot or the warrior whose slaves they are, and
whom they enrich; here the man who is powerful in the weapons of peace,
capital, and machinery, uses them to give comfort and enjoyment to the
public, whose servant he is, and thus becomes rich while he enriches others
with his goods. If this be truly the relation between the arts of life in this
country and in those others, may we not with reason and with gratitude say
that we have, indeed, reached a point beyond theirs in the social progress
of nations?43
For Whewell, slavery, despotism, and savagery irretrievably tainted the

beauty of Indian crafts. Ugly machine goods might be regrettable aes-
thetically, but they represented social progress since they emerged from a
system of production that served poor and rich alike.
At the Crystal Palace, the differences between crafts and industry
expressed the fundamental opposition between the technological, pro-
gressive West and the archaic, timeless East. Here the dichotomy between
crafts and industry was culture, history, and morality all rolled together.
Just as India could not help but be despotic, luxurious, and backward, the
West could only be democratic, practical, and forward looking. As India
struggled to modernize over the course of the nineteenth century, this
opposition grew stronger even as explanations for it changed in tenor.
No longer based on the visual opposition between simple Indian craft
tools and massive, steam-powered English machinery, the dichotomy now
operated through the continued survival of millions of traditional artisans
working in direct competition with imported manufactured goods. By the
end of the century India was awash in new goods and ideas, with Western
products flooding urban and rural markets and Western science and tech-
nology seeping into elite education. In this context, industrial reformers
argued that it was no longer natural that Indian crafts were so different
from Western industry. Artisans could have transformed their production;
that they had not now done so required conscious explanation. Thus in
a 1905 speech to the first Indian Industrial Conference in Banaras, Prem
Behari echoed the 1851 catalog when he asked his audience to “take the
case of a village potter, a carpenter, a blacksmith or a weaver, and compare

him with his brother in Europe. The artisan in India is the same as he was
a thousand years ago.”44 But, unlike in the 1851 commentary, Behari now
tried to explain that agelessness, arguing that it was due to “the traditional
training and religious prejudices of the illiterate class” brought about by a
lack of primary education.45 Assuming that change was more natural than
stasis, critics like Behari offered various ideas for why Indian artisans had
resisted change. These included both social failures (the absence of indus-
trial leadership and occupational division into castes) and individual fail-
ures (artisanal secrecy, inefficiency, untrustworthiness, limited education,
lack of inquisitiveness, and indifference to material advancement). Able
to draw on the host of documentation efforts described in Chapter 1,
these writers used their new knowledge to confirm the essential difference
of crafts and the fundamental inferiority of hand production to modern
industry. At the same time, their new knowledge also allowed critics to
root the inadequacy of crafts in the individual bodies of Indian artisans.
In late-nineteenth-century colonial discourse, caste offered the key to

understanding the inner workings of Indian society, explaining everything
from material markers, such as occupation, financial status, food habits,
and dress styles, to more abstract characteristics, such as religious fervor,
industriousness, honesty, and thriftiness. It is hardly surprising, then, that
industrial activists emphasized the role caste played in structuring arti-
sanal production. While some admitted that this role could be positive,
generally critics argued that caste had a negative impact on production;
emphasizing the pressures to follow caste norms in employment, technol-
ogy, and product diversity, reformers pointed to the ways in which caste
kept artisans from responding freely to new market conditions. Speaking
to the third Indian Industrial Conference in Surat in 1907, for instance,
the experienced British industrial official Alfred Chatterton noted his
inability to convince weavers in the Madras Presidency to adopt more
efficient fly-shuttle looms and warping machines; he argued that extreme
caste conservatism, by which workers held firmly onto the tools and
methods of their forefathers, made weavers refuse to embrace innovations
even when they would have brought in more income and ensured steadier
work.46 Many reformers had stock tales to tell about such conservatism. In
his 1905 speech Behari related an experience with a weaver in Agra who
refused to work on a new kind of loom; the man had offered the explana-
tion that “if he did, he would be excommunicated from the caste.”47 In
an 1890 speech Wardle offered a similar story of trying to get a Peshawar
indigo dyer to dye a piece of cotton red. Wardle suggested a good price for
the work and even offered to demonstrate how to produce the new color.
The dyer
made a very respectful salaam, but said very firmly, “Tell the Sahib that I
and my forefathers have dyed blue for thousands of years, and that I will
dye it only blue.” No money inducement nor the promised information on
the processes of dyeing other colours were of any avail, and so I brought my
two yards of white calico to England undyed.48
In his month-long trip visiting silk producers across India in 1885–86,

Wardle spent little time in Peshawar, so it is impossible to know whether a
closer connection to the dyer would have produced different results.49 But
his conclusions were widely shared among the government officials who
had facilitated Wardle’s trip, all of whom had much greater experience in
India. Indeed, the 1879 Ahmedabad gazetteer anticipated Wardle’s argu-
ments of conservatism, extending them from the case of an individual
dyer to the totality of the artisanal community. Summing up “the system-
atized tyranny” of caste-based guilds, the gazetteer concluded,
On the whole these unions have been hurtful to the general interests. The
clever and the stupid, the hard worker and the idler have been kept at the
same level by an indolent and bigoted communism which does not scruple
to enforce its decrees by the most formidable religious sanctions; all efforts
at improvement have been suppressed and the accumulation of individual
wealth impeded.50
For reformers, caste prevented innovation or profit within crafts, bind-

ing individuals to backward technologies and grinding poverty. But caste
had more global economic effects as well. Specifically, industrial activ-
ists argued that since caste trapped labor into hereditary occupations, it
prevented individuals from shifting into new occupations perhaps better
suited to their skills and interests. This argument operated on two levels:
castes could pressure their members to stay within a craft, but also indi-
viduals might avoid switching to new occupations associated with lower
castes. The domination of crafts by the lower castes meant that craft work
was itself lower status, considered degrading to the dignity of upper castes,
no matter if wages were higher than in more prestigious office work.51 As
numerous reformers complained, caste therefore prevented the natural
reallocation of labor according to the push of necessity or the pull of
profitability. Just as damningly, caste kept elites from offering intellectual
leadership in industrial matters. Thus, as the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha
complained, “The thinking classes and the working and trading classes
have always lived separate. The highest thought lived, as it were, divorced
from the highest practical skill.”52 To the president of the Indian Industrial
Conference of 1908, R. N. Mudholkar, the fact that “the intellectual and
spiritual elite of the nation had no thought to throw and no time to waste”
on material development explained the destruction of India’s industries
just as much as “the heavy disabilities and restrictions imposed upon
them by the economic and fiscal policy of England and other countries.”
For it was the divorce of thinking elites from material production that had
brought about technical stasis: “Left to be cared for only by the working
men and artisans, the study of the sciences on which manufactures, art
and trade depend was neglected.”53
Divided as they were by caste from fellow artisans as well as intellec-
tuals, craftsmen could not pool knowledge, tap into scientific develop-
ments, share market information, or collaborate in new products. Nor,
many reformers argued, did craftsmen want to do those things. Indeed,
alongside the social failures tied to castes as a whole came the many more
individual failures activists attached to artisanal bodies. Some of these
were rooted in the environment: artisans lacked education and thus did
not understand the principles of their own work. Others were based in
perceived personality flaws: artisans were secretive, inefficient, untrust-
worthy, and indifferent to profit.
Of these, perhaps the most basic perceived flaw of individual arti-
sans was a lack of education. Few within artisanal communities went to
modern schools and few among them became literate through alterna-
tive channels. The result, as the president of the 1910 Indian Industrial
Conference at Allahabad, R. N. Mukherjee argued, was that no matter
how intelligent artisans might be, “being universally illiterate and thus
shut out from a knowledge of any improved methods in their respective
trades, they make no advancement or progress throughout their lives and
are content to continue working on lines that for generations have become
obsolete.”54 Alfred Chatterton agreed, but went still further to point out
that lack of education did not just close artisans off from new ideas, it also
kept them from properly understanding existing practices. In his extensive
experience working with handloom weavers, leatherworkers, and metal-
workers, Chatterton found “the ordinary artizan . . . unacquainted with
principles, and is therefore quite unable to explain why one way of doing
a thing is better than another.”55 Competent only in their own traditions
without any understanding of the science that underlay basic processes,
artisans in this view were left flat-footed when it came to adapting their
existing skills to new products or situations. Without a solid appreciation
of chemistry, dyers could not confidently substitute one dye for another
or know how new synthetic fabrics would take on color; without a proper
grasp of how wood responded to different climatic conditions, wood-
workers could not prepare joints that would retain their strength when
shipped overseas. In design terms, artisans faced the same problems. As
the JJ School of Art superintendent Cecil Burns argued in 1918, whereas
the Indian craftsman’s “intuitive taste can often be relied upon to keep
him fairly straight when dealing with traditional designs,” alien forms
and patterns created chaos: “Directly they depart from their traditional
designs the Indian craftsmen do not know what is right or wrong.”56
Why, according to reformers, were artisans so uneducated? Many put
the blame squarely on artisans themselves; whatever the limitations of
government schools, the inaccessibility of technical publications pub-
lished only in English, or the iniquities of British economic policies, indi-
vidual craftsmen bore ultimate responsibility for their failure to embrace
new ideas. Part of the problem, according to industrial reformers, was
that artisans refused to apply themselves consistently or diligently. Voicing
a common complaint about poor working practices, the Journal of the
Poona Sarvajanik Sabha argued in 1893 that Indian artisans
display in their daily avocations, a lack of system, method and precision—the

usual characteristics of practical training—and are impatient of the restraints
imposed by considerations of time and punctuality. . . . There is undoubted
capacity for work—both mental and physical—but the results so far are not
commensurate with the capacity for effort. Their exertions are spasmodic,
often put forth under compulsion, through necessity or in fits of enthusiasm,
but we look in vain among the general public for patient toil, sustained inter-
est and persevering application to the minutiae of business.57
Many ascribed that lack of initiative to intellectual failures; compared

with Europeans, Indians were uninterested in improvement. Impressed
on his visit to Europe by “the all-absorbing enthusiasm of the European
for progressive advance,” Mukharji found the average European “always
on the look out for new things. He is constantly striving to make new
contrivances and to discover new ways and means to enable him to move
on to a higher plane in the sphere of his own pursuits.” The Indian, by
contrast, was so sunk in “national torpor” that he “has always done his
best to shut his eyes against the influence of modern enlightenment.”58
Others blamed poor working methods on limited material desires; unlike
the ever-striving capitalists of Europe, Indians were satisfied with what
little they already had. Thus in 1912 Chatterton ascribed “the poverty
of India . . . to the fact that the people themselves are content with an
extremely low standard of living and are averse to more exertion than is
required to provide themselves with what is generally little more than the
bare necessities of life.”59 Still others argued that poor work revealed a fun-
damental moral failure; in contrast to the upright craftsmen of Europe,
Indians turned in shoddy work as a means of skimping their customers.
John Wallace, editor of the Indian Textile Journal, mistrusted the Indian
artisan implicitly, arguing that “he will give the smallest possible return
for his pay” and that the only ingenuity he displayed was in coming up
with excuses when charged with fraud.60 Speaking at the first Indian
Industrial Conference in 1905, the Allahabad judge Lala Baji Nath agreed,
arguing that Indian craftsmen were very “unbusinesslike,” thanks to such
practices as “unpunctuality, want of uniformity of quality, short lengths,
short weights, [and] absence of fixed charges.”61
In all these examples, fault for the lack of progress in Indian crafts lay
squarely on artisans’ shoulders. If artisans had been more independent
of their castes, they could have embraced new technologies and applied
their skills to new occupations. If artisans had been more open to outsider
leadership, they could have benefited from the new knowledge elites were
bringing in from the West. If artisans had been less lazy and more trustwor-
thy, they could have raised standards of work rather than cutting corners
at every opportunity. And, finally, if artisans had been properly oriented
toward material consumption, they would have expanded and improved
production to earn more money for their families. Passive in the face of
modern changes, content with the past, secure in the work they had done
for generations, timeless and unchanging, Indian artisans appeared as the
polar opposite of the striving, competitive, rational, efficient industrial
men of Western capitalist enterprise. As an 1896 Buddhiprakash article put
it, the difference between Indians and the English “is they are enterprising,
industrious, fearless, and determined to finish work once undertaken. We
are neither enterprising, nor industrious. We are satisfied with what we
get.”62 As the pronoun “we” suggests, this difference was disastrous not
just for individual artisans but for India as a whole. Thus in a 1902 speech
the Gaekwar of Baroda offered opposing pictures of traditional, archaic
Indian and modern, mechanized Western production as evidence of “the
enormous gulf, which we have to bridge over, before India can be said to
be on the same plane as the European Nations.”63
Obscuring Knowledge: Alternative Readings of Artisanal Practices
But was India on such a different plane than European nations? Were
Indian crafts the opposite of Western industry? Assumptions about the
sudden destruction of cultures of handcraftsmanship or the persistent

survival of conservative structures of caste and guild often developed in
the face of alternative evidence. As such, they represent a narrow reading
of the condition of crafts—one that, as we will see at the end of this chap-
ter, served diverse political ends in colonial society. Rather than accept
such assumptions at face value, then, it is important to examine evidence
available at the time that pointed to other interpretations.
In the past, few villages probably held true to Birdwood and
Coomaraswamy’s romanticized image of community patronage supporting
artisans as treasured members of isolated localities. For one, villages were
never as self-sufficient as imagined in the model of the “village republic,”
made popular by Henry Maine and others.64 Long before the nineteenth
century, India’s villages were closely interconnected into regional and pan-
regional economies and networks of production, exchange, power, and
authority.65 Within those villages, artisans rarely had the independence to
produce according to their own creative impulses. Just as in agriculture,
where Christopher Baker has warned against viewing production “through
the theoretical retina of the individual, independent peasant, toiling away
in the fields and wrestling hopelessly with the external forces of trade and
moneylending,” artisans were deeply embedded in social and economic
relationships of debt, dependence, and duty that constrained and deter-
mined artisanal practice.66 On the rural level, where the producer-con-
sumer relationship was the most direct—and therefore where the ideal of
artisanal independence might seem to make most sense—exchange was
based on relations of patronage and hierarchy, in which low-status artisans
had limited power. Within more urbanized networks, artisans generally
produced for merchants or moneylenders under varying degrees of depen-
dence; some were in debt for cash, others worked with promises to sell all
finished goods at fixed prices to a certain dealer, and still others worked on
materials dealers gave them. Even wealthy artisans who did not financially
depend on merchants were constrained in their production choices by the
dictates of local and wider markets, which were often ruthlessly specific
about styles, colors, designs, and forms.67
If things had never been as good as Birdwood and Coomaraswamy
made them out to be in the past, neither were they as bad in the present as
critics of the late nineteenth century claimed. Whatever the commonsense
assumptions about caste-based artisanal conservatism, government sur-
veys suggested otherwise. Numerous gazetteers, for instance, noted move-
ment across crafts, as artisans took up new occupations in response to the
changing fortunes of different industries. In turn-of-the-century Gujarat,
woodworking was flourishing to the extent that tailors, blacksmiths, and
potters were all becoming carpenters.68 In dyeing, new, easy-to-use chemi-

cal dyes opened the craft up to outsiders who lacked the skills to manipu-
late natural dyes. At the same time, the cheapness of chemical dyes made
it impossible for skilled natural dye artisans to compete, forcing many out
of the trade. Thus, as of 1908 Khatri caste dyers were moving into other
crafts, including silk and cotton weaving, gold and silver thread making,
carpentry, wood turning and bricklaying.69 Finally, the 1885 Poona gazet-
teer noted that members of the Jingar caste, who had traditionally been
saddle makers, exhibited a “readiness to take to any new craft which offers
an opening.” As a result, Jingars “followed a variety of callings, casting
metal, carving stones, painting, making figures of clay and cloth, carving
wood, and repairing boxes, padlocks and watches.”70 More generally, caste
rarely matched perfectly with occupation by this period, if indeed it ever
had done so; gazetteer entries for artisanal castes almost always noted
multiple areas of employment.
Just as artisans were moving across caste lines to find employment, so
too they were reorganizing production into more modern forms. Granted,
few made the complete transition from household production to mas-
sive factories employing hundreds of workers under a single roof. But
many moved along that continuum, shifting from small-scale production
controlled from start to finish within a single household to larger-scale
systems capable of mass production based on task specialization. In wood,
for instance, individual craftsmen came together by the hundreds into
large furniture workshops in Bombay to make standard catalog designs.71
In embroidery and bandhini, dealers developed increasingly elaborate
piece-work systems to coordinate the work of thousands of home-based
workers.72 In major weaving centers, master weavers amassed multiple
looms worked by wage labor in their own workshops.73 In block print-
ing, Surat- and Bombay-based export houses centralized control over the
production of saudagari cottons exported to Southeast Asia by sending
their own agents directly to different villages to commission printing
blocks and have the fabric printed and dyed.74 In zari smaller workshops
gave way to larger ones better able to afford the expensive new imple-
ments available in the market, including imported brass plates to draw
down the wire, rollers to flatten the wire, and winding frames to wind the
wire onto a silk thread; these new tools significantly increased production
speed, decreased the skill needed by individual artisans, and improved
product uniformity—a crucial issue in the face of growing competition
from France.75 Finally, in the booming brassware industry of Nasik and
Poona, production was divided into discrete stages: “The men work in
bands of five or six dividing the labour. Some make the rough outline of
the shape, others shape the neck, a third set form the lower piece, a fourth
solder the shaped pieces, and a fifth polish the whole.” According to the
1885 government gazetteer, it was this strategy of “adopting the union of
combination among the workers and separation among the articles made
which is the secret of cheap production” that allowed Poona metalworkers
“to undersell their rivals.”76
Nor did artisans uniformly reject new technologies. In weaving,
Tirthankar Roy and Douglas Haynes note that there were logical reasons
to reject new looms depending on weavers’ scale of production, access to
markets, and the nature of the technologies available.77 Semi-independent
weavers with little control over markets could rarely afford to adopt new
looms, which promised increased output; since merchants would respond
to the resulting flood of new cloth on the market with lower prices, the
weavers themselves would see no net gain from the new technology. Thus,
instead of embracing new looms, such weavers limited their changes to
the introduction of mill yarns and aniline dyes, which allowed them to
lower costs without raising production. Owners of weaving workshops
who hired day labor and produced on a larger scale, by contrast, had bet-
ter access to markets and so were more interested in increasing output.
They expanded relatively quickly into new looms, provided they were able
to maintain their traditional flexibility in type and amount of produc-
tion, division of labor, and ease of adaptation to new products.78 In other
words, where change was profitable, weavers embraced it; where it proved
otherwise, they stuck with older styles of production.
More broadly, Roy notes that accepting new technologies was never
a simple matter of a particular implement’s discrete characteristics, but
involved who controlled it, how it changed existing divisions of labor, and
what it did to other resources within the household—things that usually
escaped the attention of contemporary outside observers. Communities,
not individuals, determined the fate of innovations, with success or failure
based on the resolution of two key questions: “whether change was good
for the larger group and who had the right to deviate from the norm.”79 To
illustrate this, Roy cites the different fates of two new weaving implements
in the early twentieth century: an improved dobby capable of producing
a highly profitable style of checked cloth and a brand new loom on which
one weaver could weave three different cloths. The first was brought in
from outside the community and could be made accessible to everyone;
it entered general use. The second was the proprietary invention of an
individual weaver who tried to sell his loom to fellow artisans; they were
so threatened by his attempt to seize leadership that they burnt down his
home with the loom inside it.80
Finally, outsiders did not often appreciate the true cost of adopting new
technologies and so dismissed as conservatism what was really a pragmatic
assessment of potential utility. In the early nineteenth century, for instance,
British officials tried to get Deccani cotton growers to adopt a new, steam-
powered gin. Despite the evident superiority of the new gin in terms of speed
and efficiency, the introduction of American experts, and official encourage-
ment, farmers refused to give up hand ginning, much to the frustration of
British agricultural agents. Although officials blamed native conservatism,
the real explanation lay in the concrete advantages of ginning by hand done
by women and children at home: higher profits, lower transportation costs,
retention of cotton seeds for cattle feed, maintenance of independence, and
the ability to mobilize unpaid labor within the household.81 As Sabyasachi
Bhattacharya argues, this was not “a rejection of change itself, but rejection
of a change for the worse.”82 Generalizing more broadly, he notes that failed
innovations were often those that increased dependence—whether on yarn
merchants, sheet-metal dealers, hide suppliers, or dye agents—thereby
striking at what Nita Kumar has noted to be a central value among late-
twentieth-century artisanal communities as well.83
Difference as Power
The commonsense assumptions of late-nineteenth-century writers about

crafts thus stood on shaky foundations. For every potter throwing clay in
perfect communion with his self-contained village community, there were
many more thoroughly integrated into broad market structures. For every
wood-carver toiling in isolation, there were many more working in vari-
ous forms of association—from piecework putting out systems to debt
bondage to merchants, to wage labor in workshops—to make increasingly
standardized goods for mass, often distant markets. For every dyer who
refused to switch from indigo to red, or weaver who would not adopt
a new loom for fear of being excommunicated by his caste, there were
others who led change from within crafts by adopting new technologies
or shifting to new occupations altogether. Concrete evidence was avail-
able that artisans not only could accept change but sometimes actively
embraced it. Indeed, all the arguments cited earlier about caste mobility
across occupations, organizational upheavals, and technological changes
were based on late-nineteenth-century government sources.
Assumptions of cooperative production in the precolonial past or of
artisanal conservatism in the present emerged despite that evidence.84 By
the early twentieth century, writers across the political spectrum argued
that production in crafts was unlike that in factories; so too, artisans
were unlike modern men of industry. Public discussions of economic

development increasingly treated artisanal and mill industries as dis-
tinct topics representing separate sectors of the economy. In the early
twentieth century, for instance, activists held an annual series of indus-
trial conferences, organized to coincide with the annual meeting of the
Indian National Congress. As might be expected, much of the attention
at such conferences focused on emblematically modern industries like
steel and textiles or—those favorite subjects of late-nineteenth-century
industrial plans—soap, matches, glass, and umbrellas.85 Participants at
industrial conferences also, however, discussed other major sectors of
the economy, including mines and minerals, agriculture and plantations,
trade and commerce, and of course crafts. Thus, at the Indian Industrial
Conference held at Surat in December 1907, three separate speakers pre-
sented papers on handloom weaving in India, including one that detailed
handloom improvements made by the American Marathi Mission in
Ahmednagar and another describing attempts to reorganize handlooms
into small workshop production in the Madras Presidency.86 Even though
handlooms shared much with mills—they produced the same general
product (cloth), shared the same input (mill-spun thread), and faced
the same competition (British imports)—they were rarely discussed
in the same papers, appearing instead as a separate topic of discussion
entirely. Occasional attempts to compare the status of handlooms and
modern industry only cemented this difference. Thus, when Dutt spoke
as president of the first Indian Industrial Conference held in Banaras in
December 1905, he repeated his admiration for home-based hand pro-
duction, arguing that “weavers who work with their family at home lead
a better and more satisfying life than the tens of thousands of laborers
who work in one big mill.” And yet, he defined progress solely in terms of
modern mills: “keeping in step with times is also necessary, and so some
changes in our ways also must be adopted, and we too must learn how to
set up companies, operate the machineries of factories and mills here.”87
Crafts might be appealing, but for social, cultural, and moral reasons;
economics demanded modern mills.
Increasingly, explanations of difference rested on culture; artisanal
attitudes, habits and instincts, their forms of belonging, and group prac-
tices all separated crafts from industry and indeed from modern progress.
More specifically, when articulating that difference, writers often focused
on the individual artisanal body, not the larger networks of production
and exchange in which individuals were embedded. Coomaraswamy’s
book is thus titled The Indian Craftsman, not “Crafts in India”; similarly,
Dutt and Birdwood set up their oppositions not between crafts and
modern industry but between an individual weaver or potter and an

individual mill worker. For Coomaraswamy, Birdwood, and others who
idealized crafts, artisans were autonomous and creative workers who
earned their living through the generous support of entire village com-
munities or wealthy patrons. For those anxious to replace crafts with
modern industry, artisans were so isolated and conservative that they were
unable to combine for more efficient production or to take advantages of
economies of scale. In documentation efforts, official investigators firmly
linked complex production processes to the culture-bound bodies of arti-
sans; here the same impulse operated, deploying the individual artisanal
body not to explain the present but to reveal the future—defined as either
a perpetuation of tradition or a failure of development.
In the hands of an imperial official like George Birdwood, the appeal
of an argument that Indian traditional industries were fundamentally
different than those of the West is relatively clear. Fitting snugly into clas-
sic orientalist ideas about the alterity of the timeless, conservative East,
such an argument merely provided further evidence for why traditional,
backward India was and should be under the progressive rule of the
self-professedly modern, scientific-minded British. The Industrial Arts of
India, for instance, declared “the life and arts of India essentially the same
as we find them in the Ramayana and Mahabharata,” thanks to the essen-
tially unchanging character of India’s villages:
India has undergone more religious and political revolutions than any other
country in the world; but the village communities remain in full municipal
vigor all over the Peninsula. Scythian, Greek, Saracen, Afghan, Mongol,
and Maratha have come down from its mountains, and Portuguese, Dutch,
English, French, and Dane, up out of its seas, and set up their succes-
sive dominations in the land; but the religious trades union villages have
remained as little affected by their coming and going as a rock by the rising
and falling of the tide; and there, at his daily work, has sat the hereditary vil-
lage potter amid all these shocks and changes, steadfast and unchangeable
for 3,000 years, Macedonian, Mongol, and Maratha, and Portuguese, Dutch,
English, French and Dane of no more account to him than the broken pot-
sherds lying around his wheel.88
Action, vitality, politics, and progress all lay outside the village in the
hands of Greeks, Afghans, the Portuguese, and the English; throughout it
all, the village potter sat at his wheel, immovable as a rock, patiently doing
what his ancestors had done 3,000 years before. What change there was
came from outsiders; on their own, Indians were masters of continuity,
not progress. For men like Birdwood the failings of artisans—caste,
conservatism, irrationality, archaic tools—were not specific to crafts, but

spoke to the larger failings of Indian society. At the same time, the achieve-
ments of artisans—beauty, social harmony, freedom from the pressures
of capitalism—were also the achievements of India, ones that marked the
country’s relative isolation from the global world of economic competi-
tion. Such a country could do little to hold its own in the wider world. For
that British rule was a necessity.
If arguments of India’s craft difference served imperialist needs so easily,
why, then, would so many nationalist-minded Indians adopt the same ideas?
In answering this question it is important not to assume either a passive
acceptance of British categories for understanding the world or a failure to
understand the imperial political implications of such views. Instead, it is
worth considering how, in articulating crafts difference, Indians advanced
their own ideas about the nature of both the economy and possibility of
native leadership—ideas that just as often justified opposition to as support
for colonial rule. Coomaswamy, for instance, closely paralleled Birdwood
in emphasizing the timeless, traditional nature of Indian craftsmanship.
In The Indian Craftsman he drew from fifteenth-century Sinhalese poems,
tenth-century Chola inscriptions, the Ramayana, the Dharma-sutras,
Buddhist Jatakas, the Ain-i-Akbari, the thirteenth-century Sinhalese royal
chronicle the Mahavamsa, and charters for Buddhist monasteries dating
from the second century B.C.E. to the eighteenth century C.E., all to cre-
ate a static picture of ancient crafts traditions with no regional variety and
no divergence between prescriptive texts and actual practices.89 And yet,
whereas Birdwood argued that such timelessness demanded colonial rule,
Coomaraswamy used it to challenge imperialism. For Coomaraswamy,
equating handcraftsmanship to ancient Indian tradition turned a poten-
tially narrow aesthetic concern into a core element of Indian culture to be
preserved in the face of British domination. As a regular guest of the Tagore
family in Calcutta in the early twentieth century, Coomaraswamy joined in
lively discussions of nationalist aims and tactics, taking particular interest
in the need to free India culturally, spiritually, and aesthetically from the
shackles of Western materialism. This commitment to cultural nationalism
appeared clearly in a 1911 essay, where he declared,
India politically and economically free, but subdued by Europe in her

inmost soul is scarcely an ideal to be dreamt of, or to live, or die for. . . . It is
the weakness of our national movement that we do not love India; we love
suburban England, we love the comfortable bourgeois prosperity that is to
be some day established when we have learned enough science and forgotten
enough art to successfully compete with Europe in a commercial war.90
By turning their backs on progress and civilization as defined in the West,

he argued in 1924, patriotic Indians would then be free “to follow the
historical development of our own beliefs, our architecture, sculpture,
music and literature, and of all the institutions, social and religious, with
which they are inseparably intertwined.”91 This was a message for Europe
as much as for India. Declaring in 1918 that “it is life, not merely Indian
life that claims our loyalty,” Coomaraswamy sought to make the harmoni-
ous, traditional life of India a model for the world at large as it struggled
to come to terms with the horror of the Great War.92
For Coomaraswamy, in other words, the difference embodied in India’s
hereditary artisans did not justify India’s subservience to the British;
instead it established India’s right to lead the global march to a better
future. As in other forms of colonial knowledge, orientalist difference
could operate just as easily within nationalist as imperialist logic.93 More
broadly, though, the idea of artisanal difference did not just help to estab-
lish the essential cultural identity of India in opposition to the West, but
also helped to define the authority of a new generation of elites within
Indian society. In a period when old forms of power rooted in caste,
community, and landholding were in flux, elites turned to new criteria
to justify their prominence: things like education, progress, science, tech-
nology, and government titles. In some parts of the country, this shift of
focus involved a degree of upheaval, as older elites unable to master new
idioms of power lost prominence to younger generations more adept in
the public world of colonial society.94 In western India, however, existing
structures of power generally proved flexible enough to adapt to the new
era. In language terms, as Veena Naregal has demonstrated, traditional
literary elites reestablished their dominance through the new means of
a strict hierarchy between English and vernaculars.95 In industrial terms,
Svati Joshi notes a similar process by which public debates about develop-
ment proved entirely compatible with the existing economic, social, and
cultural power of a merchant-industrialist-social class.96
Within crafts, this domination rested on the essential cultural difference
of artisanal bodies, defined as the antithesis of not just modern western
labor, but modern Indian elites as well. All of the stereotypical character-
istics of artisans outlined earlier, whether virtues (traditionalism, village
identity, communitarian anticapitalism) or faults (conservatism, lack of
education, refusal to change jobs, disregard for economic gain) were pre-
cisely those rejected by India’s modernizing, Western-educated, upwardly
mobile, ambitious urban elites. Whereas artisans remained defined by and
rooted in the past, industrial activists set their sights and claims firmly on
the future. This essential opposition comes out clearly in reform writings
of the time. Thus, in an 1876 article on the need for industrial develop-
ment in India, the Buddhiprakash offered the following exhortation:
Dear artisans of India, do not give way to inertia and negligence in such a
critical time for our motherland. Produce even better things than the ones
given by foreign manufacturers. You might say it is a very difficult task. Then
listen to me. In earlier periods, our country was very much ahead of all other
countries in its artistic skills and products. You have allowed those skills to
be used by the foreigners who are now dominating you! Why should you
allow them what is your own inheritance, what belongs to you through your
ancestors? Why have you given away your treasure and turned into idlers?
Why would you not be skilled as those people have become? The means they
possess are not sent to them alone by way of the skies by God, surely! But
these people have to be praised for their determination and enthusiasm. You
too can become aware and skilled like them. However, you are backward
even when you copy them, so how would you develop new skills? But if you
really try hard enough, we can put our country ahead soon.97
The slippage in pronouns here is telling. While failings are carefully defined
in the second person—“you allow them what is your own inheritance,”
“you are backward”—a more inclusive vision emerges through first-per-
son plural claims to the nation as a whole—“our country was very much
ahead,” “we can put our country ahead.” Artisans might, in other words,
bear responsibility for the failings of the past; they might equally help with
progress in the future if they try hard enough. But the natural tendencies
toward inertia and negligence, the inevitable impediments to progress
coming from a backward group, demanded that “we”—the educated, elite
readers of the Buddhiprakash—step forward to help pull the country into
a more progressive, profitable future. A November 1904 cartoon from
the Anglo-Gujarati journal the Hindi Punch made that role even more
obvious. Captioned “Divali Music: Loud Enough to Wake the Heaviest
Sleeper,” it depicts a group of industrial activists poised with drums and
horns—labeled “Perseverance,” “Strenuous Endeavours,” “Special Efforts,”
and “Energetic Cooperation”—around the recumbent, sleeping form of
Indian Art and Industry, ready to wake her up. The implication is clear;
since Industry might not wake up on her own, the educated leaders of the
nation, working together, must step in to rouse her.
That “we” aimed to define itself by modern criteria: education, class,
commitment to progress, facility with the institutions of the colonial
state. There was no room in this shared agenda of industrial develop-
ment for petty divisions of caste or community; nor, for that matter,
were political divisions between British and natives to disrupt a common
agenda of progress. Indeed, industrial activists did all they could to

define economics as politically neutral, as the grounds for unanimity
in an otherwise increasingly divided political landscape.98 Thus, in his
speech opening an industrial conference in Poona in 1890, Mahadev
Govind Ranade noted that whereas social and religious issues divided
traditionalists from reformers, one sect or caste from another, in regard
to the material issue of
the poverty of our resources, and our physical weakness, all men are agreed,
and all have a common interest in co-operating together for the common
good. . . . Hindus and Mahomedans, Parsees and Christians, the Rulers
and the Ruled, the Privileged and the Unprivileged Classes, all stand on a
common platform, and, as the constitution of the present meeting itself
demonstrates, are prepared to work together.
In keeping with this unanimity of opinion, the organizers had chosen to

“eschew Politics altogether,” making the event “eminently catholic and
acceptable to all.”99 Others made similar claims that economic interests
operated above the divisive politics of parties and religion. The editor of
the Buddhiprakash for much of the late nineteenth century, Dahyabhai
Dalpatram, refused to cover political and religious subjects in order to
not disrupt a presumed consensus around how best to reform society and
the economy.100 Similarly, even though industrial reformers organized
the first Indian Industrial Conference in Banaras in December 1905 to
coincide with the annual meeting of the Indian National Congress, they
declared the conference to be explicitly nonpolitical in order to encour-
age participation from all parties. The result was “abundant and genuine
sympathy” extended “by every European—official as well as non-
official—who was approached with a request for co-operation and help,
by every Indian gentleman without reference to his official position or
his political views, and by every section of the Press, beginning with the
London Times.”101
Such claims to operate above ideology, race, caste, and religion offered a
potent form of political legitimacy to India’s industrial reforming elites. In
advocating for greater productivity, new technologies, better organization,
and more skilled labor, elite reformers argued that they spoke not only for
artisans but for the entire nation. For, whatever the differences in meth-
odologies, everyone was presumed to agree on the common goal of devel-
opment itself. This offered, in turn, an opportunity to assert a new claim
to power, not for representation within the state, but, as Gyan Prakash
notes, over a central function of the state: its governmentalist projects of
caring for and improving the Indian population.102 Late-nineteenth- and

early-twentieth-century development ideology assigned the state primary
responsibility for progress—a responsibility based not just on presumed
duty but also on the reality of superior resources.103 As the Poona-based
newspaper the Mahratta put it in an 1895 article demanding more public
spending on technical experiments, private enterprise on its own could
not provide the building blocks for industrial growth: “In almost every
country such movements are supported by Government, and we see no
reason why the Bombay Government should be an exception to it.”104
And yet, even as activists held the British responsible for development,
they denied that a foreign government could ever properly understand
or provide for India’s needs. Emphasizing the exteriority of British rule,
Indian elites put firm limits around the role the government should play
in development. In his speech opening the Indian Industrial Exhibition
in Ahmedabad in 1902, for instance, the Gaekwar of Baroda defined the
British government as holding “a unique power” with which it could offer
economic encouragement and stimulate industrial progress; this power
could be exerted by enforcing trade production and buying government
supplies within the country. Before acting, however, he cautioned that
the government must get “to know the public opinion through the better
known and intellectual sections of its subjects.” Only then would it put the
right policies in place; only then would “all the possible and reasonable
benefits of governance” accrue to the population.105 Many other industrial
reformers agreed, steering official interventions into broad infrastructural
needs—education, credit, tariff protection, technical experiments—while
reserving for themselves the job of implementing real change on the
ground. Thus in his speech opening the Poona industrial conference in
1890, Ranade first listed all the steps the government might take, if only it
were more committed to industrial development: impose import duties,
offer low interest loans, guarantee loans, invest in Indian industries
directly, and offer contracts for government supplies to Indian producers.
But then the focus changed from what “it” (the government) might do to
what “we” (educated, progressive, modern Indians) must do. This shift
was marked with a reminder: “After all, Government can do but little,
save pioneering work.” After some initial help from the government, it was
up to Indians to implement fundamental, practical change. That change
would demand arduous work. Given the challenges, unity and coopera-
tion were vital: “The evil is too great, and of too long a standing, to be
brought under control by private individual efforts. We have to work with
a will, to pull long, and pull all, and to pull till we succeed.” To ensure that
this common goal was defined properly, Ranade then singled out “those
who think with us on this matter” and “men of light and leading from
different parts” to put their heads together and come up with a plan of
action.106
As much as crafts development did focus on the needs and concerns of
artisans, then, it was always, already about power. Defining crafts through
difference helped the British defend the necessity of their rule in India; at
the same time, it allowed Indian elites to claim authority over the lower
classes. Indeed, in part because artisans were so thoroughly excluded from
the debate, crafts offered Indian elites a means of asserting their growing
leadership skills on a national stage. If still excluded from formal politi-
cal power, industrial activists could establish their authority in the realm
of the economy; if continually reminded of their racial inferiority to the
British, those same activists could assert their own superiority over tradi-
tion-bound, illiterate artisans.
The idea of crafts difference thus served diverse political ends: drama-
tizing the problems with British rule, inspiring a search for crafts-based
alternatives to Western-style industrialization, justifying elite leadership
over backward artisans, and defining the material scope of Indian national
culture. More immediately, perhaps, this difference also served precise
practical ends, shaping the form interventions in crafts took. Indeed, as
we will see in the subsequent chapters, all attempts to reform crafts to
better suit national needs operated on the basis of the essential difference
between artisanal and modern, industrial production.
3
Developing Traditions:
Preservationist Design and the
Independent Artisan
I n early May 1853, India’s first baronet Sir Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy wrote
to the government of Bombay with a proposal for a new philanthropic
endeavor: “a School for the improvement of Arts and Manufactures.” As
a member of Bombay’s organizing committee for the Great Exhibition in
London, Jeejeebhoy had been struck by both the strengths and weaknesses
of Indian artisans. Because of their delicate physiques, Indians were “natu-
rally suited to industry requiring skilled, delicate handiwork”; the problem
was that their industrial ingenuity was too often misdirected. The solu-
tion, in his mind, would be an art school that would introduce new tech-
nologies—including “any practical improvement in the weaving of cotton,
silk, Musroo and Velvet”—and offer instruction in “Painting, Drawing,
and Design, Ornamental Pottery, Metal and wood carving and turning,
wherein the use of complicated machinery is not indispensable, as also
in Gem and Pebble cutting.” Such instruction, Jeejeebhoy argued, would
do many things: develop skills, elevate taste, expand demand, introduce
new industries, stimulate employment, and—finally—improve “the habits
of Industry of the Middle and lower classes of our Native population.”
The result, Jeejeebhoy hoped, would be that India could then “take up an
advanced position among the manufacturing countries of the world.”1
The generous offer of Rs. 1 lakh to found the school was duly accepted,
and classes started at what came to be the Sir Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy (JJ)
School of Art in Bombay in March 1857. But Jeejeebhoy’s vision of a
school that, by teaching art, would launch India’s global manufacturing
competitiveness did not come to pass. Instead, in keeping with the grow-
ing idea of crafts difference discussed in Chapter 2, by the end of the
nineteenth century the JJ School had firmly separated art from industry,
traditional aesthetics from modern manufacturing. Indeed, institutional
developments cemented those divisions. When, as noted earlier, the JJ
School expanded its commitment to crafts in 1890 with the opening of
the Reay Art Workshops, school officials dictated that the new workshops
teach not just traditional styles but also traditional working methods,
thereby excluding new machinery as well as more efficient factory-like
divisions of labor. Such modern concerns found an entirely separate
home across town in the Victoria Jubilee Technical Institute (VJTI),
which opened in Bombay in 1889; from its inception the VJTI offered
instruction in the science, technology, and practice of spinning, weaving,
and dyeing as used in the modern mill industry. For the colonial govern-
ment, the split between craft and industry, tradition and modernity, art
and manufactures was complete; the JJ School dealt with one, the VJTI
with the other. Whatever Jeejeebhoy’s hopes, by the end of the century art
school instruction had proved incompatible with industry.
Instead of modernizing crafts, JJ School officials set out to preserve
them, trying not to erase but to perpetuate the positive markers that
separated crafts from modern industry: visual beauty and a specific mode
of independent, creative, hand production. Nor were they alone in doing
so; in this chapter I explore how exhibition organizers, museum directors,
publishers, handicraft emporia managers, craft workshop owners, and
cooperatives activists all were equally anxious to rescue Indian crafts from
the widespread social and cultural upheavals brought on by colonial rule.
The most public of these efforts focused on preserving traditional designs
in an era of rampant Westernization, whether by documenting them in
print, displaying them in exhibitions and museums, or teaching their
principles to practicing artisans. Less well-known examples tried to retain
autonomy for working artisans. Whichever approach they took, however,
all shared an assumption that how an object was made impacted what was
produced. And, more specifically, all the interventions tried to address
both products and production. This dual focus can be seen best, perhaps,
by thinking of alternatives. If design preservation had meant only a desire
for traditional-looking goods, success could have been achieved with no
attention to working methods; by centralizing production, distributing
approved designs, and standardizing quality control, art officials could
have ensured a steady supply of things that looked distinctively Indian.
Instead, officials specifically rejected just those changes and did every-
thing they could to keep artisans independent, including teaching design
principles and publishing examples of historic designs in the hope that
artisans would reinvigorate indigenous styles on their own. Rather than
DEVELOPING TRADITIONS 105
impose tight control over production, art officials worked to build auton-
omy in the face of oppressive market conditions.
At least they did so up to a point. At the same time that art officials
insisted that artisans bear ultimate responsibility for designs, they also
kept this creativity in check by reserving the right to act as arbiters of taste.
Likewise, cooperatives and factories that promised creative and social
autonomy to artisans simultaneously enforced new kinds of oversight
and control. On both sides, the interplay of independence and authority
revealed both pride in traditions and a growing sense of their importance
to society at large. Whatever the individual creativity at play, by the end
of the nineteenth century crafts had become national heritage in that
they represented not just the particular products of separate creators but
the collective unconscious of the whole country. In an 1885 speech at the
opening of an exhibition at the Bhuj School of Art, for instance, Khengar
III, the Maharao of Kutch, declared,
The artizans of India are still possessed of such skill and superior work-
manship as any country in the world might justly be proud of. They excel
in anything requiring patience and diligence, their patterns are tasteful and
original; they are expert in executing gorgeous and elaborate designs, and
this has been the unanimous opinion of those who can really appreciate
them. . . . India has in this respect, as in any others, a glorious past to fall
back upon, which is a great advantage for any nation to possess.2
For the Maharao traditional arts belonged not to individual artisans but
to the nation as a whole; if at the start of the quote it is the “the artizans
of India” who possess superior skills, by the end it is “India,” which owns
those skills as part of its glorious past. In that slippage, crafts became
national culture and history, rolled into one.
That slippage made it all the more worrisome that India’s traditional
arts seemed to be in danger of disappearing in the face of the twin forces of
Westernization and modernization. In a two-part article in the JIAI in 1890
on “The Decline of South Indian Arts,” South Indian scholar Pandit Natesa
Sastu found evidence of the erosion of traditional design everywhere he
looked. At the famous carpet center of Ayyampet, artisans suffering “in utter
poverty” from the loss of markets had turned away from traditional pat-
terns and dyes in favor of “an awkward imitation of European patterns, and
an admixture of Hindu with European magenta and other colours” which
produced “a most hideous appearance.”3 In goldsmithing, beautiful, purely
Hindu patterns of indigenous gold ornaments had been “replaced by an ugly
and hybrid English-Sami pattern,” which was “a disgrace to both European
and Hindu art.”4 Across all crafts, “the boldness of the execution has now fled
away, and all the old patterns have perished,” with European styles acting like
a “luxuriant growth of weeds,” choking the life out of South Indian arts.5
As Annie Coombes has argued, a rhetoric of decline permeated late-
nineteenth-century British discussions of colonial material culture, with
writer after writer describing native cultures as slowly falling apart in
the face of modernizing influences from the West.6 In the Indian con-
text, George Birdwood provided an early example of that rhetoric in his
commentaries on the Indian section at the 1878 Paris Exhibition. In The
Industrial Arts of India, he declared that Indian arts of all kinds were
more and more overcrowded with mongrel forms, the result of the influ-
ences on Indian art of European society, European education, and above all
of the irresistible energy of the mechanical productiveness of Birmingham
and Manchester. Through all these means foreign forms of ornament are
being constantly introduced into the country; and so rapidly are they
spreading, that there is a real fear that they may at last irretrievably vitiate
the native tradition of the decorative art of India.7
Looking around at artisanal production of the day, Birdwood’s successors

found further evidence of “a bastard English style”:8 silver British racing
cups made with elephant handles, wool carpets combining Axminster
and Mughal designs, and saris woven with elements taken from English
wallpaper patterns. Neither European nor Indian, the results horrified
design purists. In 1914, Samarendra Nath Gupta of Lahore’s Central
Museum warned that the incursion of “elements of foreign art . . . would
result, as has already been the case in some Indian indigenous industries,
in the production of mongrel hybrids.”9 Glyn Barlow for his part argued,
in 1903, that “Indian art-work is good; and European art-work is good;
but that which is neither the one nor the other is unlovely. The signs of an
uprising of a hybrid species are in the land, and it is a pity.”10
Bastardization, mongrelization, a new species—all these commentators
spoke in the late-nineteenth-century language of racial miscegenation, pos-
ing artisanal experiments in design as direct threats to cultural and indeed
pure racial identity.11 Crafts were, of course, only one component of a much
larger trend toward hybridity among Indian elites, by which Western edu-
cation, dress, habits, and tastes threatened to blur the cultural boundaries
between the British and their colonial subjects. As Homi Bhabha has argued,
such native “mimicry” proved profoundly unsettling to colonial officials,
revealing as it did the fundamental ambivalence at the heart of colonial-
ism: the promise of a universal civilizing mission resting on the grounds of
constantly maintained difference.12 It is hardly surprising, then, that in the
late nineteenth century the British insisted ever more stridently on at least
the visual markers of difference. Thus, British authorities required princes
educated in British public schools or in the new Mayo College in Ajmer
to appear in imperial durbars dressed in their “native” garb, while British
architects designed railway stations housing paradigmatically modern
technologies sheathed in Indo-Saracenic ornament.13 Even as colonial rule
compelled change, officials rushed to cloak it in the mantle of tradition.
This was decline defined in visual terms: as a shift from traditional
authentic styles to modern, hybrid ones. Accompanying it was decline
defined in social terms: as an unraveling of the ideal social relationships
built around handcraftsmanship. George Birdwood paired his striking
evocation of the glories of artistic hand production within harmonious
Indian villages cited in Chapter 1 with a warning that such glories were
under increasing threat from colonial modernity; by the late nineteenth
century, artisans were increasingly moving “into the colossal mills of
Bombay, to drudge in gangs, for tempting wages, at manufacturing piece
goods, in competition with Manchester, in the production of which they
are no more intellectually and morally concerned than the grinder of a
barrel organ in the tunes turned out from it.”14 In a speech on Indian silks
at the Colonial and Indian Exhibition of 1886, Thomas Wardle marked
the fate of native dyers who “are not able to hold up against machine
competition, and their occupation threatens to be soon extinguished, and
with it the artistic perception and skill which has for ages given to so many
people an interesting and beautiful employment.” With the “substitution
of machine for hand work” not only a “richly decorated class of goods”
would be lost, but an entire way of life built around art and skilled crafts-
manship.15 In The Indian Craftsman Coomaraswamy outlined a similar
fall from grace, arguing that British rule had reduced skilled, spiritual,
learned craftsmen “to mere paid workmen, earning daily wages.”16 Patrons
had disappeared under an alien government uninterested in local crafts
traditions, leaving craftsman who live “only to make brass trays and other
pretty toys for passing tourists whose lives and manners he does not
understand, and for whom, as he well knows by experience, any bungling
is good enough, since they know nought of good or bad craftsmanship
even in their own land, and still less in his.”17 More broadly, a recent “deg-
radation of standard, which is undermining alike the crafts of the East and
the West” was due to the arrival of “modern individualism”; “whether we
call it ‘Laissez Faire’ in Manchester, or the introduction of ‘Free Western
Institutions’ into India [it] hesitates to interfere with a man’s sacred indi-
vidual liberty to make things as badly as he likes, and to undermine the
trade of his fellows on that basis.”18
In depicting change as erupting into village crafts through the

interference of outside forces, Coomaraswamy spoke to contemporary
understandings within swadeshi politics, as Manu Goswami puts it, of
capitalism “as an ‘outside’ that impinged on rather than constituted and
shaped from within” the Indian nation.19 For those who valued crafts as a
superior form of social organization and as a source of beauty, capitalism
had disrupted India’s natural, cooperative, communal production system.
Thus, in a 1901 speech to the Philosophical Institute in Glasgow Romesh
Chunder Dutt noted that previously flourishing weaving villages that
had “produced that famous Indian muslin which was once the wonder
of Europe” were now “deserted and desolate; the great lakes excavated
in the olden times are silted up; the temples and religious edifices are in
decay; the streets are covered with jungle; and the old weaver families have
migrated elsewhere to seek a scanty subsistence, and their old ancestral
villages know them not.”20 Dutt blamed the decline on a range of British
policies, including high land assessments, unfavorable tariffs, and the
drain of wealth. But he also explained the change in terms of the intru-
sion of capitalism into Indian manufactures. Pitting Western capitalism
against community-minded Indian craft production, he saw the influence
of the former in terms of a destruction of artisanal happiness:
Work exists for many under the Indian system; man seems to exist for work
in the field or the factory in England. Capitalism has done much for man,
but has not improved the type of humanity. Rather has it the tendency of
reducing man to something like a part and parcel of the soulless machinery
it has helped to set up.21
Whether arguing in visual or social terms, Dutt, Sastu, Birdwood,

Coomaraswamy, Gupta, and Barlow all defined the dangerous changes
of the period as having come from outside. The worst kind of European
designs had invaded Indian bazaars, forcing artisans to degrade their skills
and bastardize their designs; exploitative, hierarchical Western capitalism
had intruded into the harmonious, cooperative life of India’s villages,
thrusting artisans into debt or into wage labor in factories. Framing the
argument thus not only highlighted India’s difference from the West, it
also made Indian artisans out to be passive victims of historical forces
beyond their knowledge or control. As we have seen in Chapter 2, such a
view legitimated the leadership of educated elites better versed in worldly
matters; since artisans had been so unable to counteract design or mar-
ket changes on their own, they clearly needed assistance from outsiders,
whether British or Indian.22 But, just as crucially, claims of decline from a
past golden age also structured the types of interventions offered. Rather
than embrace design innovation or market consolidation, these reformers
used the rhetoric of decline to justify a rescue mission to preserve India’s
traditional crafts.
Preservationism emerged out of a fear that India’s traditional crafts
were disappearing, not out of a concern that all artisanal production
would shift to factories. Most observers agreed that the modern industrial
sector would not be able to supply all of India’s material needs for decades
to come. The problem was that, as artisans struggled to adapt in the
meantime, crafts would retain their own worst features (isolated workers,
backward technologies, no economies of scale), while also adopting new
faults from modern industry (exploitation, hierarchy, and alienation from
work). In other words, crafts would remain, but the positive aspects of
crafts difference would be gone. Such a transition would not just be indi-
vidual and economic, with the effects confined to particular artisans who
descended into poverty. It would also be national and cultural; India as a
whole would lose its distinctive designs and way of working—a way suited
to its own community-oriented social being—in favor of the foreign styles
and competitive capitalism of the West.
Anxious to prevent such a future, preservationists sought to hold off
the twin evils of Westernization and capitalism. Not all change, however,
was resisted and not all innovation rejected. Art officials were not blind
to the threat from imports or the opportunities posed by new technolo-
gies. As in other fields, they tried to accommodate such changes, pushing
artisans to search out new markets or to develop new products suitable
to modern needs. But officials also tried to contain the cultural impact
of such developments by holding onto key elements of crafts difference.
Thus, if market exigencies replaced paternal local patronage with distant,
unknown consumers, at least artisans could still retain their individual
autonomy; if changing desires demanded a shift from carved house fronts
to carved dining tables and sofas, at least those items could still feature
recognizably Indian ornamentation.
The Object of Preservation: Traditional Styles in Changing Times
Design preservation efforts actually took some time to get started in India.
Indeed, in the 1850s and 1860s, art officials in India generally encour-
aged European designs and methods among artisans. Given the acclaim
heaped on Indian ornamentation and color skills at the Great Exhibition
of 1851, it is somewhat surprising that it was not until the 1870s that seri-
ous efforts to promote traditional styles began, starting first in art schools
and then quickly spreading out to exhibitions, publications, museums,

and stores. It is not that art officials in India were unappreciative of local
design skills. It was just that there seemed to be little reason to worry
about their ultimate survival. With traditional manufactures still popular
in local markets, teachers and exhibition organizers focused on improving
local design skills rather than preserving them. Indeed, it was not until new
tastes and mounting imports threatened to swamp local traditions that
officials began to think about preservation.
As such, efforts to promote Indian design in the subcontinent emerged
from a different context than overseas. At international exhibitions Indian
crafts appeared always, already traditional thanks to a rigorous, multilay-
ered selection processes in India that weeded out inappropriately hybrid
submissions. In India, it was impossible to ignore hybrid goods; artisans
gravitated towards them, bazaars were full of them, consumers purchased
them. The desire to promote traditional design emerged in India, there-
fore, not only because of abstract admiration for Indian design among
other international design traditions, but more specifically because of real
fears that Indian design was about to disappear altogether. Art officials
launched drawing classes for artisans, displayed historic examples of tra-
ditional arts, and promoted those arts to the consuming public to stem
that tide of change. On the surface this was purely a visual movement,
concerned with changing styles and design. But it was nonetheless also
invested in production. Specifically, all of the efforts to restore Indian
styles insisted on individual artisanal power over designs—power rooted
in a proper understanding of historic examples and design principles
alike, but carefully kept into proper visual channels by the oversight of
largely European art officials.
Instruction: Art schools, museums, exhibitions, and the educated eye
Among the earliest—and certainly the most institutionally powerful—sites

for the preservation of Indian crafts were government art schools, the first
of which were established in the Presidency cities of Calcutta, Bombay,
and Madras in the 1850s. Indeed, in a June 1909 lecture on “The Function
of Schools of Art in India” delivered to the Royal Society of Arts, JJ School
of Art principal Cecil Burns defined preservation as the central mission of
art education in the subcontinent. According to Burns, the Government of
India had set up art schools in the mid-nineteenth century not to advance
the fine arts, but “to preserve from decay and to improve the crafts of the
country.”23 Ignoring the role of Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy in creating his own
institution in Bombay, Burns described school founders as “Europeans

of cultivated taste and learning” whose enthusiasm had been simultane-
ously aroused by “the beauty and distinctive character of the buildings
and craft-work of a former period” and frustrated by the comparatively
poor quality of modern work. Burns defined part of the problem as a loss
of creativity; workers had stopped inventing, “and from much copying
their designs became lifeless, while the craftsmen, from never attempt-
ing to devise new patterns, lost whatever power of original thinking they
may have formerly possessed.”24 But another part of the problem was the
incursion of foreign styles; the flood of foreign imports entering India in
the nineteenth century had created a situation in which “India from an
artistic point of view quickly became and has since remained a suburb of
Paris and London, as she is from an industrial point of view the suburb of
Manchester and Birmingham.”25
As Burns described them, it was to “arrest this decay” in both individ-
ual creativity and national design that the art schools opened, providing a
bulwark against the artistic degradations of the marketplace.26 In the early
years of the school, officials argued that the best way to preserve Indian
art was to give artisans a clearer understanding of the principles underly-
ing their work. The first head of the JJ School, J. A. Crowe, for instance,
admitted in 1857 that “it has been the good fortune of Eastern nations to
possess a natural gift for harmonies of colours,” which meant that “the
Hindoos have been able up to the present time to reproduce the most
admirably modulated harmonies.” But he argued that this gift was purely
instinctual, operating “without any laws” through conservative adher-
ence to tradition.27 Such instinctual skill in color would not be enough
to survive the cultural upheavals of the modern day. For that, artisans
needed a solid knowledge of design principles. Thus Crowe argued that it
was “a most desirable object” to “teach these laws and illustrate them by
the perfect models before them without endangering the existence of that
which is already so good.”28 Writing the same year, Bombay’s director of
public instruction E. Howard argued similarly that native talents would
only benefit from European rules. Indeed, his hope was that the JJ School
would become “a school of design . . . native in the best sense, owing to a
sense of accuracy, truth, and natural beauty to European inspiration, but
moulding its material into purely Indian types.”29
This emphasis on principles reflected orientalist assumptions of
Indian difference from the rational, scientific, rule-bound West; what
was instinctual, particularistic, hereditary practice in India had been
rendered into abstract, universal truths in the West. In art terms, Western
design professionals increasingly saw aesthetics as a science, the mastery
of whose laws ensured both beauty and economic success.30 To bring that
science to the benighted colonies, art schools took on the job of opening
up traditional practice to principles, rules, and order. Initially at least, this
meant an almost exclusive focus on drawing and basic geometry—i.e., on
abstract design lessons rather than the practical application of aesthetic
principles to actual production.31 Thus, when the JJ School first opened
in March 1857, it only offered drawing classes. Nor did students seem to
object; the early classes filled quickly to the point that, by February of the
following year, 68 students were enrolled, with an additional 40 applicants
turned away for want of space.32 That focus on drawing continued into
the 1860s as the school stabilized financially and added more students,
eventually moving into an elaborate new building on the Esplanade in
April 1878 where it remains to this day.
Whatever the goals of using Western principles to revitalize traditional
Indian design, many scholars have noted that early instruction tended to
do precisely the opposite, training Western realist portraitists and public
works department draftsmen.33 Art school instruction was essentially
European in personnel and methods, with South Kensington–trained
instructors following syllabi laid down by the Department of Science and
Art in London. In the beginning at least, it was also European in content;
until the early 1870s India figured only as the exceptional exotic example in
an otherwise exclusively European parade of design examples selected, as
an 1859 report on the school noted, “from good specimens of the Antique,
Middle Ages, Renaissance, &c.; principally from Dyce’s Government
School of Design Drawing Book, and Gruner’s specimens of Ornament.”34
This European orientation carried over into the school’s three new deco-
rative arts studios established in the mid-1860s. Students of decorative
sculpture and fresco painting turned out gargoyles, allegorical friezes, busts
of famous men, and models of ethnic types for the new neo-Gothic build-
ings of Bombay, including Victoria Terminus, the High Court, Bombay
University and Crawford Market. Meanwhile students of ornamental
metal work made iron railings, grills, plant stands, and outdoor tables all
modeled on European examples; when exhibited at the 1865 Nagpur exhi-
bition, these elicited praise from event organizer Harry Rivett-Carnac for
demonstrating “the successful manner in which Natives can be taught to
copy English work.”35
This emphasis on Europe did not last. As appreciation for Indian
crafts grew and ideas of difference deepened, so too did commitment to
teaching Indian design. As early as 1868, architectural lecturer George
Molecey dismissed the use of ancient Greek or Gothic examples in Indian
instruction, arguing that they “must to the Indian student be as it were a
dead language.” In their place, Molecey recommended that the JJ student

explore “the indigenous style of his own country.”36 Fellow teacher John
Griffiths agreed, arguing that “in reproducing the works of their ancestors
[students] would be preserved from the practice of an alien and uncon-
genial art with which they can never have any true Sympathy.”37 In the
fine arts, this meant fewer copies of Western masterpieces, replacing that
with attempts to capture Indian subjects, colors, and themes using the
techniques of Western realism.38 In crafts, the impact was even more
dramatic. To begin with, the school expanded its own collection of crafts
in order to give students direct access to examples of indigenous design.
It also began sending students out on government-sponsored trips to
document the principal architectural monuments of the region; such trips
offered the dual advantage of studying art in situ but also of assembling
detailed drawings, photographs, and models of buildings and ornamen-
tal detail for classroom use. The most famous of these trips—a series of
twelve yearly excursions led by Griffiths to Ajanta—generated careful
reproductions of the famous cave paintings that then circulated within all
the departments of the school, influencing painting styles, pottery deco-
ration, and designs for copper.39 (See fig. 3.1) By incorporating a range
of Indian arts, JJ instructors hoped to provide their students with varied
Figure 3.1 Vases prepared by students at the JJ School of Arts in the late 1880s
Source: “Bombay Pottery,” JIAI 2 no. 17 (1888), 4. Courtesy of the University of Pennsylvania Libraries.
examples of excellent design in diverse media. But they also hoped that
those examples would revive a sense of national design, returning students
to a more congenial idiom than was possible using foreign examples. That
hope rested on the assumption that students had a natural affinity to any-
thing produced in the subcontinent, even, for instance, to sixth-century
cave paintings. Thus, describing his work with JJ students copying the
Ajanta paintings, Griffiths noted:
The most curious and interesting phase of my Indian experience was the
intuition of Hindu, Parsee and Goanese students in the mysteries of an art
still congenial to the oriental temperament and hand. . . . I am persuaded
that no European, no matter how skilful could have so completely caught
the spirit of the originals.40
This preference for indigenous styles took institutional form at the JJ

School with the opening of the Reay Art Workshops in 1890. As noted in
Chapter 1, the workshops specialized in regional art crafts that were, as
then JJ superintendent Griffiths put it, “truly Indian in their treatment”:
wood carving, pottery, silver and copper work, and carpet weaving.41
For Griffiths, what made these crafts “truly Indian” was not just their
visual appearance but their traditional mode of production. The Reay
Workshops tried to preserve both. In place of objects inspired by English
country churches or classical Grecian friezes, students produced rugs pat-
terned on Mughal designs and carved wooden screens echoing the jali
work of Ahmedabadi mosques. In place of classroom instruction in which
students copied out practice examples set by an instructor, the workshops
employed a master-apprentice model in which all students worked on
actual objects for sale, with those who were the most advanced handling
the more difficult stages of production. Griffiths hired master craftsmen
to head each workshop, promising that
no interference of any kind is made that would tend to disturb the tradi-
tional mode of working peculiar to each craft, beyond the insistence that
the work executed shall be of the best, and that the ornamentation shall
be, as far as it is possible for it to be in this age when art is cosmopolitan,
Indian.42
In the Reay Workshops, students learned not just design content—

what was a properly Ajanta-styled figure or the appropriate shape of a
couch—but also design principles—the rules of proportion, line, balance,
harmony, and color that made possible good design. In other words, they
learned not just to copy tradition, but also how to produce it anew in
changed times. JJ instructors argued that artisans who could not adapt
traditional ornamentation to new types of objects were doomed to failure.
Thus, in his 1909 speech to the Royal Society of Arts, Cecil Burns argued
that Indian artisans had lost their markets “not in consequence of the
action of hostile tariffs, but by reason of their lack of capacity to adapt
themselves to altered demands and changed conditions.” For Burns, “the
economic salvation of the craftsmen of India” would not come until they
were “trained to understand the principles upon which their ancestors
built up their designs, and apply those principles.”43 Instruction, in other
words, reaffirmed the ideal of independent, artisanal creativity. But it did
so with the provision for external oversight by art school officials.
Dissemination: Spreading traditional design among working artisans
Whatever the ability of Griffiths or Burns to demand only properly tradi-

tional work within the walls of the JJ School, artisans continued to inte-
grate foreign and Indian elements into their work in private workshops
across the region.44 Such work reflected popular taste; mixed styles were
in high demand at the time, across class lines. And yet art officials refused
to accept this trend, instead insisting that hybridity could be quashed if
only art schools could extend their reach in society; it was not that tradi-
tionalism was unpopular, they argued, it was just that the message of tra-
ditional design was not being spread consistently to enough people. They
were, to some extent, correct—at least in their assessment of the influence
of art schools. The JJ School and other later art schools in the region—
including ones at Baroda, Surat, Bhuj, Rajkot, Nagpur, and Jaipur—had
a very limited impact. Not only did they teach a miniscule percentage of
the overall artisanal population, even their own graduates refused to stick
to purely Indian design once they started work commercially. According
to art officials, that failure to adhere to traditional styles revealed a basic
problem with how designs circulated in local society. Artisans rarely had
the opportunity to see high quality historic work; private collections of
fine crafts rarely went on public display and few artisans could afford to
keep the best examples of their own or their ancestors’ work. Nor did
artisans have local models for how to adapt old decorative ideas to new
consumer desires. As the director of the Lahore Museum Percy Brown
put it in 1907, since artisans “have no traditional designs for many of
the articles now in demand,” they were forced to adopt European styles
wholesale.45
Anxious to reach beyond the small numbers of students actively

enrolled in art schools, design preservationists sought to bring the tradi-
tionalist agenda out to practicing artisans in their workshops. To do so,
they launched a two-pronged effort: first, to widen knowledge of tradi-
tional ornament, and second, to demonstrate how those traditions could
be adapted to new purposes. As with art schools, this was an innovative
traditionalism that involved expanding European oversight, circulat-
ing designs in new ways through print, and asking artisans to employ a
broadly conceived historical tradition of ornament in their work.
Two of the most important men in the definition and implementation

of the preservationist design agenda beyond the boundaries of art schools
were John Lockwood Kipling and Thomas Holbein Hendley. Trained at
the South Kensington School, Kipling first came to India in 1865 to teach
ornamental sculpture at the JJ School. On the basis of his success there, he
was awarded in 1875 the dual positions of curator of the Lahore Museum
and principal of the newly formed Mayo School of Arts in Lahore, posts
that he held until he retired from government service in 1893. That move
to Lahore represented an aesthetic as well as physical shift; after working
largely in Western realist sculpture in Bombay, Kipling devoted himself
to traditional crafts at the Mayo School. Inspired by William Morris’
attempts to revive artisanship in England, Kipling used the Mayo School
as a platform from which to celebrate traditional design, tirelessly teach-
ing, writing and organizing events on the subject.46 Hendley, by contrast,
came from a medical background, serving the Government of India as
residency surgeon in Jaipur State from 1874 until 1897. Based on personal
interest and not professional training, Hendley’s investment in traditional
arts developed during his time in Rajputana into a public mission. Starting
with private collecting and investigative efforts in the 1870s, he then went
on to found the Jaipur museum in 1881, assemble an exhibition of Indian
arts at Jaipur in 1883, organize the Jaipur Court at the Colonial and Indian
Exhibition of 1886, preside over a Government of India art conference
in 1894 called to discuss the future of traditional arts, and—back in
England—chair the Indian Committee for the Festival of India Exhibition
of 1911, all the while publishing widely on Indian arts.47
Early converts to the cause of design preservation, Kipling and Hendley
established models for how to bring that message out to practicing artisans.
One of the earliest expressions of their emerging commitment came in
the form of twin exhibitions: the Punjab Art and Industry Exhibition at
Lahore in 1881–1882 and the Jaipur Art and Industrial Exhibition in 1883,
each organized to demonstrate the continued vitality of indigenous design.
At the Lahore exhibition, visiting American designer Lockwood de Forest

reported that only those items were admitted that were “strictly native, no
Europe things or anything in that style”; indeed, de Forest thought that
emphasis on indigenous design so remarkable that he later termed the
event the “first exhibition of Indian Art held in India.”48 The 1883 Jaipur
exhibition similarly displayed excellent local and regional goods in tradi-
tional styles as evidence of the achievements of indigenous arts. Although
intended to popularize traditional design among the public at large, both
exhibitions sought specifically to address the needs of artisans. Thus, at the
Jaipur exhibition, Hendley not only presented fine traditional work for local
artisans to copy, he also put on exhibit negative examples of things “which
show what should have been avoided, and what mischief has already been
done by the contact between Oriental and European art” in order to sound
a warning note to artisans tempted to stray into foreign styles.49
Such exhibitions could reach large numbers; more than 230,000 people
attended the Jaipur exhibition during the two months that it was open.
But in the end, they remained temporary affairs. To reach artisans on a
more stable basis, Hendley retained many of the exhibits for display in the
Jaipur museum, which moved into a permanent home in Albert Hall in
1886. Lessons of design operated on several levels there. First, as discussed
in Chapter 1, the building itself documented the best in local ornamen-
tal traditions, with the walls covered with architectural details copied
by local stone carvers from historic buildings in the region. Within the
walls, Hendley displayed only the finest works of traditional arts in hopes
of stimulating consumer demand. More generally, Hendley encouraged
artisans to visit the museum and use the fine historical examples they saw
there as inspiration for new work in traditional styles. And there is at least
some indication that the museum was successful on these grounds; in his
account of the Jaipur exhibition, Hendley noted that, after the museum
had only been open three years “it is quite a common thing for artisans to
go to the Museum for a few minutes to study.”50
More broadly, Kipling and Hendley helped to formulate Government
of India policies to promote traditional design among artisans. When in
1883 the Government of India was considering how to revive industrial
arts, Kipling and Hendley were two of the men asked to a conference in
Calcutta to offer advice. One of the key suggestions they agreed upon
was the creation of local, regional, and national museums displaying
crafts. These museums were to have a broadly inclusive aim suggestive
of a documentary interest: to create “a typical collection of the arts and
manufactures of the Province.” And yet not all local manufactures were
welcome. With a view toward the impact such museums could have
on contemporary craft production, objects copied from or inspired

by European examples—no matter how profitable or popular—were
“debased samples” to be excluded. Instead displays were to feature only
the “best examples of oriental designs and processes.”51 Commenting on
the Calcutta conference’s proposals, Government of India revenue official
E. C. Buck made clear that documentation here had a very specific agenda:
to “maintain an acquaintance with the patterns and forms formerly pre-
vailing in the country, and specially typical of oriental art and design.”52
That insistence on proper styles only grew stronger with time, reflecting
the influence of Kipling, Hendley, and others. It was not enough that
objects be beautifully made or well-suited to their purpose; as of 1901, the
Government of India asked that museum officials also examine samples
on the basis of design authenticity “to decide finally whether they are to
be accepted as fair specimens of Indian art.”53
Hendley and Kipling also looked beyond exhibitions and muse-
ums to spread the lessons of traditional design in another form: print.
One option for publication was the JIAI with its lavish illustrations of
superlative crafts. Hendley and Kipling both regularly wrote for—and
indeed helped found—the journal, which they and other members of the
Calcutta conference hoped would be a useful reference for artisans.54 Early
years of the journal featured contributions from the two men on Punjabi
brasswork, copperware, cotton printing, wood carving, rustic ornamen-
tation, Indian ivory carving, Mooltan pottery, and Burmese silverwork
(all by Kipling), and Indian metal work, bookbinding, rugs, jewelry and
enamels, Rajasthani decorative arts in general, and the arts of Ajmer and
Bikaner in particular (all by Hendley). The format of the JIAI was not,
however, especially conducive to artisanal use. Within articles, the text
usually focused on existing processes (which artisans already knew and
practiced) while the plates illustrated only a few select examples within a
craft—hardly enough to provide a full sense of the historical complexity
of a style. Within the journal as a whole, the articles covered diverse sub-
jects, exploring South Indian cotton printing in one issue, Bengali ivory
carving in another, Punjabi woodwork in a third, and rarely returning to
the same craft within a single year.55
Other publications offered more concentrated lessons in traditional
design. One option was the Technical Art Series of Illustrations of Indian
Architectural Decorative Work that was assembled by Hendley’s colleague
in Jaipur, Colonel Swinton Jacob. An engineer by training who served as
the head of the Jeypore Public Works Department from 1866 to 1912,
Jacob was an ardent admirer of traditional building and craft skills.
Frustrated with the anonymous, standardized buildings being put up by
the Government of India’s Public Works Department, Jacob assembled

meticulous scale drawings of traditional architectural elements for the
use of local artisans. One attempt to distribute those drawings was via
the Jeypore Portfolio of Architectural Details; published with the support
of the Maharaja of Jaipur between 1890 and 1895, the Portfolio offered
assistance to architects and artisans interested in reviving authentic,
Indian buildings.56 The Technical Art Series aimed at an even wider audi-
ence. Published at nominal cost by the Survey of India starting in 1886,
the series was intended, as the title plate makes clear, “For the use of Art
Schools and Craftsmen.” By illustrating select details from historic build-
ings, the series aimed to increase public knowledge of India’s rich tradi-
tion of architectural ornamentation, and thus public demand for more
Indian styles across crafts. The first four plates of the 1892 collection,
for instance, presented individual sections of carved granite pillars at the
Virabhadra Temple in the Anantapur District of the Madras Presidency,
selected to show varieties of ornamental patterning. Later plates in the
same volume drew from monuments across India, including soffits,
brackets, and dado panels from Fatehpur Sikri, a temple doorway from
Bundelkund, and arches, windows, and wall surface decoration from
Bijapur.57 Although drawn specifically from architecture, the illustra-
tions were offered as inspiration for artisans in all media. Thus the text
accompanying a plate depicting the stucco centerpiece of the ceiling in a
room in “Jodh Bai’s Palace” at Fatehpur Sikri (see fig. 3.2) suggests that
“the design is of exceptional beauty and is admirably adapted for many
purposes. Among artificers it could advantageously be used by gold and
silver-smiths and workers in brass and iron, as well as for [sic] wood-
carvers.”58 Another plate illustrating the mihrab in the Jama Masjid in
Dholka, Gujarat, noted that “worked in silver, with but few modifications,
such a form would present a pretty case for a small time-piece.”59
The Technical Art Series tried to serve all crafts, presenting a common
set of decorative elements useful to the entire artisanal community. Other
publications focused on a single craft, offering more precise details on
how design ideas could be applied in practice. In 1905 Hendley published
Asian Carpets, a massive volume of beautiful full-color plates document-
ing details of historic carpets in the collection of the Maharaja of Jaipur,
with the explicit goal
of their proving useful to students of this most interesting subject, as well as

to Schools of Art and Museums, but more especially to manufacturers, who,
with their aid, might be able to produce copies which would truly represent
the artistic and magnificent works of the best period.60
Figure 3.2 Illustration of the ceiling from “Jodh Bai’s Palace,” Fatehpur Sikri in
the Technical Art Series, 1894
Source: Courtesy of the New York University Libraries.
A more affordable attempt to reach out within particular crafts was a

series of Industrial Art Pattern Books prepared in inexpensive formats
by government art schools to illustrate the principal styles in key crafts
by province.61 One of the first of these—possibly prepared by Kipling—
appeared in the early 1890s, covering wood decoration in the Punjab. The
book offered some one hundred examples of older styles of work—what
Kipling’s successor as principal of the Mayo School, Percy Brown,
described as “a representative selection of purely indigenous examples
gathered from some of the most historic sources in the Punjab, . . . fully
illustrating all the principal styles of work in this particular material”
(see fig. 3.3). Along with those historical examples came suggestions for
how to adapt old styles to new products, carefully maintaining traditional
Figure 3.3 Pinjra designs in wood from the Punjab, drawn by Ram Singh
under the direction of Lockwood Kipling
Source: Lockwood Kipling, “Punjab Woodcarving,” JIAI, 1 no. 4 (1884). Courtesy of the University of
decoration while admitting new forms. These ideas were presented “in
the form of ‘working drawings’ and it is anticipated [they] will be of
value to any workman requiring a good series of specimens to refer to in
connection with any art woodwork he may have in hand”62 (see fig. 3.4).
The goal, as Brown put it,
is to prevent the rapidly increasing use of the very worst form of foreign . . .
illustration to which unfortunately the wood-carver owes many of his pres-
ent day inspirations. . . . The Industrial Art Pattern Books are an attempt to
stem this tide of ugly and unsuitable designs which are now flooding the
workshops of India.63
A still more informal means of disseminating traditional designs was

in unpublished patterns that circulated among producers. Hendley made
available his designs from the collection of the Maharaja of Jaipur through
hand drawings as well as through more formal printed works; as of 1905
when Asian Carpets came out, its designs were already in use across north
India, in the Lahore, Delhi, Agra, and Ajmer Jails and in private firms in
Figure 3.4 Sketches for Anglo-Indian furniture, drawn by Ram Singh, under
the direction of Lockwood Kipling
Source: Lockwood Kipling, “Punjab Woodcarving,” JIAI, 1 no. 4 (1884). Courtesy of the University of
Amritsar and Srinagar.64 Other sources for such designs were jails and
museums. In the 1890s, the Yeraoda Jail in Pune produced exact woven
copies and detailed paper patterns based on a collection of famous 250-
year-old carpets held at the Asar Mahal in Bijapur. The Yeraoda work-
shop superintendent then supplied the patterns free of charge to other
jails or to private manufacturers either in full-size samples or in special
composite carpets designed to show off common patterns.65 Similarly,
when in 1894 Lockwood de Forest was gathering ideas for furniture to
be produced at the Ahmedabad Wood Carving Company (see below), he
requested and received a series of paper drawings of wood carvings from
Jaipur, including designs of the main doors to Albert Hall, home of the
Jaipur museum.66
To ensure that artisans learned the proper design lessons from these
various sources, art officials in the 1880s and 1890s gave themselves the
responsibility of “pointing out and controlling any cases in which bad
design or careless workmanship or foreign influence are acting prejudi-
cially on the local industries.”67 To do that, they traveled to key centers of
craft production, visited artisans in their workshops, offered design advice,
and suggested new product lines. Kipling regularly worked with artisans on
how to adapt old patterns to new ends; in the words of the Government of
the Punjab, the Mayo School acted “as ‘an aesthetic centre,’ and ‘a source of
enlightened criticism and advice’” for local artisans.68 In Jaipur, Hendley
similarly reached out, in part through expanded access to museum collec-
tions; Jaipur Museum policy dictated that “all good specimens of Indian
artwork are freely lent to the local workmen for reproduction.”69 But
beyond that, Hendley himself suggested new design directions, encourag-
ing local metal workers in the mid-1880s to expand their production from
un-embellished waterpots and vessels to large, intricately ornamented
repoussé brass trays.70 Within the Bombay Presidency, the JJ principal
John Griffiths used the carpet studio in the Reay Workshops to recast old
designs into new shapes suitable for use in Western-style living rooms;
the school then supplied those designs to different carpet manufactories
around the region in the 1890s, thereby fulfilling the government’s desire
that, under the leadership of the JJ School, “the industry will be properly
supervised.”71 In the early 1900s, then JJ principal Cecil Burns expanded
his oversight over traditional styles still further. Not only did he supervise
traditional-style production at the Reay Workshops, he also published
studies of ivory and fine metal work, advised carpet weavers on designs,
held exhibitions of the work of past students in order to make sure “that
their work has not degenerated,” and, in 1910, opened a new normal class
to centrally train teachers for industrial arts for western India.72
On the surface, these attempts to disseminate traditional designs made

artisans passive recipients of either printed patterns or design advice
delivered by European officials. When, for example, Griffiths and officials
at Bombay Presidency jails circulated carpet patterns, the assumption was
that those designs would be copied directly by other producers. But the
appearance of passivity is misleading. When Kipling provided examples
of pinjra-decorated designs for desks and tables (see fig. 3.4) in his 1884
article in the JIAI, he offered some potential uses of the original decora-
tive patterns on furniture; by also providing numerous examples of the
original ornamentation as applied to historic buildings or abstracted
into decorative details (see fig. 3.3), however, he also encouraged artisans
to develop their own alternative applications. When the Technical Art
Series published examples of architectural detail it demanded artisanal
interpretation even more directly. While the textual notes accompanying
the plates suggested which crafts those details might best be copied into,
no examples of how that might be done were provided; indeed, the 1890
government resolution formalizing the Technical Art Series stated that
“the main object of the series is not to provide craftsmen with working
drawings, but to give them ideas which they can work up for themselves in
their own way.”73 Similarly, government policy refused to provide set pat-
terns to artisans. Such an idea “of fixing the art of a locality by approved
designs or standard patterns” was proposed as part of the Government of
India’s 1883 attempt to formulate policies on industrial arts. It was, how-
ever, roundly rejected by art school and museum officials “on account of
the restriction which would be placed on original development by native
workmen and others connected with art-manufactures.”74 Instead of
imposing standard designs directly, the art officials unanimously agreed
that more could be done indirectly through local museums “by storing up
the best examples of oriental designs and processes.”75
Like art schools, then, museums, exhibitions, and publications designed
to promote Indian styles demanded that artisans take an active role inter-
preting and adapting traditional ideas. Not content just with a visual
result—the revival of traditional design—these efforts also addressed the
methods used to produce those results. In doing so, they worked to reaf-
firm both elements that separated crafts from modern industry: a distinc-
tive appearance and a specific mode of production based in independent,
creative artisanal labor.
Promotion: Bringing public value to traditional styles
Complementing and extending these efforts to promote design tradi-

tionalism among artisans—in schools or workshops through material
examples, print, or personal intervention—were other efforts focused on
an entirely different audience: consumers. Design reformers realized that
converting producers to traditionalism meant little if there was no market
for their work. As the viceroy of India Lord Ripon argued in a speech
opening the Simla Industrial and Fine Arts Exhibition of 1881:
It is, of course, absolutely necessary in regard to industrial art, if you wish

that art to be good and truly artistic, and based upon sound principles,
that you should not only have good inclinations and good training in the
workmen or persons who construct the works of art, but that they should
be encouraged by good taste on the part of the public.76
The problem? Late-nineteenth-century consumers seemed to lack just that

good taste. As a subsequent viceroy, Lord Curzon put it in 1905, Indian
elites filled their homes “with flaming Brussels carpets, with Tottenham
Court Road furniture, with cheap Italian mosaics, with French oleographs,
with Austrian lustres and with German tissues and cheap brocades.”77
For all the hostility in that quote, Curzon was not far off the mark; by the
turn of the century, Western furnishings and fine arts had become a key
marker of distinction in upper-class homes. Virtually all the major new
palaces in princely states featured furniture and décor imported directly
from Europe; two of the many examples of this trend from western India
are the Laxmi Vilas Palace in Baroda (started 1878, completed 1890) and
the Ranjit Vilas Palace in Wankaner, Kathiawad (started 1907, completed
1914). Nonroyal elites similarly invested in foreign styles, whether at the
highest levels of society as evidenced in Rajendro Mallik’s Marble Palace
in Calcutta or J. D. Tata’s home in Bombay, or at the more modest scale
of English-educated government servants who ordered local copies of
Chippendale or Queen Anne style furniture for their homes.
Tottenham Court Road furniture and Austrian lustres fulfilled mod-
ernizing desires and enabled new pleasures; by comparison traditional
floor cushions or brass oil lamps represented holdovers from an earlier
era. Design preservationists thus had to convince consumers that tradi-
tional design was compatible with modern comforts. Or, as Ripon put it
in 1881, they had “to educate the taste of the public, so that taste, being
developed by the contemplation of so many beautiful and suitable things,
the demand for those things may produce an adequate supply.”78 As with
attempts to reach out to artisans, publications provided a key way to bring
this new message to consumers. Crafts monographs, exhibition cata-
logues, and the JIAI all addressed consumer needs, providing information
on distinctive styles, prominent artisans, and representative prices. In his
1907 government monograph on carpet weaving in western India, for
instance, H. J. R. Twigg not only explained in some detail which carpets
were available where, but he also spent an entire chapter advising consum-
ers how to evaluate the quality and therefore price of a carpet according to
the fibers and dyes used and the density of knots per square inch.79
The JIAI was even more clearly oriented towards consumer concerns,
illustrating “possible European applications and uses” for each craft and
providing prices for the items depicted whenever possible. Indeed, the
government resolution creating the journal stated that its “chief practical
object” was “to establish in all parts of the world in which an interest is taken
in the Art Manufactures of India a better knowledge of the various types
now existing, with the view both of increasing the demand for them, and of
facilitating their supply through the agency of traders in Oriental wares.”80
Of all its functions—documentation, design instruction for artisans,
and taste-making for consumers—the JIAI probably served the last best.
Describing basic production processes offered no new technical knowledge
to artisans, but taught consumers where the skill of a craft lay and why it
was valuable; illustrating only a few examples of traditional work failed to

establish the historical trajectory of design for a particular region or media,
but clarified for collectors the key differences between Banarasi and Poona
brasswork, or between Bengali and Punjabi embroidery; finally, jumping
from one craft or region to another only occasionally glanced on the needs
of artisans in a particular media but provided buyers a composite, all-India
sense of artisanal traditions. In other words, the very things that made the
JIAI useless to artisans were exactly what made it invaluable to consumers.
The JIAI operated as a resource guide to the art industries of the
subcontinent, alerting potential buyers to local specialties and areas of
particular interest. Exhibitions and museums offered similar services,
from their outset aiming not just to document local skills or resources
but also to promote the sale of local goods. Thus the V&A Museum in
Bombay was founded with the hope that, by displaying local products and
raw materials, the museum would “ultimately be the means of increasing
the produce and sale of these articles alone which can add to the wealth
of this part of India.”81 In the early years of the V&A, the articles in ques-
tion were often European in form and style; hence displays at exhibitions
and museums alike in the 1850s through the 1870s featured Indian-made
furniture, boots, harnesses, cutlery, or ironwork, all designed to show how
local artisans could master European skills. But even then some attention
was paid to Indian decorative arts as a distinctive part of local economic
capabilities. In 1858 then V&A curator George Birdwood spent Rs. 500
on a variety of inlaid wooden work prepared by Atmaram Waleram, a
local artisan who had recently won prizes for his submissions to the Paris
Exhibition of 1855. Birdwood then arranged Waleram’s inlaid chess table,
carved workboxes, envelope box, inkstand, and bookstand with the pur-
chase prices clearly visible, as a means of establishing for museum visitors
what constituted fair prices for the best quality work.82
As the traditionalist design agenda took hold in the 1880s that focus
on building markets for Indian work only grew stronger. At the V&A, new
collections of Sindhi-style plates and Ajanta-styled vases then under pro-
duction at the JJ School provided a useful stimulus to school sales, while
displays of contemporary Kutchi silver established skill levels and appro-
priate styles. In Jaipur, Hendley reached out to consumers even more
directly through the 1883 exhibition and through the Jaipur museum’s
home at Albert Hall, which he envisioned as a three-dimensional cata-
logue of local arts from which visitors could have reproductions made of
favored pieces.83 Subsequent exhibitions built on these lessons to consum-
ers. When the Maharao of Kutch Khengar III married in February 1884,
his Diwan Manibhai Jasbhai organized an Arts and Industries Exhibition;
of the twenty categories of items displayed, one was devoted entirely to

local crafts.84 Similarly, one of the events organized to welcome the Prince
of Wales to Bombay in 1890 was an exhibition of industrial arts at the JJ
School. Assembled by the Bombay Art Society—an organization that, one
of its leaders claimed, was “doing good work in cultivating the artistic
tastes of the people of this Presidency”—the exhibit included examples
from the collections of native princes and specimens of carpets, brass, and
marble work sent from Jaipur by Hendley, all gathered “to stimulate the
public in an appreciation for objects of industrial art.”85
Publications, exhibitions, and museums all focused on improving
taste as an indirect means of stimulating demand: the hope being that
consumers would apply the lessons learned to their own negotiations
with artisans, demanding indigenous styles. Not all consumers were so
enterprising. For those who could not travel across India in search of
fine crafts or who were not in one place long enough to place orders with
artisans directly, museums began to open permanent emporia devoted to
fine crafts in the 1890s. Meant to supply a perceived need for centralized
access to Indian art industries, such stores opened in western India in
Poona, Surat, Baroda, and Nagpur. On the surface these were consumer
driven; consumer complaints about difficulties faced finding Indian
crafts prompted local officials to open stores in which such things would
be available. And yet they also had a strong didactic mission, aiming to
educate consumers into developing a proper taste for traditional crafts.
Operated usually on some form of government subsidy, traditional crafts
emporia attached to museums used rigorous selection criteria to exclude
all but the highest quality goods. This set them apart from commercial
dealers who, government officials insisted, “traded in every form of art
workmanship, the good with the bad,” focusing on “the most popular and
fashionable articles, which it would not be beside the mark to designate as
frequently the least artistic and often the most degraded types of work.”86
At museums, the “main object of the sale room” was, according to Percy
Brown of the Lahore Museum, just the opposite: to bring “to the notice
of the purchasing public the very highest and best examples of local art
industry; the matter of trade being a very secondary consideration.” Such
an endeavor “would do a great deal towards maintaining the high quality
of Indian Art, both as regards design and manufacture.”87 That, indeed,
was the hope of the Government of India, which suggested in the 1883
scheme to promote Indian industrial arts that crafts emporia “would
enable wealthy purchasers, who are prepared to give adequate prices for
good work, to ascertain what are the highest standards of each class of
Indian manufacture.”88
The didactic mission of these crafts emporia becomes even more clear
when considered in light of their close affiliations with museums. Not only
were most craft emporia operated by museum staff on museum premises,
but the goods offered for sale in such stores were often closely tied into
existing museum collections. After the Lucknow Museum opened a crafts
shop, for instance, artisans regularly produced new items for the museum
collection, with previous examples rotating into the attached shop for
sale to visitors.89 Other emporia in Lahore, Kanpur, Madras, Bangalore,
Rangoon, and Nagpur had similarly close connections with their respec-
tive local museums.90 In western India, the Reay Economic Museum in
Poona, founded and operated by the Industrial Association of Western
India, opened an attached showroom in 1889 in order to offer duplicates
of their collections for sale to the public.91 Similarly, in 1898 some private
gentlemen launched a crafts depot-cum-museum in Surat, with goods on
sale complementing the items on display.92 The Government of Baroda
for its part opened an emporium attached to the Baroda Museum in 1912,
“for the purpose of increasing among the public the love and taste for
good artistic objects.”93 As of 1916, the emporium offered a range of art
crafts, including pottery, lacquer work, objects in silver and other metals,
textiles, and ivory inlays.94
Emporia and other attempts to reach out to consumers had a largely

visual focus: to create a particular taste for traditional styles. They also,
however, helped to accentuate the other key element of crafts difference:
hand production. Most basically, they did this by insisting on a basic
division between handmade goods and machine-made ones, confining
the latter to separate sections if not—as in the JIAI—excluding them
entirely. More subtly, they helped reinforce the idea that handwork was
itself valuable, a site of traditional culture and national heritage. When the
V&A added a series of clay models of artisans at work sometime around
the turn of the century (see fig. 1.5), the figures served a documentary
function, demonstrating the peoples and processes involved in craft
production. On another level, though, they also played an educative role,
connecting objects on display in other parts of the museum to particular
artisanal bodies and traditional skills. Similarly, descriptions of processes
in the JIAI, while useless on a technical level to practicing artisans, helped
to focus consumer attention on the methods of craft production, making
those methods central to the proper appreciation of crafts.
That dual emphasis on teaching consumers taste and the value of hand-
work reached its fullest expression with the 1903 Delhi Durbar Exhibition.
Organized by Viceroy Curzon to mark the accession of Edward VII to
the throne as emperor of India, the exhibition highlighted the achieve-
Figure 3.5 The Bombay Room at the Delhi Durbar Exhibition of 1903
Source: George Watt, Indian Art at Delhi, 1903, plate 2. Courtesy of the University of Pennsylvania Libraries.
ments of Indian artisans working in the purest indigenous designs. In

his instructions to the exhibition organizers, Curzon explicitly stipulated
that the exhibition was to contain “only the work that represented India’s
trade, traditions, instincts, and beliefs of the people” with no foreign styles
allowed. Indeed, when it opened in January of 1903, Curzon called it “an
Exhibition of all that is rare, characteristic or beautiful in Indian Art.”95
Yet this was Indian art designed around Westernized lifestyles, featuring
a series of model rooms designed, as exhibition organizer George Watt
put it, “for the purpose of exemplifying the adaptability of the various
better known styles of Indian Art, to modern household furnishing and
architectural decoration.”96 In the Bombay room, for instance, several
profusely carved couches covered in local fabrics shared space with a large
tufted carpet, metal and clay decorative urns, a wooden standing screen, a
sculpture of an Indian woman, and a bust of Shivaji (see fig. 3.5).97
Building proper consumer taste was one of the central goals of the
Delhi Durbar Exhibition. In his speech opening the exhibition, Curzon
argued that the event would
show that for the beautification of an Indian house or the furniture of an

Indian home there is no need to rush to the European shops at Calcutta or
Bombay, but that in almost every Indian state and province, in most Indian
towns, and in many Indian villages there still survives the art and there still
exist the artificers who can satisfy the artistic as well as the utilitarian tastes
of their countrymen and who are competent to keep alive this precious
inheritance that we have received from the past.98
And yet, as the second part of that quote reveals, Curzon did not ask con-
sumers merely to fill their homes with reproductions of ancient styles or
machine-made goods covered with Indian ornament; instead, he called
on them to reach out to living artisans, to become their patrons, and so
keep Indian art alive in the creative present. Indeed, later in the same
speech Curzon gave patrons and artisans equal responsibility for India’s
art future:
Many of these objects are beautiful in themselves, but we hope that the
Indian workmen who are here, and also the patrons who employ them, will
study them, not merely as objects of antiquarian or even artistic interest,
but as supplying them with fresh or rather resuscitated ideas, which may be
useful to them in inspiring their own work in the future.99
At the Delhi Durbar Exhibition, as with publications, museums, and

emporia, design preservation reached directly out to consumers, asking
patrons to take an active role in determining the future of traditional
styles. These venues worked in tandem with efforts to educate artisans
into the principles and content of traditional design. Indeed, all were
equally concerned with a certain visual result, trying through different
means to ensure the unique appearance of traditional crafts. At the same
time, all were also concerned with the means by which that result was
achieved. Like education and dissemination efforts to reach out to arti-
sans, promoting traditional crafts to consumers demanded active, creative
producers, albeit now supported by equally active patrons similarly com-
mitted to traditional design. Implicitly harkening back to an earlier era
of generous royal patronage, exhibitions and emporia tried to educate a
new generation of buyers to revive that tradition in the present, rejecting
foreign styles as they did so.
Preserving Work: Artisanal Relationships in Flux
All the efforts discussed so far set out to affect the outcome of craft pro-
duction: whether styles were indigenous or foreign, purely traditional
or hybridly modern. Indeed, inspired by Western influences spread-
ing inexorably through colonial society, these represented the bulk of
the preservation efforts of the era. Combining the dissemination of
approved designs with education in design principles, schools, exhibitions,

museums, publications, and emporia did try to affect the process of pro-
duction. Art officials argued that only a certain kind of creative, thought-
ful labor would ensure the survival of traditional design as a living art
rather than a relic of the past. Hence the emphasis on teaching principles,
on distributing plates of design elements, on educating consumers into
active support for indigenous styles: these were the means necessary to the
end of design preservation.
For some, however, independent creative labor was not the means to
an end but the end in itself. Indeed, alongside the better-known efforts
to preserve styles were other attempts to preserve particular working
conditions. These projects fought different demons than design pres-
ervationists, attacking not Westernizing designs but commercialization,
exploitation, and impoverishment. And they proposed different solu-
tions, arguing not for design education but for new forms of working
relationships intended to preserve individual independence within pro-
tective structures designed to shield artisans from the intense competition
of consumer markets.
Here I focus on two very different examples of this side of the preserva-
tionist agenda: a commercial attempt in Ahmedabad to revive traditional
patronage within a novel furniture workshop; and a noncommercial
effort across western India to rescue artisans from exploitative middlemen
through cooperatives. The two addressed different geographic markets
(overseas as opposed to local), focused on different types of consumers
(an international cosmopolitan elite as opposed to the local middle and
lower-classes), involved different artisans (woodworkers as opposed to
handloom weavers), and attracted different attention (by art officials as
opposed to experts in rural development). Even in their one main area of
commonality—a commitment to restoring artisanal independence—they
defined that independence differently. The Ahmedabad Wood Carving
Company (AWCC) encouraged wage laborers to develop their own
artistic ideas, giving free reign to individual creativity in decorative ele-
ments; independence here was aesthetic not economic, defined in terms
of personal expression not how individuals fit within a larger corporate
whole. Cooperatives worried little about individual expressiveness and
more about the social context for production, helping artisans escape
both wage labor and financial dependence on middlemen; given the
relative rigidities of markets for handloom cloth—the main product
of artisanal cooperatives—artistic freedom may well have been beside
the point. Both the AWCC and cooperatives harkened back to the ideal
state of craftsmanship Birdwood and Coomaraswamy had described,
with contented village workers intellectually engaged with their work.

But they emphasized different sides of that vision: the artistic need
for personal creativity as opposed to the economic need for structured
self-sufficiency. Both, however, shared a fundamental investment in pre-
serving artisanal independence—a key element separating crafts from
modern industry.
Creativity: Lockwood de Forest and the AWCC
The first example of a preservationist effort aimed at the process of pro-

duction actually parallels quite closely the design-focused efforts already
discussed. Founded in 1881, the Ahmedabad Wood Carving Company
was devoted to producing fine furniture and wood paneling drawing on
the architectural heritage of western India. The artistic director, American
designer Lockwood de Forest, was a close associate of some of the most
important men working for Indian design preservation in the late nine-
teenth century, including Kipling, Hendley, and Jacob. More broadly, de
Forest knew virtually everyone else involved in Indian arts at the time:
George Birdwood and Purdon Clarke in London, John Griffiths and
George Terry in Bombay, various heads of the Madras and Calcutta art
schools, and key industrial officials across India such as Alfred Chatterton
and E. C. Buck. With these men de Forest shared ideas, investigated
regional artwares on common collecting trips, poured over museum col-
lections, built up knowledge of design traditions, exchanged new designs,
and exhibited work.100
For all his admiration for these men, however, de Forest differed from
them in several key respects. First, as an American acting in a private com-
mercial capacity, he did not boast the institutional authority of British
art school officials or industrial officers. Nor, trained as an oil painter in
the United States, did he share their grounding in the South Kensington
system of art education. More importantly, he differed in his assessment
of what was wrong with Indian crafts and what should be done to preserve
them. British art officials explained problems and offered solutions in
crafts in visual terms: Indian artisans did not properly understand aes-
thetic principles and so needed art education or access to better designs.
de Forest insisted that Indian design already was excellent. Looking back
in 1919 on his efforts in India, he wrote that crafts in India “were perfectly
organized and the work done was as perfect as the organization and had
been for untold centuries as the further one went back the more perfect it
seemed.”101 That perfection meant that Indian artisans had more to teach
the world than to learn from it. Thus, when in 1912 de Forest published a
book of designs to be used in American art schools, not only were most of
the illustrations taken from Indian examples, but much of the introduc-
tion focused on the artistic abilities of Indian artisans, describing them as
men who “had so mastered the notes of line that they were not only able
to read their meaning but to compose in them.”102 Taking that praise one
step farther, in 1918 de Forest suggested bringing over working craftsmen
from India to teach in American art schools to “show how work should
be done, for it is only in the East that the workman have not lost their art
and skill.”103
For de Forest, the problem with contemporary Indian crafts was not
design but patronage, not inadequate knowledge but bad markets. Indian
artisans were perfectly capable of turning out the finest quality work in
purely traditional styles; in de Forest’s view, they were masters in their
arts, not just technically but also aesthetically, capable of creative innova-
tion within their respective craft traditions. It was just that Indian artisans
could not utilize those skills because of the current configuration of the
marketplace with its pressures to produce cheap goods for uncaring cli-
ents. The solution, then, was twofold. First, improve patronage: provide
proper support from customers who understood and appreciated good
design. Writing to Louis Tiffany in 1881, de Forest argued: “there is only
one way to keep up Indian art and that is to make a market for the best
things and then you will have no difficulty in getting them. . . . A few lacks
[sic] of rupees will do more to preserve Indian art than all the art schools
and all the talk possible.”104 Second, restore autonomy: create a careful
system of production that would protect artisans from commercial pres-
sures, ensuring creative freedom in their art.
The AWCC set out to do both. Indeed, it emerged directly out of de
Forest’s frustrations with existing production networks that offered nei-
ther good patronage nor true artisanal autonomy. During his first trip
to India in 1881–1882—made to investigate traditional arts on behalf of
Associated Artists, his business partnership with Tiffany, Samuel Colman,
and Candace Wheeler—de Forest found quality standards declining across
crafts, with artisans pressured to cut corners and degrade their skills in
order to produce cheaper goods at greater profit to merchants. Nor was
he able to intervene effectively on his own. Instead, de Forest faced fre-
quent difficulties getting good work done, unable to convince artisans to
work consistently or carefully for him, an unknown client. The solution,
both to his own search for high quality goods and to the larger problem
of structures degrading artisanship, came via the prominent Ahmedabadi
merchant Muggunbhai Hutheesing. Hutheesing came from a family of
prominent bankers, civic leaders, and art patrons; his father Kesrising
had financed the construction of the famous Seth Hutheesing temple in

Ahmedabad, completed in 1848. By 1881, however, much of Muggunbhai
Hutheesing’s fortune had disappeared, thanks to the crash in the Indian
cotton market at the end of the American Civil War.105 Thus, when de
Forest came to Ahmedabad looking for help in getting wood carving
done, Hutheesing agreed to help; drawing on his family’s role as patrons
of crafts in the past—and perhaps responding to straightened finances in
the present—Hutheesing went into partnership with de Forest to produce
high quality, traditionally inspired wood work, founding the AWCC.
The AWCC aimed to be the perfect sponsors of fine quality work. No
pressure was exerted to simplify designs or skimp on materials in order
to save money; aiming at only the wealthiest markets, the firm was able
to support excellence. At the same time, the AWCC also strove to provide
the perfect environment for individual expression, based on de Forest’s
belief that art lay not in an object itself, but in the creativity brought to it,
in the thinking human who brought it into being. de Forest had come to
that belief in India; watching Indian artisans at work “has taught me as no
other study what art really meant—that art was the creative principle of
the world and the universe itself.”106 It took him a while, however, to put
that belief in personal creativity into action at the AWCC. When the firm
first started, de Forest exerted fairly direct design control. After walking
through Ahmedabad with Hutheesing and the head mistri,107 picking out
patterns and motifs from local mosques, tombs, and old wooden house
fronts, de Forest drew up a series of designs. Hutheesing then assembled
the drawings—for wooden panels, decorative molding, mantels, picture
frames, sofas, swings, armchairs, and desks—into pattern books, keeping
one copy for himself and giving one to de Forest so that orders could be
coordinated even when the latter was not present.108 But that system of
rigid pattern making soon gave way to more informal direction. After only
a few weeks watching the woodcarvers at work, de Forest quickly realized
that “my mistri could originate designs just as easily as making copies.”109
As his confidence in the workmen grew, de Forest began to dictate only
the overall form of an object—the dimensions of a mantelpiece, or the
width of molding—leaving the ornamentation up to the woodworkers
in question. Those instructions carried over into more complex com-
missions as well, as indicated by the surprised pleasure de Forest showed
at the completion in 1882 of the workshop’s first full set of living room
furniture. As de Forest’s wife, Meta, reported in a letter to her mother-in-
law, “Lockwood thinks the men have been wonderfully clever, for he only
made a rough drawing and did not expect them to be able to do it all so
thoroughly.”110 The results of this kind of collaborative creativity could
Figure 3.6 Bench prepared by the AWCC, late 1800s

Source: Courtesy of Umung Hutheesing.
sometimes be startling; in one piece de Forest designed in the 1880s, the

famous tree of life motif from Ahmedabad’s Sidi Sayyid Mosque appears
on the carved back of a bench whose arms are formed by curling cobras
(see fig. 3.6).
Inspired by high principles of benevolent patronage and artisanal
autonomy, the AWCC was also founded on a very practical collabora-
tion between de Forest and Hutheesing. The former took responsibility
for creating designs, finding customers, and generally setting the artistic
direction of the firm; the latter managed the practical details of hiring and
supervising workmen, maintaining accounts, ensuring the exclusivity of de
Forest’s designs, and dispatching finished goods—taking a commission of
7 percent for his troubles. It was from the beginning a commercial under-
taking dedicated to producing excellent goods at steady profits for custom-
ers around the world. Those combined skills allowed smooth operations
from the start. Opening in February of 1881 with some twenty men and
boys, the workshop turned out its first full set of carvings and brasswork
in less than seven months at quality levels far exceeding de Forest’s expec-
tations. Part of that success seems to have been due to a ready availabil-
ity of skilled labor; according to de Forest, the status of the Hutheesing
family was such that artisans thought “it was rather an honor to work for
them.”111 Proud of the results, de Forest sent the finest of the wood carv-
ings to Kipling’s exhibition of Indian arts in Lahore at the end of 1881.
They made quite an impact; Purdon Clarke, then on tour collecting for
the South Kensington Museum, was so impressed that he ordered several
things for the museum.112 Other attention and orders soon followed thanks
to de Forest’s aggressive efforts to publicize his work. On the commercial
front, de Forest arranged with James Proctor Watson (of Watson and Co.
in Bombay and London) and the London carpet dealer Vincent Robinson
to sell AWCC goods in Indian and British markets.113 On the official front,
the workshop’s accomplishments were noted in a speech by the Governor
of Bombay at the opening of the Poona art exhibition in 1881, and were
prominently displayed in the Bombay artwares courts at the 1883 Calcutta
International Exhibition.114 More individually, orders arrived from Jaipur
state, the Rajkot durbar, and local British officials.115
Confident of the firm’s position at the forefront of what he imagined
would be a run on Indian arts,116 de Forest returned to the United States
in the summer of 1882 to build the American market for Indian wood
carvings. Initially, at least, the response was disappointing; although an
early exhibition of his Indian collections held in the early fall of that year
was a success, de Forest failed to arouse much interest among his architect
friends in the carving and stone work.117 Over time, however, he was more
successful. For the next twenty years, de Forest worked steadily to expand
sales of AWCC work, taking over the American side of the business himself
after the dissolution of the Associated Artists in November of 1882 and
eventually designing his own house in New York City as a demonstration
of all that could be done with Indian carvings (see fig. 3.7). These efforts
paid off in terms of articles celebrating his work in major design magazines
and commissions for interiors—complete with carved paneling, furniture,
and all the fittings—for prominent clients across the country, including
Andrew Carnegie, Bryn Mawr College, and Marshall Field’s of Chicago.118
Those commissions, combined with demand generated by prize-
winning pieces sent to international exhibitions in London, Antwerp,
Chicago, and elsewhere, kept the AWCC busy through the 1890s.119 After
Muggunbhai Hutheesing died in 1889, his three sons took over the busi-
ness without disruption; when de Forest returned to India for a second
trip in December 1892 he found the workshop operating smoothly with
some 100 men at work.120 By the turn of the century, however, business
had begun to decline, with stocks piling up unused in New York. Around
the same time, de Forest began to shift his attention away from Indian
work. Anxious to devote more time to painting, de Forest eventually sold
Figure 3.7 Lockwood de Forest home, East 10th Street, New York City, early
twentieth century
Source: de Forest, Indian Domestic Architecture, plate XX. Courtesy of the Anne and Jerome Fisher Fine
Arts Library, University of Pennsylvania Libraries.
his share of the AWCC to Tiffany Studios in the fall of 1907 in the hopes
that they would be able to build markets back up again. He was, however,
disappointed, writing later, “Though I had turned over to them a com-
plete organization which I had been able to manage with the greatest ease,
they did not understand how to use it to advantage.”121 Tiffany Studios
apparently tried to change not only the workshop’s products, but also the
business relationship with the Hutheesings, further disrupting produc-
tion. By 1911 Purushottambhai Hutheesing was regularly asking de Forest
to intercede with Tiffany over issues ranging from the commission he col-
lected to wages, fees for shipping, and the thickness of wood needed for
intricate pierced work.122
The problem was not just that the nature of the partnership was now
in doubt. Input prices had increased significantly by 1911; compared
to the early 1880s, prices for good quality teak wood had climbed by
60 percent or more while wages for good carpenters had increased from
Rs. –.12.6 a day to between Rs. 1.2 and Rs. 1.8. Nor was it always possible
to even find labor at those prices; Purushottambhai Hutheesing wrote

in 1911 that, despite his best efforts: “I want today more than a dozen
carpenters. . . . I don’t mean to say there is scarcity of crude labour but
the cultured labour is dearer and scarce as well.”123 On the demand side,
new aesthetic trends in the United States pushed exotic Indian work out
of fashion. Assessing the decline in carving work some years later, de
Forest admitted, “Perhaps even I could not have succeeded in arousing a
greater interest in Indian carving [than Tiffany Studios had done] with
the adverse influence of the Architects towards the French art of the
Louis period, and the late renaissance.”124 In any case, troubled by an
unsympathetic American partner, saddled with higher costs, and faced
with shrinking markets, the AWCC soon closed down; by the time de
Forest made his last collecting visit to India in 1913–1914, the work-
shops had essentially ceased operations, with only a few men at work.
Whatever its ultimate failings, the AWCC was hailed by crafts enthu-
siasts as a resounding success in its early years. Commercial yet based in
traditional aesthetics, centralized under efficient management yet artistically
individualistic, producing at the highest quality yet able to employ up to a
hundred artisans at a time, the firm provided a totally different model for
preserving and revitalizing crafts. Unlike art schools, exhibitions, museums,
and publications, de Forest did not try to tell others what to do; instead he
just went ahead and did it himself, putting his ideas into direct, successful
action. And others recognized that. As early as 1884, John Griffiths gave the
AWCC full responsibility for reviving fine wood carving in a city where the
craft had almost died out; by the early 1890s, the workshops had become one
of the required stops for European travelers to Ahmedabad.125 For his part,
de Forest claimed that the AWCC did more to “encourage and preserve real
art,” than the “the so called schools of Art,” which, by introducing European
methods, were “in most cases doing everything to destroy it.”126 What made
the AWCC’s furniture “real art” to de Forest were the methods used to pro-
duce it. He did not impose traditional decoration but respected and fostered
the creative abilities of his workers—in the process operating according to
the idea of crafts difference as defined through both product and process.
Financial autonomy: Cooperatives and the individual artisan
Compared to de Forest’s self-conscious attempt to revive crafts by chan-

neling artisanal creativity through careful commercial structures, the
final preservation effort in crafts—cooperatives—appears not to be
preservationist at all. When they began in the early 1900s, cooperatives

resolutely looked forward to a utopian future; rejecting exploitative con-
trol by merchants and middlemen, artisans would band together to forge
harmonious, egalitarian relationships of mutual assistance; suppress-
ing individualistic strivings for personal profit, fellow craftsmen would
pool resources to ensure an adequate livelihood for everyone; shedding
the shackles of the present, workers would march together into a bet-
ter future. Nor did cooperatives appear to set much store in individual
creativity or autonomy; instead the objective was to ease poverty through
economic collaboration. As the 1915 Government of India Committee
on Co-operation in India declared, “The chief object of co-operation in
India was to deal with the stagnation of the poorer classes;” specifically,
the basic principle was that “an isolated and powerless individual can by
association with others and by moral development and mutual support
obtain in his own degree the material advantages available to wealthy or
powerful persons, and thereby develop himself to the fullest extent of his
natural abilities.”127
Underneath the revolutionary rhetoric, however, the movement also
looked backwards, not to utopian futures in which individuality had
disappeared into anonymous collectivity but to idealized pasts in which
artisans worked separately, controlling the pace and outcome of their own
work. Counterintuitively, one of the primary objectives of the coopera-
tive movement was to restore individual independence, rescuing artisans
from new cycles of debt and dependence—a development which, as E. M.
Edwardes described for silk, had cast weavers “from the pedestal of inde-
pendence at the feet of the capitalist trader. . . . The grandson of him that
paid others to assist him is but the labourer hired by the merchant to toil
from morn till eve.”128 This transition was real. Although pockets of pros-
perity existed within almost every craft, economic historians have noted
a general loss of artisanal independence in this period.129 As of 1909, for
instance, P. N. Mehta reported that only 30 percent of handloom weavers
in western India had any degree of independence in their craft; approxi-
mately 50 percent were indebted to the degree that the work on their
looms was pledged until the repayment of that debt, while the remaining
20 percent were so financially compromised that they no longer even
owned their own looms but wove as paid labor for others.130
Cooperatives fought against this trend. In place of external domi-
nation they promised to restore productive independence, allowing
individual artisans to once more control what they made and to whom
they sold their goods. Cooperatives did not, it should be noted, pro-
mote absolute independence with craftsmen struggling in isolation
against competitive markets; that would have doomed artisans to fail-

ure. According to the director of industries for the United Provinces V.
N. Mehta it was that isolation—or what he called “the individualistic
method of production”—that was the “main cause of evil” in handloom
weaving. Using yarn spun within the household, warping each piece
separately at home in short lengths suitable to only a single piece of fabric,
finishing poorly, and relying on “inefficient and wasteful” marketing with
“the manufacturer losing a whole day on the bazaar day to dispose of
one or two pieces of cloth”—these were the things destroying artisanal
viability.131 In place of such individualism, Mehta and others proposed
structured, communitarian independence, with each artisan producing
separately while relying on the support of his (and all cooperatives in this
era focused on men) fellow workers. Writing in 1921, Alfred Chatterton
declared that the “present amorphous state of the community of hand-
loom weavers” demanded more structure including “some sub-division
of labour” in preparatory stages and marketing. For, “to do his best
the hand-loom weaver cannot work alone.”132 By pooling information,
artisans could create their own direct connections to distant consumers,
thereby becoming independent of moneylender-merchants who controlled
markets. By pooling money, artisans could invest in more efficient tech-
nologies that were priced out of reach of individual producers. Thus, Mehta
suggested that handloom weavers set up central processing depots for each
cooperative with beaming machinery to produce warps of standard lengths
and widths, and facilities to calendar and finish cloth.133
Chatterton and Mehta wanted to protect artisans’ economic autonomy,
freeing them from the clutches of moneylenders. Both agreed, though, on
the simultaneous need to preserve social autonomy, keeping artisans in
charge of production rather than combining them as wage labor into cen-
tralized factories. Thus, just as emphatically as he demanded subdivision
of labor, Chatterton imposed strict limits on change: “We do not want
to turn the hand-loom weaver into a machinist or make him a unit in a
complex organization of the modern factory type.”134 Others shared those
views. In a 1918 article in the government-published Bombay Co-operative
Quarterly, K. R. Kulkarni laid out a series of steps that could be taken to help
crafts compete with mill production. Like Chatterton, though, he insisted
that the goal was both to retain “the intellectual and imaginative forces in
life which go with the existence of skilled craftsmen and small workshops”
and to preserve “a large class of craftsmen from sinking to the level of
‘coolies’ and wage-earners.”135
Cooperative advocates emphasized the evils of factory production
in which workers, forced to do deadening work in unsafe conditions
during the day, returned to crowded, unhygienic homes at night. While

such evils were obviously not unique to India, many argued that Indians
were particularly ill-suited for such conditions. The past president
of the International Cooperative Alliance H. G. Wolff spoke to com-
mon assumptions when he posed the question in 1919 “to anyone who
knows India, whether the Indian appears at all cut out for the wholesale
monotonous and wearying mill-work, in more or less close and shut up,
unhealthy rooms, at a steady grind, away from his house and little field.”136
Echoing Wolff, P. G. Shah noted physical differences that made factory
work problematic in India: “The tropical climate of this country makes
strenuous exertion in factories a heavy strain on the ill-fed physique of the
labourer, and leaves him open to dangers and diseases in the slums, which
are already reported to be worse than those in European countries.” But
he also noted sociocultural factors that made artisanal production prefer-
able. Citing “the unwillingness with which a born potter or weaver leaves
his ancestral employment and village to join a factory,” Shah declared that
“there is no doubt that he would be infinitely more happy in his ancestral
environments . . . than in the slums of factory life.” Part of that happiness
he ascribed to a particularly Indian “attachment to ancestral home”; more
significant, though, “is the love of freedom, and the dislike of the disci-
pline and of the regular hours of factory life.”137
In the end, Shah declared that “the central idea” of cooperative
organizing to be “the emancipation of the workman from the blighting
monotony of factory life.” To do that, work had to be done on a small
scale “so that the workman produces more or less a complete thing
and is able to bring his individuality to bear upon his work.”138 On the
face of it, this goal seems incompatible with the beaming machines and
finishing depots Mehta recommended that rendered production more
centralized, standardized, and factory-like. And yet, on closer exami-
nation, they were indeed compatible. Cooperatives carefully targeted
services at particular stages of production and particular sections of
the artisanal population in order to balance the competing demands of
combination and independence. Within production, that meant mech-
anizing or centralizing only preparatory and finishing processes, while
leaving the actual creation of specific products in individual hands.
Thus in weaving, the transformation of yarn into cloth was the preserve
of individual weavers while everything done to the yarn before it got to
the loom (spinning thread, beaming and sizing warps) or after it left the
loom (calendaring, finishing, marketing) could be done cooperatively.
Within the overall population, cooperatives tried to represent only inde-
pendent producers, excluding wage laborers on the one hand and large
workshop owners employing other artisans on the other; explaining the

policy, the Government of Bombay’s annual report on cooperatives in
1915 argued that big workshop owners were men “to whose interest it is
to keep their caste fellows in economic bondage.”139
With the exclusion of such men, cooperatives promised to bring artisans
of similar economic standing together in equality and harmony, increasing
productivity without succumbing to the evils of factory production. Just
as importantly, they promised to do so in a way that made sense to Indian
values and culture. Indeed, many argued that cooperatives were a natural fit
with India, both in terms of the basic principles of shared work and mutual
aid operating in villages, but also in terms of the larger traditions of caste
associations and artisanal guilds. Wolff, for one, saw India as an excellent
field for cooperative organizing, since “there is undoubtedly a natural bent
towards Co-operation in the Indian character. Hindoo and Mahomedan
alike show a distinct predisposition for collection action.”140 Bipin Pal agreed,
arguing that Indian society was rooted in the principles of “association not
isolation; cooperation, not competition; . . . duty and not right.”141
Cooperative activists had the opportunity to put their principles into

action in India in 1904 with the passage of the Cooperative Societies Act
allowing the official registration of societies. At the beginning, artisans
were only a peripheral concern; inspired by mounting concerns about
farming debts, the initial focus was on agriculture. Even as the move-
ment gained momentum in the 1910s and 1920s that emphasis remained,
with the overwhelming majority of cooperatives across the subcontinent
representing farmers. As of 1917, for instance, only 180 out of the 1,225
registered societies active in the Bombay Presidency were nonagricultural;
of that 180, only 29 were artisanal cooperatives.142
Despite that emphasis on agriculture, cooperative enthusiasts across
India quickly recognized the benefits of extending the movement to
artisans. Initial efforts focused on handloom weaving, with weavers’
cooperatives starting as early as 1906 in the Madras Presidency, United
Provinces, Central Provinces, and Mysore State.143 As the second larg-
est sector of employment in the country after agriculture—and as an
industry marked by worker poverty, uncertain markets, particularly
extractive middlemen, and growing competition from all sides—weaving
was an obvious choice; as the Registrar for Co-operatives in the Bombay
Presidency put it in 1915, “There is no class of men in this Presidency for
whom co-operation can do more than for the weavers.”144 Compared to
other parts of the country, however, the Bombay Presidency developed
artisanal cooperatives relatively slowly. In 1907 the first two weavers’
cooperatives of the region opened in Ratnagiri district;145 in 1912 the

number rose to ten while by 1919 there was a total of thirty-three repre-
senting some 2,300 members around the presidency, with another nineteen
societies in the Baroda State.146
As the number of cooperatives grew, services expanded as well. Virtually
all artisanal groups started as credit agencies, offering members low-cost
loans to cover the purchase of raw materials, new appliances, or other
productive inputs. This alone did many things: it saved artisans money
since they were not forced to pay the extortionate interest rates charged
by local moneylenders; it freed artisans to seek out the best prices for their
finished goods, since they were not tied through debt to sell their products
to local merchants; and it allowed artisans to invest in new technologies.
As cooperatives grew more established, a few began to purchase raw
materials at wholesale prices for members, lowering input prices dramati-
cally; by 1919, nineteen of the thirty-three registered societies offered this
service.147 Some began to purchase preparatory equipment like warping
and winding machines in weaving for shared use, giving members access
to efficient but expensive equipment that radically decreased production
time. Some also arranged to sell work in a cooperative store so that mem-
bers would not be forced to hawk their wares individually in saturated
local markets or to turn them over to local dealers at reduced prices; by
1919 seven of the thirty-three societies offered marketing facilities.148
Most of the early artisanal cooperatives in the Bombay Presidency
represented weavers. While these societies faced regular crises brought on
by leadership upheavals, sudden changes in input prices, or the onset of
drought or famine that destroyed the buying power of their rural consum-
ers, they seem to have been somewhat more successful than cooperatives
in other crafts. Government cooperative officials considered leather, for
instance, a promising field for cooperative development; thanks in part
to official confidence perhaps as many as twenty leatherworkers’ societies
were founded between 1908 and 1911.149 Yet by 1913, all but three had
folded, frustrating R. W. Ewbank, the registrar of cooperatives for the
Bombay Presidency, so much that he was willing to write off the possibil-
ity of any future development among leather workers at all. As he saw it:
“There is no doubt that Chambhars150 are too ignorant and too factious
to manage Co-operative Societies without constant help and supervision
from outside. If this cannot be obtained the societies must be gradually
wound up.”151 Other crafts did not even experience the modest level of
cooperative growth enjoyed—even if only briefly—by leatherworkers.
Indeed, as of 1919, weaving was the only craft represented by officially
recognized cooperative bodies in the Bombay Presidency.
Whether in weaving or leather, the immediate goal of cooperative

organization was to restore artisans’ independence, freeing them from
the clutches of middlemen, while simultaneously protecting them from
factory-like alienation of labor. And yet that independence was elusive
and expensive. Particularly in their early stages, cooperatives could only
replace some of the functions of local sowkars.152 Credit societies limited
loans to productive purchases only, which kept members dependent on
moneylenders for marriages, funerals, and other expenses; those that
provided raw materials or sold finished goods could rarely match the
supplies and expertise of established dealers. Membership in cooperatives,
then, often threatened vitally important access to money, materials, and
markets. This made association with cooperatives not only unappealing
but downright dangerous. In Dharwar town, one weaving cooperative
initially had trouble attracting members; weavers there were afraid that if
the local moneylender heard they had purchased yarn through the society
rather than from his shop, he would call in all outstanding debts, result-
ing in financial ruin.153 Although the Dharwar cooperative did eventually
succeed, an attempt to provide yarn at reduced prices in another town in
the same district fared more poorly, since members remained dependent
on local sowkars for sales; according to W. T. Pomfret, the acting principal
of the VJTI, “Merchants of the place knowing that sarees made . . . were
the product of the Society’s yarn refused to buy from the weavers till such
time as the weavers had no money: and as the latter were unable to sell
elsewhere, they had eventually to sell at a loss to the former.”154
Even when artisans did want to form cooperatives, they did not always
have the skills necessary for successful operations. In weaving, again,
observers regularly noted that organizing the purchase of the diverse
colors and qualities of yarn required by members weaving various kinds
of cloth proved difficult for many cooperatives, since it required intimate
knowledge of the distant, often highly unstable wholesale yarn markets
in Bombay.155 Sales were even more daunting; disposing of cloth that
varied in quality according to the skills of member weavers, either in
local markets controlled by often hostile merchants or in more distant
centers, demanded organizational, marketing, and accounting skills well
beyond the capabilities of many societies.156 And that was in good years.
In periods of economic uncertainty the challenges posed by fluctuating
prices, demands by members for cash advances on goods prepared, and
shaky consumer demand proved well nigh insurmountable. In 1919, for
instance, the very successful Dharwar Union of ten weavers’ cooperatives
found itself suddenly saddled with a debt of Rs. 50,000, thanks to an
ill-fated combination of unexpectedly high yarn prices on the one hand
and the onset of both influenza and famine that destroyed local markets
on the other. Anxious to support its members during that difficult time,
the union cooperatives continued to give cash advances against finished
cloth, thereby precipitating the financial crisis that was only solved by an
emergency grant from the provincial government.157
The artisanal independence from merchant-moneylenders that coop-

eratives tried to achieve was, then, almost impossible to achieve in
practice. Markets were too complex and economic relationships too
intertwined for artisans to become totally self-reliant. If the promise to
deliver independence was flawed in execution, it was also flawed in its
very premise. Cooperatives offered freedom from moneylenders while
simultaneously tying members into new forms of dependence to the
society itself; organizers tried to replace the exploitative relationships
of colonial capitalism with what they argued were the more natural,
Indian ties of community, cooperation, and mutual aid. As Douglas
Haynes notes, a society’s financial success relied on members producing
for the cooperative even when they could earn more elsewhere, whether
temporarily during busy seasons or more permanently when they could
expand their business by adding looms and hiring labor. Loyalty to the
cooperative precluded some of the most important survival strategies
artisans had: adjusting production, switching markets, and seeking out
new outlets as a way to weather changing market conditions. By demand-
ing that weavers give up that flexibility, Haynes argues that cooperatives
threatened to undermine the defense mechanisms that were critical to
basic economic survival.158 The autonomy offered by cooperatives was
thus defined in opposition, not just to financial exploitation by outsid-
ers but to individualistic striving by members. Building as they did off
idealized models of harmonious communities pitching in for common
purposes—models supposedly rooted in India’s particularly noncompeti-
tive, cooperative ethos—cooperatives represented a particular affirmation
of the lost world of traditional production.
Change in the Name of Tradition
Preservation efforts of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century

focused on two key issues: traditional design and artisanal autonomy. On
both fronts, activists looked to the past for models of proper artisanal
practices. Visually, art officials hoped to restore earlier design integrity,
purging foreign elements in the decorative arts by educating artisans
and consumers into the active support of India’s own design traditions.
Socially, AWCC managers and cooperative organizers tried to return con-
trol to artisans, fostering artistic and economic autonomy within larger
organizational structures inspired by traditions of royal patronage and

village mutual aid. Although primarily directed at artisans, these were
broadly inclusive efforts that gave producers and consumers, rich and
poor, rural and urban alike a role to play in the restoration of Indian
crafts. Crafts here were a public concern, important not just for individual
artisanal prosperity or personal consumer comfort, but for national econ-
omy and culture. Reformers argued that the solution to the problems of
the present lay within India’s own heritage, if only that heritage was prop-
erly understood. Thus, art schools, museums, exhibitions, publications,
workshops, and cooperatives looked to India’s distinctive craft heritage for
lessons on how to forge a path for development.
Or at least they did up to a point. It is important to recognize that these
efforts were also essentially innovative. Whatever their claims to preserva-
tion, none aimed to return artisans to past products or practices whole-
sale, but instead tried to advance change. The caveat was that that change
could not threaten the core aspects of artisanal difference: ornamentation
or artisanal autonomy. The most obvious innovations were visual. Most
basically, all preservation efforts encouraged new forms. In 1894–1895
for instance, the Reay Workshops produced a silver address casket, spirit
measures, salt cellars, copper plates, a large copper vase, an octagonal
wooden table, and an ebony and ivory carved tablet on which an address
to the governor of Bombay was engraved; all represented novel forms,
but were covered with Indian ornament.159 The Technical Art Series and
the JIAI similarly promoted new products: clocks echoing the shape of a
carved mihrab, tablecloths embellished with embroidery patterns used on
phulkari shawls, writing desks covered with pinjra designs. The AWCC
operated in the same vein, applying carvings copied from a temple door-
way to a fireplace mantle or translating the form of a mosque window
into the back of a bench. Aside from novel forms, all these products reveal
innovation in the very definition of Indian ornament. By applying design
elements from one media to another (a stone mihrab reinterpreted into
silver), one region to another (a Lahore balcony copied in Ahmedabad),
and from one time to another (ancient cave-temple paintings reformu-
lated as decoration on modern vases), preservationists design efforts
worked to forge a broader definition of national design.
More fundamental still, though, were innovations in control over
production. All preservation efforts operated on a shared assumption
that artisans needed external supervision. As noted earlier, Griffiths
promised that mistris in the Reay Workshops would have complete
control over their work, “beyond the insistence that the work executed
shall be of the best, and that the ornamentation shall be, as far as it is
possible for it to be in this age when art is cosmopolitan, Indian.”160

That was a crucial caveat, in that at the JJ and other art schools British
teachers assumed responsibility for keeping students to Indian styles of
ornamentation. British officials did not trust the mistris; since even the
most accomplished traditional workman tended to stray into foreign
styles, Griffiths argued the necessity of maintaining the “most vigilant
watch over them; otherwise they are sure to go wrong and turn out some
most atrocious work.”161
At the AWCC, similarly, for all de Forest’s claims to be restoring cre-
ative autonomy to artisans, he maintained clear and exclusive control over
products, supervising styles even when overseas via a complex system of
sketches, cabled orders, and personal letters. AWCC products provide
visual demonstration of this control. Within his house in New York City,
for instance, de Forest had a dining room mantelpiece copied from the
doorway of a Jain temple, a sideboard of teak with perforated copper pan-
els copied from an old royal cabinet, and a large window framed with open
work arches and perforated screens copied from a balcony in Lahore.162
All had been prepared according to inspiration de Forest had found
across north India, none of which would have been directly accessible to
his woodworkers in Ahmedabad. Within such pieces, woodworkers had
the freedom to invent new patterns within certain sections, but de Forest
dictated how those elements fit together into a form of his own devis-
ing. Artisans, in other words, were autonomous within only very narrow
limits; otherwise they remained almost entirely dependent on the firm for
direction and employment. That dependence becomes particularly clear
in a story recorded in a 1961 survey of wood carving in Gujarat:
It is said that it [the firm of Messrs Hutheesing Brothers] fell into bad
days as there was no demand for carved articles. The proprietor, anxious
to maintain his faithful workers, asked them to go on preparing one inch
cubes perfect in every respect. Curious to know what the master did with
them, one of the workers spied him feeding them into his hooka. When this
was known by other artisans, they became careless and their cubes were no
longer perfect. The owner, noticing this, regretfully discharged the workers
saying that their faithlessness was the cause of their downfall.163
Whether true or not, the story attributes the firm’s success to AWCC
management; without a clear sense of the firm’s purpose, artisans became
sloppy in their work, bringing on dismissal due to their own faithlessness.
This hardly was a picture of artisanal autonomy; instead artisans relied on
their managers for basic direction, incapable of maintaining their skills or
jobs on their own behalf.
Even cooperatives, which were set up with the specific purpose of

empowering artisans, remained ambivalent about turning over actual
power to the artisans themselves. Government organizers promised that
societies would be self-governing, and yet subjected them to oversight far
more stringent than that exercised over commercial firms. Whereas with
joint stock companies the government could only request information
be made public, with cooperatives, as H. Clayton a former registrar of
cooperative societies in Burma noted in 1920, “The Registrar is placed in
a sort of paternal position in regard to every society. He defines the terms
on which alone it comes into existence, he has the power to keep himself
fully informed of its working, and he has the full discretion to bring its
existence to an end, if he thinks such a course desirable.” Clayton defended
that enhanced power over cooperatives, arguing it made sense “when the
class of persons for whom the Co-operative Societies’ Act is intended
is realized”—i.e., artisans, agriculturalists, and other people of limited
means, all of whom had limited education. According to Clayton, only
when that class had really imbibed the true principles of the movement
and built up their own skills could government supervision decrease and
cooperatives become more truly autonomous.164 That members might
never be judged capable was an obvious threat; indeed, a 1958 study
found that government officials often essentially ran cooperatives, dictat-
ing terms rather than allowing members to manage their own affairs.165
In other words, external government oversight remained a fundamental,
accepted part of cooperative organizing.
Within craft preservation efforts, then, leadership rested in the hands
of outsiders: European art experts, American designers, government
cooperative officials. In all cases preservation did not allow leadership
to artisans themselves, but instead presumed artisans to be incapable of
extricating themselves from the problems of the moment. If preservation
efforts were not all that they claimed to be, however, their very novelty
remains remarkable. As suggested in Chapter 2, as late as the middle of
the nineteenth century Indian economic reformers imagined a natural
progression from artisanal to modern factory production, with the latter
promising new efficiency and productivity that would rescue India from
poverty and backwardness. It was only by the end of the century that
preservationists turned their backs firmly on mechanized industrializa-
tion, insisting instead on the key markers separating crafts from modern
industry: artisanal autonomy and indigenous design. The novelty of pres-
ervation efforts, therefore, relied on the attendant novelty of the idea of
artisanal difference—an idea with enormous productive power.
4
Modernizing Artisanship:
Rationalization, Efficiency, and
the Cult of the Craftsman
I n 1889, writing at the height of the preservationist efforts discussed in

Chapter 3—with the Lahore and Jaipur exhibitions less than seven years
before, the Journal of Indian Arts and Industries in its second volume, the
Technical Art Series only three years old, and the Reay Workshops to open
the following year—the Gujarati poet Dhirajrai issued a plea for industrial
regeneration in India in the pages of the Buddhiprakash:
O Natives, now take pride in your own Nation, get together

Encourage the native ways and fill up the nation with your crafts and skills.
You have become powerless and your home is burnt down, you are
making great efforts to stay afloat;
But if you do not discover new strategies, you are surely done for.
Using the key of chemistry, discover new machines,
Go abroad, visit America, England, China, bring forth all their skills.
Says Dhirajrai, embrace swadeshi, remove your superstition and other faults.1
Compared with preservationists, Dhirajarai offered a very different sum-

mary of the issues facing India’s crafts. The problem with current produc-
tion, in his mind, was not frenetic change but powerlessness and passivity;
superstition, shame, and helplessness had combined to burn down the
house of Indian manufactures. Dhirajrai also offered a radically different
solution: not to look inward to India’s traditional past but to turn outward
to Western science and modernity. Only by encouraging native ways and
introducing foreign industrial technologies would the nation stay afloat;
only with new, forward-looking strategies would India be able to remove
its faults.
This call for technical change was echoed a few years later in an 1893
article in the Journal of the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha. Using prose rather
than verse the journal laid out the problem in the following terms: “The
real standing of a country in the scale of civilization is thus increased by
the practical pursuits of its people, the number and magnitude of their
callings, their industries, their enterprise, their skill, their ambition and
their performances and by the extent to which they employ natural forces
as aids to production.” Since competitive progress among nations was
revealed in “the superiority enjoyed by one nation over another in the
arts and reproductive industries of the world,” it was vital that India learn
to adopt new technologies. Looking to the West, “we see how those that
keep abreast of the times and work with perseverance in profitable occu-
pations on modern methods are able to live well and enjoy a high scale of
comfort.” Within India, however, “we notice that the great majority of our
people are barely able to make both ends meet and that some millions of
them live on the very verge of existence.” The explanation for this differ-
ence was not hard to find: “It may be prejudice, it may be ignorance, or
want of opportunities, but, certain it is that they continue to follow dis-
credited methods of industry and occupation too slow for the age.” What
did the future then hold? Catastrophe, if things continued much longer:
“The times have changed and if our working classes will not adopt mod-
ern methods of work and rapid ways of production they must inevitably
be crowded out of all profitable occupations.”2
The modernizing imperative laid out by Dhirajrai and the Poona
Sarvajaik Sabha represent the second major strain of crafts development
efforts in India, operating in ideological opposition to the preservation
efforts described in Chapter 3. Concerned about the slow development of
modern industry in India, many activists were frustrated by preservation-
ist approaches. To them, mimicking ancient ways of working only per-
petuated India’s backwardness, preventing Indians from taking advantage
of the proven achievements of efficiency, productivity, and profitability
demonstrated by modern industrialization. Insisting on visual difference,
meanwhile, limited Indian production to decorative luxuries, which did
little to nothing to balance India’s growing trade deficit. In both cases,
modernizers insisted on two key points: first, that the primary challenges
facing crafts were economic rather than social or aesthetic, and second,
that the solutions lay in the modern industrial West rather than ancient
artistic India. Thus in 1908 Hemendra Prasad Ghose expressed only
qualified gratitude to “enthusiastic European lovers of Indian art” for their
efforts “to see in all Indian products the stamp of a solid national style—
a style penetrating and unifying all the products of the country.” Those
MODERNIZING ARTISANSHIP 151
Europeans, he argued, had missed the point. “With their eyes fixed not on
economic questions but on artistic considerations,” they had concentrated
on traditionally designed luxuries for the rich or artistic independence
for individual craftsmen. In doing so they had “sadly ignored” the needs
of the masses whom Ghose labeled “the great patrons of the industries of
a nation.”3 Distracted by art, Europeans ignored economics; anxious to
preserve national style, they neglected the modern technologies that could
have brought greater profits to producers and lower prices to consum-
ers. The industrial chemist and president of the Poona City Municipality
Dorabji Pudomjee shared Ghose’s emphasis on economics over art and
technical change over social continuity. In 1902 he argued:
In my humble opinion the regeneration of India depends more on the

establishment and support of large factories that can turn to use the vast
mineral and vegetable resources of the country and that can employ work-
people by the thousand, than on the revival of ancient trades such as hand
weaving of carpets, shawls, silks, silver and gold chasing and enamelling,
ivory carving, lacquer work, damascene work, artistic pottery and metal-
ware, marble inlaid work, &c., trades which certainly deserve every encour-
agement that a benign Government can give, but which are calculated to
help units and not the nation.4
In place of a backward-looking preservationist approach, men like

Ghose and Pudomjee set out to modernize artisanal production. Starting
from the view that all of the things that separated crafts from modern
industry were problems to be solved rather than assets to be protected,
these activists tried to erase difference, making crafts more like modern
industry. If artisans were sloppy and devious in their habits, carefully
structured schools would discipline them into precise efficiency; if arti-
sans were conservative and archaic in their methods, scientific-minded
elites would offer structured technological interventions to modernize
production. This investment in change reveals a fundamentally different
view of India’s economic and social future than what underlay preserva-
tionism. Rejecting the inevitability and desirability of India’s difference,
efforts to discipline labor and introduce new technologies declared India
part of the modernizing world, firmly ascending the global ladder of civi-
lization that, as Michael Adas has argued, was seen as graded according to
technological sophistication.5
Modernizing efforts had two main goals: to improve labor and mod-
ernize technology. In terms of labor the 1880s and 1890s were seen to be
a period of crisis. One crucial element of this crisis was the shortage of
skilled labor, with not enough workers capable of filling new consumer
needs suitable to a modernizing society. Officials in Sind, for instance,

complained that there were not enough accomplished carpenters or
smiths there to make furniture, build government structures, or supply
the hardware required by the local population.6 Factory owners, for their
part, worried over the lack of skilled hands for their cotton-spinning and
weaving mills; not only did that slow down production, but it forced
owners to pay high wages to the few trained operatives they did have, just
to keep the latter from taking their knowledge elsewhere.7 But alongside
such complaints about the lack of skilled workers came fears about the
underemployment of large sections of the population. In rural areas
high taxes, uncertain prices, mounting debts, population growth, and the
subdivision of land into unsustainable fragments all combined to push
farmers off their land; even those with land to work found themselves idle
during the long dry season if they lacked irrigation.8 In urban centers the
educated middle class was an even more pressing concern, as more and
more graduates of government schools found themselves unemployed,
unable to find office positions and unwilling to accept lower-status
employment.9 Together these employment problems laid the foundation
for political unrest as frustrated youths turned to radical parties for solu-
tions. They also stymied national growth, since, as the Buddhiprakash
argued in 1877, “the country which is full of idlers and beggars can never
make progress.”10
Along with the need for more and better labor came the associated
imperative to improve the work that that labor did. European visitors
to international exhibitions had long remarked on the archaic nature
of Indian artisanal tools; the surveys and studies of crafts in the late
nineteenth century only confirmed this fact, laying out in clear detail the
imprecise, inefficient traditional methods used to produce a variety of
goods. Reformers saw large sections of the productive population work-
ing far below their potential, leaving individuals in poverty and consign-
ing the nation to backwardness in terms of both internal self-sufficiency
and international competitiveness. By introducing better technologies,
reformers hoped, in the words of T. K. Gajjar, the founding principal of
the Kala Bhavan in Baroda, “to rescue our small industries and make them
with the help of modern science a source of prosperity to our country.”11
Indeed, to many, as Gyan Prakash has argued, modern technology offered
the magic solution to India’s many problems by promising to resolve
social inequities, generate productivity, and generally advance India into
the modern age.12
These dual modernizing projects—to improve labor on the one hand
and technologies on the other—represented a shared project on the part
of Indian and British elites. Free of the orientalist emphasis on India’s

timeless, communalistic traditional past that marked preservation efforts,
public attempts at labor and technical reform attracted much greater
participation from Indian elites. Nationalist critics and government offi-
cials alike agreed that one basic way to make the Indian economy more
productive was by stirring conservative and backward artisans into greater
discipline and efficiency. The shared nature of this agenda within colonial
society is particularly striking given the often sharp differences between
Indian and British priorities in other aspects of industrial modernization.
Nationalists of the day saw the British as either apathetic or downright
hostile to both advanced technical training and modern industrial devel-
opment in India.13 Scholars have echoed those views, closely tracking
heroic Indian struggles to advance the cause of advanced technical and
scientific training or to launch modern factories in steel, cotton, and other
core industries in the face of subtle or overt British resistance.14 There
has been, by contrast, little attention to the substantial overlap between
Indian and British ideas about lower-level industrial education or techni-
cal improvements for artisans. Not subject to the often bitter racial divi-
sion of debates over elite technical education, public discussions and plans
generally featured significant agreement on the need to modernize and
rationalize lower-class artisans. In terms of education, British and Indian
elites offered joint support to schools designed to create a disciplined,
productive workforce out of unruly, unpredictable lower-class artisans—
schools that, like the other parts of the education system, reinforced rather
than erased hierarchies within colonial society.15 In terms of technol-
ogy, British and Indian elites invested shared energy in using science to
devise solutions to the problems of artisanal production—with scientific
methods and principles carefully defined as the intellectual property of
Westernized intellectuals alone.
In this chapter, I focus on the central elements of this joint project to
modernize crafts: industrial schools, which set out to reform labor, and
technical experiments, which set out to transform processes. Both tried to
remove key stumbling blocks in the way of more efficient, rational produc-
tion. Through careful instruction into basic geometry, proper techniques,
and simple accounting, uneducated artisanal boys would become models
of disciplined labor, capable of producing to meet modern consumer
needs; modeled on state-sponsored efforts in Germany and Japan, where
modernized workforces had enabled rapid industrial growth, such schools
promised to revolutionize production. Through detailed scientific analysis
of available materials and tools, archaic looms, kilns, and dye stuffs would
finally give way to up-to-date technologies capable of standardized results
and large-scale production; applying the technical principles underly-

ing European industry to the problems of Indian crafts, experiments
promised to bring customary practices in line with modern approaches.
Even while trying to render crafts more like modern industry, however,
modernizing efforts often worked to preserve the essential difference of
crafts. Thus, schools that tried to discipline labor limited students to hand
tools and promoted individualized work, thereby separating artisans from
factory conditions; at the same time, efforts to develop new technologies
shied away from mechanizing or centralizing production.
Improving Labor: Industrial Schools and the

Modern Culture of Hand Work
The first institutional efforts to create new labor skills in western India
began in the 1850s via industrial education. One such attempt was the
Bombay School of Industry, which was founded at the private initiative of
Dr. George Buist in the early 1850s to promote “the spread of mechani-
cal improvements, and extension and improvement of mechanical skill,
throughout India.” Later renamed the David Sassoon Industrial and
Reformatory Institution, the school also sought “the laudable object of
the reformation of the many juvenile delinquents annually arrested by
the Police, the encouragement of apprenticeship amongst the working
classes, and the introduction of better implements than are common in
India.”16 To accomplish these varied ends, apprentices were given limited
classroom instruction alongside extensive workshop training in carpentry,
metalwork, molding, wood turning, and tailoring in the hope that they
would be able to find work and avoid lives of crime.17
As the nineteenth century progressed, the Sassoon School updated its
instruction to keep up with the changing job prospects of Bombay city,
introducing courses in carriage building and painting in the 1870s and
printing and power loom weaving for modern mills in the 1890s.18 It
did so through a combination of private and state funds and private and
official leadership. On the private financial side, the eminent Parsi phi-
lanthropist and civic leader Jugganath Sunkerseth provided land for the
school, the Hindu banker Mungaldas Nathoobhoy gave an early donation
of Rs. 17,000, and the prominent Jewish merchant family the Sassoons
contributed more than Rs. 30,000 to endow the school.19 The government,
for its part, paid the salary of an engineer assigned to supervise instruc-
tion and then, from 1857 onward, also paid a small sum to the school for
every student per month in recognition of the amount saved to the state
by not keeping the boys in jail.20 In terms of leadership, when the school
was reorganized under the Sassoon name in 1857, its managing commit-
tee consisted of members of the Sassoon family, local Indian leaders like
Sunkerseth, as well as government officials from the police, education and
general departments.21
The Sassoon School differed from other industrial schools in the vol-
ume of financial support it received from both private and public sources,
as well as in the specific association with the police in the treatment of
juvenile delinquents. Most other industrial schools operated on far less
lavish funds and offered instruction on a voluntary basis. On other levels,
however, the school shared much with other institutions of the time. In
terms of sponsorship, industrial schools represented diverse actors, rang-
ing from missionary groups to local municipalities, philanthropic individ-
uals, princely states, and industrial reform groups. In terms of instruction,
most industrial schools offered a mixture of classroom and workshop
training, emphasizing the latter both to provide hands-on, practical
instruction and to keep boys in manual rather than clerical trades. Finally,
in terms of goals, schools aimed at a variety of industrial objectives. Most
sought to improve the level of skills within existing industries, usually
focusing on teaching improved methods in carpentry and blacksmithing;
others tried to train new labor, introducing boys to crafts then in demand
in colonial society.
Industrial schools emerged at the same time as—and often operated
in close communication with—the art schools discussed in Chapter 3.
Some schools like Kala Bhavan in Baroda even straddled the line divid-
ing the two, offering courses in basic carpentry as well as fine arts, button
manufacture as well as decorative silverwork. Like art schools, industrial
schools tried to use education to rationalize artisanal production, subject-
ing hereditary practice to detailed oversight by trained outsiders. Both
also tried to teach abstract, scientific laws—whether geometry and physics
or proportion and perspective—to artisans seen as unable to comprehend
the principles underlying their daily work. And finally, all relied on gov-
ernment aid and oversight; even if not always run directly by government,
most schools accepted some government assistance, which brought with it
annual inspections by officials from the education department.
For all those similarities, though, industrial schools also departed signifi-
cantly from the model of art instruction. For one, they taught very different
crafts: utilitarian carpentry, blacksmithing, and weaving rather than deco-
rative carving, embroidery, or silver work. For another, they emphasized
techniques, not designs; what mattered at a local industrial school was not
the ornamental style on a desk, but the quality of its joints, the efficiency
by which the parts were prepared, and the degree of precision achieved in
execution. Still further, they operated from different attitudes about Indian
skills; whereas industrial schools emerged out of frustration with the failures
of local artisans—failures to learn new crafts or to do good-quality work in
existing crafts—art schools assumed that skills were excellent, or at least had
been so in the past and so just needed help to return to former standards.
On the basis of these differing attitudes, industrial and art schools took dif-
ferent approaches to tradition. By the 1880s art schools did all they could
to revive traditional design, documenting, disseminating, and popularizing
indigenous styles to help them survive in the face of Westernization. By
contrast, industrial schools did all they could to disrupt existing skills, intro-
ducing entirely new industries and reformulating existing ones to create
efficient production suited to a modernizing society.
Industrial schools were like art schools, however, in perpetuating crafts
difference. Even as they tried to render artisanal practices more efficient
or introduce improved techniques, industrial schools held onto key
elements separating crafts from modern industry. As critics remarked,
schools rarely addressed the needs of modern industry. That mismatch
was visible in the skills and subjects taught. Hand carpentry, blacksmith-
ing, handloom weaving, and book binding did little to prepare laborers to
work the new machinery of large weaving or spinning factories or news-
paper presses. But the insistence on crafts difference was also visible in the
comprehensive nature of the curriculum that aimed to create independent
artisans capable of retail work for individual clients, rather than special-
ized, segmented labor for large production houses.
One of the many industrial schools that opened in the latter part of
the nineteenth century was the Dharwar School of Industry. Opened in
1873, the school operated until 1883, when a new railroad workshop in
the town took over the task of preparing skilled labor.22 Typical for the
Bombay Presidency in terms of size, longevity, and the type of instruction
it offered, the Dharwar School is a useful example of a small industrial
school that shared the dual objectives, outlined above, of improving labor
and building industries. Located in a small district headquarters in the
southern part of the presidency, the school perhaps had more limited
access to markets and materials than others located in larger cities and
towns. But, like its counterparts among other early schools that opened
in Ratnagiri in 1863, Surat in 1865, Poona and Pandharpur in 1878, Sirur
and Bombay in 1879, and Dhulia in 1880, it struggled with common
issues of attracting and retaining students, finding outlets for their work,
and maintaining its long-term viability in the face of official scrutiny.
Thus, while the particular expression of such problems may be specific to
Dharwar, the school helps illustrate the promises and limitations of early
industrial education more generally.23
Boys at the Dharwar School spent half their time in the classroom
learning reading, writing, and simple arithmetic, and half in the work-
shop developing specific skills in carpentry and blacksmithing as well as
more general principles of efficiency, accuracy, precision, and diligence.
Once formally enrolled, boys moved through a sequence of progressively
more difficult levels of work with the expectation that the complete
course would take five years. In the first standard, students were expected
to be able to plane and square a piece of wood; by the third standard, they
were to have mastered the construction of simple door frames, doors, and
desk boxes and the basics of iron work; meanwhile by the fifth and final
standard, they were to be able to do any carpentry work assigned to them
and to fit up a small working model steam engine.24 As they advanced
through the standards, boys were subject to regular examination; success
on exams determined the level of stipend a student was entitled to, rang-
ing from Rs. 1 a month in the first standard up through Rs. 6 a month to
those who had passed the fourth standard.25
The choice of wood and metal at the Dharwar School reflected very
particular local labor needs; when it opened in 1873, the school was
meant to train skilled workers for a local saw-gin factory. In continuing
the training in those two areas after the quick demise of the factory, how-
ever, the school responded to a more general sense of optimism in those
crafts. Markets for both were expanding in the late nineteenth century
as consumers demanded more furniture, new styles of buildings, gates
and railings, and mechanical equipment. Market growth in turn brought
increased earnings; virtually all the 1880s series gazetteers across western
India echoed the findings for Ahmedabad district in 1879 that “carpenters
and blacksmiths are better off than before.”26 Although this encouraged
artisans from a variety of crafts to take up carpentry and metalwork,
demand for skilled labor in both crafts continued to exceed supply down
to the turn of the century.27 In a period of expanding demand, the school
promised to train existing carpenters and smiths to new styles; during a
period of occupational mobility the school offered to help new artisans
make the transition to wood and metal skills.
Or at least that was the theory. For all its lofty aspirations, the school
faced troubles almost from the start. One key issue was financial. Initially,
the school hoped to be economically self-sufficient, with sales of student
work underwriting instruction. And, in fact, it did show significant early
sales; by late 1879 the school had sold a total of Rs. 14,613 worth of goods,
including carts, saw gins, railings, doors, and boxes.28 But while cumulative
totals appeared rosy, annual sales had been declining steadily from 1875, with
work done for the government alone shrinking from Rs. 5,309 for 1876–77
to Rs. 3,958 for 1877–78, and Rs. 1,940 for 1878–79.29 One explanation for
that failure was the mismatch between the simplicity of student skills and
the complexity of consumer demands. While many students started the
course, few stayed through the entire program; the majority of students
were, therefore, left clumped in the lower standards with only basic abilities
totally inadequate for complicated commissions. As the Southern Division’s
superintendent engineer, Col. J. R. Mansell, put it, “There is almost no work
which can be entrusted to the school proper—that is to the apprentices. .
. . When he [H. W. Lewis, the school superintendent] gets a job he calls in
adult labour from the outside market.”30 Forced by low student skills to rely
on expensive labor hired from the bazaar, the school never came close to its
goal of self-sufficiency, but instead remained dependent on funds from the
local municipality and the Education Department.
Other problems emerged in recruitment and retention. One of the
school’s basic objectives was to improve skills available locally by replac-
ing informal, home-based, on-the-job learning with a fixed curriculum,
graded instruction, and yearly examinations. In keeping with that goal,
officials hoped that the school would primarily teach boys from artisanal
castes, interrupting existing training, which, they argued, had failed to
impart high standards. Unfortunately, few artisans seemed interested.
As of 1879, Lewis reported that only five out of 36 boys then enrolled
were officially of artisan or carpenter castes; the rest he described as East
Indians, Rajputs, Lingayats, Chitragars (or painters), Hindus of other
castes, and Muslims.31 Nor did this caste composition change much in
the next few years; in 1881 there were only seven artisans among the 38
boys enrolled.32 Although school officials attributed this low turnout to
conservatism, artisans had real reasons to stay away. Practically, instruc-
tion at home produced similar results but at much lower costs, with
boys contributing to family income far earlier than if they had to rely on
school stipends.33 Morally, Nita Kumar has pointed out that traditional
apprenticeships taught young artisans not only how to produce goods but
also how to work in accordance with the religious and moral precepts of
the community; given that cultural message, colonial education systems
represented a threat to a community’s ability to socialize its youth into the
ideals and skills of a particular profession.34
The boys who did enroll rarely stayed in school for long. Most—whether
artisan or otherwise—attended classes infrequently or dropped out entirely
after only one or two years.35 Some left as soon as they acquired enough
literacy skills to apply for low-level clerkships. Others moved on when they
achieved a basic competency in their craft, finding that they could earn
more elsewhere.36 K. M. Chatfield, the director of public instruction for
the Bombay Presidency, made this early departure a sign of success, argu-
ing that boys leaving for more remunerative employment in the bazaar
was “so far satisfactory as it shows that the school instruction enables boys
to earn money at a trade.”37 But Chatfield and others remained disap-
pointed that students did not stay in school and constantly experimented
with different strategies to improve retention, including fines for early
departure but also incentives like higher stipends and profit sharing for
those who did persist into higher standards.38
As suggested above, the Dharwar School was fairly typical of its era.
Other industrial schools that opened in the 1870s and 1880s in cities
like Poona, Bombay, Surat, and Ahmedabad or in smaller towns like
Pandharpur, Ratnagiri, Vaso, Patan, and Sirur similarly offered a graded,
structured curriculum, focused instruction in wood and metal, and tar-
geted boys from artisan castes. Those other schools also shared many of
the problems Dharwar faced, including financial instability, difficulty
recruiting artisanal students, and trouble retaining boys into the most
senior classes.39 Observers of the time were all too well aware of those
failings. Some of the harshest criticisms came from within the govern-
ment. Asked by the Viceroy Lord Dufferin to prepare a memorandum on
the condition and prospects of industrial education in India, the Home
Department secretary to the government of India A. P. MacDonnell
summed up the state of the field in July 1886 thus:
the so-called Industrial Schools, modelled upon no considered plan, . . .

never rise above mere workshops for the production of inferior articles at
extravagant cost. For all purposes of practical training they are useless; and
it is no exaggeration to say that of the 45 Industrial Schools which now exist
in India, hardly one serves any true educational purpose.40
Almost twenty years later, things had not improved. Writing in a January
1904 resolution on education policy, H. H. Risley, MacDonnell’s successor
as Home Department secretary to the government of India, presented his
own list of complaints, including that
industrial schools in India have been wanting in definiteness both of meth-

ods and objects, . . . that they have been insufficiently coordinated with
particular local industries or trades, and that the impression produced by
them either upon industrial development or upon industrial education has
been relatively small.41
As proof of those policy problems, Risley noted that schools had failed to
train better artisans:
A large proportion of the pupils who attend them have no intention of

practising the trade they learn, but pass into clerical and other employ-
ments, using the industrial schools merely in order to obtain the general
education which they could acquire in ordinary schools at less cost to the
State, but at greater cost to themselves. Even for those who do intend to
follow the trades taught in the industrial schools, it is feared that in some
cases the teaching given does not provide a training of a sufficiently high
standard to enable them to hold their own with artisans who have learnt
their craft in the bazaar.42
Swept up in what became a torrent of criticism about the state of

education in India from the 1890s on,43 industrial education came in for
sharp attack by nationalist-minded Indians. But whereas MacDonnell and
Risley explained its failures in terms of poor planning and lack of coor-
dination, nationalists in particular argued that the problem lay in a much
more serious absence of political will. In November 1898, Poona’s Kesari
newspaper lambasted the government for its poor record on industrial
education by arguing that it had “never gone an inch beyond boasting of
its noble intentions to do this and to do that.” If Japan could manage to
teach industrial subjects so thoroughly in thirty years, the paper asked,
why could the Indian government not manage to do anything “beyond
producing a few sapless graduates, when it has had every facility at its
command and very good material in the intellect of the Hindus”?44 This
reference to Japan is telling. Many looked overseas for examples of how
a systematic, well-funded program of industrial education could propel
industrial modernization. At the 1908 Indian Industrial Conference in
Madras, for instance, the conference president R. N. Mudholkar argued
that the recent rapid industrial transformation of America and Germany
was “due to the cultivation of the natural sciences and their application to
industrial purposes,” made possible by extensive scientific and technical
education. If a similar industrialization had failed to take off in India, he
reasoned, it was due to the state’s failure to provide adequate education
for industry.45
The example of successful efforts overseas provided one reason to hang
onto the principle of industrial education in India even if the current
practice of it was flawed. Another reason was the high price of inaction.
Crafts represented much of the 95 percent of industrial employment
that was located outside officially recognized factories46; without some
change crafts would continue to lose ground to factory imports, thereby
dooming India’s economy to further decline. On their own, artisans

seemed unable to effect the necessary changes; industrial schools thus
represented one way to intervene in the hope of bringing artisanal prac-
tices into line with modern needs. That sense of pressing need sparked
a major expansion in the number of industrial schools in the late nine-
teenth and early twentieth centuries. As with the earlier era of industrial
education, most of these new schools closed down within two or three
years of opening, usually because of the combined financial burden of
providing both student stipends and working materials for instruction.
Still, the numbers of schools and students did grow; whereas in 1885–86
there were only seven industrial schools, with 755 students in the whole
of the Bombay Presidency and Sind, by 1890 there were 28 schools, serv-
ing 1300 students, and in 1902 the number of schools had risen to 32.47
Further expansion came in the 1900s; as of 1939 the presidency boasted
32 officially recognized industrial schools for boys teaching things like
carpentry, metalwork, leatherwork, bookbinding, tailoring, and hand-
loom weaving; another 30 institutions offered courses for girls in lace
making, needlework, and other skills.48
Even as the overall scale of industrial education expanded, activ-
ists worked to reform its content. One of the most sustained efforts at
reform came in 1901 thanks to the particular interest of then Viceroy
Lord Curzon. In April of that year E. C. Buck, the secretary to the
government of India in the Revenue and Agricultural Department,
completed a six-month official survey of the progress made toward
industrial and technical education across India.49 Then in September,
Curzon himself assembled an educational conference at Simla of all
the provincial directors of public instruction to recommend changes
in educational policy, with a particular focus on industrial educa-
tion based on the information provided in Buck’s report.50 This then
prompted the appointment of another commission of four experts led
by Lieutenant-Colonel J. Clibborn, the principal of Thomason Civil
Engineering College at Roorkee, to consult with interested parties across
India about how best to implement the recommendations of the Simla
conference.51 Not only did all of this activity mark a radical expansion
in the level of government attention to the question of industrial edu-
cation, it also represented a new attempt to coordinate activities across
India. By carefully gathering testimony from across the subcontinent
on existing practices and ideas for future development, the hope was
to craft a common system that could reshape all schools in all parts of
India—part of Curzon’s larger drive to introducing efficiency across his
administration.52
This push to rethink industrial education generated few concrete sug-

gestions for how to run individual schools. Competing parties found little
common ground on issues such as the length of instruction, age of stu-
dents at admission, scale of student stipends, or relationship to markets.
The government itself was divided on what to do, rejecting in 1904 the
suggestions of its own Clibborn commission, which proposed moving
students out of formal schools and into apprenticeships in government-
supervised workshops.53 Perhaps one of the few points of real agreement
was about what was to be left out of artisanal education: serious literary
instruction. Industrial schools were to improve efficiency in production,
teach better use of tools, impose more rigorous quality standards, and
impart a sense of time discipline—all of which contributed to national
productivity; they were to do nothing that might encourage boys to leave
their crafts. As Curzon explained in his speech opening the 1901 Simla
conference, if the goal was to turn a boy into a skilled craftsman, “as it
obviously must be, then you must give him an education neither too high
nor too low to qualify him for an artisan. If it is too high you make him
discontented with manual labour; if it is too low he becomes a useless
workman.”54 This objective became official policy in 1904 when the gov-
ernment of India delineated two primary goals for industrial education:
“(1) of keeping up and developing a boy’s inherited manual skill, and (2)
of giving him a general education which will enlarge his prospects as a
craftsman while preventing him from falling into the clerical groove.”55
In accord with such directives, schools generally offered no instruction in
English and indeed only provided training in rudimentary reading and
writing in the vernacular for fear of providing artisans boys with the skills
to compete for clerical jobs.56
Other grounds of consensus did emerge regarding key principles of
industrial education, most particularly the need for greater consistency in
curricula and instructional methods. Within the Bombay Presidency these
objectives prompted the Education Department in 1902 to introduce new
uniform levels of study and common examinations for all government-
aided industrial schools and to institute a common training class for
drawing teachers from across the region.57 In 1908 the department went
a step farther and instituted a program at the College of Science, Poona,
to train teachers for industrial schools; the five main subjects taught were
the familiar woodworking (including carpentry and cabinet making),
metalwork (including ornamental wrought iron and cast iron), and draw-
ing, with the addition of instruction in teaching techniques and—perhaps
optimistically—in tending and testing oil engines, steam engines, and
boilers.58
More broadly, the attempt to reform industrial education prompted

many in the field to explain their work in new ways. In the 1870s and
1880s industrial schools had promised to solve local product shortages:
not enough good furniture in Dharwar or poor-quality railings in Surat.
Such promises opened schools up to predictable criticism if, despite their
services, it was still difficult to get a decent cabinet or gate made. Whether
to protect schools from such obvious complaints or to widen the prom-
ised impact beyond local consumers to the national economy as a whole,
industrial educators in the early twentieth century increasingly changed
their arguments for industrial education. Instead of providing particu-
lar craft skills, educators now claimed to address general labor failures,
namely the inability of Indian artisans in any craft to work carefully and
efficiently. Defining the need for industrial education before the 1905
Banaras industrial conference, R. N. Mudholkar pointed to those general
benefits:
The working-man and the artisan whose brain has been developed, whose
eye has been trained, and whose hand has acquired deftness by the proper
kind of general education and who has grasped more or less the principles
of the craft which he follows, the tools which he handles, and the materi-
als he works upon, is a far more efficient workman than he who has only
received the traditional training in the practice of his profession without
any general or scientific education.59
This shift in objective did not actually change the methods of indus-
trial education. Schools continued to teach carpentry and smithy work;
they just defended that choice differently. Wood- and metalwork were
now valuable less for preparing carpenters and smiths than as manual
training suitable for any kind of artisanal work. Thus A. W. Thomson,
professor of engineering at the Poona College of Science and inspector
of technical education for the Bombay Presidency, argued in 1902 that
carpentry “was one of the very best subjects to teach a boy who was later
on to become an artisan of any sort; a boy with even a small amount of
ordinary education learning carpentry could, with the acquisition of this
knowledge, manage any trade that he was put to.” Indeed, in his testimony
to the Clibborn commission, Thomson suggested that carpentry “ought
to be the preliminary education for all trades,” noting that it was taught at
schools in India “because they wanted to turn out good carpenters and to
improve trades generally.”60 How, exactly, were carpentry and smithy work
supposed to improve trades generally? By, as Alfred Chatterton put it,
helping “to educate the hand and eye, to form habits of observation, judg-
ment and accuracy, to cultivate the sense of proportion, to make the pupil
ready, resourceful and self-reliant.”61 According to these arguments, all

artisans stood to benefit from training in judgment and accuracy whether
or not they continued to work in wood and metal; lessons in planning
projects, interpreting drawings, measuring components, executing cuts or
joints cleanly, or finishing surfaces all taught basic working principles that
then could be applied to any other craft.
Attempts to train artisans to higher skill levels and more efficient prac-
tices were, at their core, attempts to discipline labor. Indeed, industrial
schools fit snugly into wider imperial projects to discipline the native
body whether through education, medicine, sport, the army, or jails.62
They also fit within larger global projects to control and render produc-
tive the lower classes more generally, including efforts within Britain
to train its own artisans to proper corporeal habits within hierarchical
workshops.63 Those wider contexts directly informed E. C. Buck’s 1901
report for Curzon, which quoted approvingly from an earlier British study
of industrial education in Ireland. First and most importantly, “manual
instruction aids in the development of the moral qualities, such as accu-
racy, industry, perseverance, etc.”; beyond that, it “had been recognized by
medical authorities as having a beneficial effect on general mental devel-
opment,” “stimulates the intelligence of the pupils,” and “develops the
constructive faculty.”64 Without manual instruction, artisans presumably
would fail to develop morality, intelligence, or even constructive skills; it
was up to outsiders to step in and lead the way forward, teaching not just
new technologies but the essential culture of work. By disrupting tradi-
tional closed apprenticeship systems with ordered, systematic, structured
instruction, artisans would come to understand the moral value of hard
work and would thus be prepared to serve the needs of modern society.65
As on the school cricket field, where elite boys were to be transformed
into more amenable colonial subjects—“strong yet obedient, energetic
yet docile, individual yet orderly, playful yet useful”—so too in school
workshops artisans learned supposedly unfamiliar ideals of precision,
diligence, exactitude, and efficiency to take up their proper place in the
imperial order as productive, rationalized labor.66 The parallel with cricket
extends another direction as well; both cricket and artisanal education
taught social differentiation as much as imperial purpose. Within the
working classes, industrial schools tried to separate out artisans from non-
artisans. Schools like Dharwar tried to recruit only artisans into wood
and metal classes. Whether or not individual boys were from communi-
ties traditionally involved in these two media was immaterial; operating
on the assumption that manual skills could easily be transferred from
one craft to another, industrial educators actively encouraged artisans to
move between crafts and give up unremunerative traditional occupations

to embrace new skills. While schools aided the movement between crafts,
any attempt to open training to non-artisans brought on sharp rebuke.
Thus, Chatterton complained in 1901 that “there is no justification for any
attempt to induce other classes of the community to seek their livelihood
among the ranks of the already overcrowded industrial classes.”67
Even more worrisome to industrial reformers than movement into
crafts by other manual workers was the fear that artisans might attempt
to leave the ranks of manual labor altogether. Indeed, the more crucial ele-
ment of social differentiation embedded in industrial education was the
insistence on the fundamental divide separating artisans from elites not
involved in manual work. This insistence came in the face of widespread
evidence that artisans were looking to break out of manual work. On the
one hand, boys often attended industrial schools for other than industrial
reasons—that is, to get a literary education at little cost. Boys may have
only been able to get limited vernacular literacy skills at industrial schools,
but they did so while receiving stipends rather than while paying the fees
demanded at other schools. Industrial schools therefore represented a
useful means for poor boys to get the education they needed to get office
jobs and thus advance socially within colonial society. On the other hand,
other artisans tried to get access to literary education more directly. One
group in Bombay even formed something called the called the Deccan
Artisans’ Association in September 1890 to improve the status of artisans
via both religious purification and secular measures, including ensuring
community access to “technical and liberal education.” Started by gold-
smiths, the association soon reached out to other artisan castes, resolving
in 1893 to include on the managing committee one member each from
the blacksmith, carpenter, coppersmith, and mason castes, along with two
goldsmiths. The hope was that, by joining together, the various artisan
groups could better assert themselves in the face of Brahminical domina-
tion.68 As with artisanal and other backward caste associations elsewhere,
Western literary education here offered the means of building respect and
equality, often outside of crafts.69 That the Deccan Artisans’ Association
was interested in non-artisanal advancement is suggested by the fact that
its leaders were all in office jobs, including a clerk in a solicitor’s office, two
men involved with the post office, and the president Bapuji Krishnarao
Trilokya, who was retired on a government pension.70
Putting strict limits on the literary side of artisanal education was a way
to squash such aspirations to social mobility. As R. N. Mudholkar put it to
the Banaras Industrial Conference in 1905, the colonial education system
was a highly stratified one designed not to transform society but “to equip
the different classes of the people with the mental and moral requisites,
the literary culture and the scientific and practical acquirements suited to
their different stations.”71 This stratification underlay new elite access to
advanced technical, engineering, and scientific instruction at Kala Bhavan,
the Victoria Jubilee Technical Institute (VJTI) in Bombay, and the Poona
Engineering College. Requirements for English fluency, extensive course-
work in mathematics and science, and high fees at such institutions all
helped to shut out artisans. In their place, the VJTI and the like targeted
middle- and upper-class boys who might be diverted from higher literary
education and trained to be managers of factories and leaders of India’s
industrial development. Indeed, that elite focus was essential to the success
of these new institutions. As many noted, boys with any pretense to educa-
tion sought government service or office jobs, shunning anything associ-
ated with industrial work; the latter, even if it might pay more, was simply
lower status.72 It was not enough, then, to offer technical education to the
middle classes. Those classes had to be taught to respect industrial pursuits,
to learn, as the head of the Geological Survey of India Sir Thomas Holland
put it in 1905, “that the man with technical dexterity is of more use to the
country than the writer of editorials or the skilful cross-examiner; that
applied science now belongs to the highest caste of learning, and is a wor-
thy field for the best ability we can obtain.”73 One way to reform tastes was
to clearly demarcate different kinds of education appropriate for different
classes. If middle-class students objected to being too closely associated
with lowly artisans, then one solution lay in creating a separate sphere of
education suitable not to hands but to leaders of industry. Technical educa-
tion, in other words, could become a respectable occupation, but only if it
was restricted to respectable men—that is, if artisans were excluded.
If industrial education sought to separate artisans both from other mem-
bers of the working classes and from white-collar workers, it also helped to
reaffirm the separation of crafts from modern industry. In all the attempts
to reform industrial education, there was little real effort to bring it into line
with the needs of modern factories. Despite the rapid expansion of the field
in the 1890s and early 1900s, only one of the new institutions that opened
in that period tried to link artisanal training to modern mills. Thus, the
Ranchhodlal Chhotalal Technical Institute in Ahmedabad, when it opened
in 1909, offered classes in drawing, design, different textile fibers, and the
working and repair of different power looms in the hope that “by means of
such a school the standard of intelligence and efficiency among mill opera-
tives in Ahmedabad will be raised.”74 Apart from that one exception, all the
other new industrial schools taught hand, not machine, skills and aimed at
small artisanal production, not large factories. This orientation toward crafts
is visible in the comprehensive content of instruction. Industrial schools

taught students all stages of production in a given craft, from the preparation
of raw materials through design, simple fabrication, more complex construc-
tion, finishing, and installation. Thus, graduates of the Dharwar School were
expected to be able to construct a piece of furniture from scratch by sketch-
ing the design, determining the amount of materials needed, selecting wood,
shaping joints, sanding components, assembling the pieces, and applying a
final finish. Such training prepared students to operate independently or in
conjunction with a few others; it did not orient students toward highly seg-
mented production with strict specialization to different stages of work.
This orientation toward craft is also visible, however, in the tools used;
schools trained students in the proper use and care of hand tools, expanding
occasionally into some basic machinery (lathes, drills, rollers) suitable for an
individual workshop. When advanced machinery appeared on syllabi, as at
the Dharwar School and in the teacher training program offered at the College
of Science in Poona, it rarely impacted students; reserved for the upper
levels of training, steam engines and boilers were out of reach for the vast
majority of boys who left school after only a few of the lower grades. More
broadly, the skills associated with such equipment were carefully identified
as being related to repair not construction, maintenance not production; in
the larger structure of the imperial economy in which Britain supplied India
with engines, machines, and advanced technology, there was little room for
Indian artisans to master the creation of such valuable imports.
Industrial education, in other words, worked to improve and render
more productive labor within existing structures of social, industrial, and
imperial difference. Limiting literary education helped prevent undue
social mobility by which artisans would compete for clerical jobs; limiting
mechanical training and emphasizing individual self-sufficiency in work
kept artisans in crafts rather than mechanized work. Part of the conserva-
tive social vision inherent in colonial education as a whole, artisanal edu-
cation specifically built on the culture of crafts difference to hold workers
in their jobs with the goal, as Rachel Tolen put it in another context, of
creating a subjected but productive workforce.75
Improving Methods: Handloom Experiments and the

Science of Production
Compared with industrial education, technical improvement took a much

longer time to develop in western India. Until the very end of the nine-
teenth century, efforts were few and far between: experiments to develop
sericulture in the 1830s, attempts to identify clays suitable for modern
pottery in the 1850s, investigations to adapt traditional Sindi pottery to

Western dining or drainage needs in the 1870s.76 Nor was there much
to show for those measures; no perceptual expansion or modernization
resulted in either silk or pottery production. By the 1890s, however,
things had begun to change. Growing publicity around artisanal strug-
gles to survive industrial competition drew attention and resources to
the role improved technologies could play in traditional production. At
the same time public faith in the transformative possibilities of modern
science encouraged activists to look past social impediments to imagine
technical solutions to the problems facing crafts. Responding to these
trends, provincial governments across India in the early 1900s began to
open weaving institutes, dye laboratories, model tanning factories, and
sericultural farms.77 Within the Bombay Presidency, government experts
addressed the needs of pottery, handloom weaving, tanning, sericul-
ture, dyeing, and calico printing.78 The new Department of Commerce
and Industries founded in the Baroda State in 1905 took an even more
aggressive line, adopting as a central charge the need “to conduct indus-
trial experiments and to give demonstrations of successful processes.” In
keeping with this directive, the department engaged experts to investigate
materials, methods, tools, and products in traditional industries such as
oil and soap production, tanning, calico printing and handloom weav-
ing, along with newer industries, including glass, cement, and button
making.79
As in other parts of the subcontinent, in western India the bulk of
practical technical work in crafts focused on handlooms. This attention
emerged out of a series of interrelated social, economic, and political
imperatives. Socially, as we saw in Chapter 2, many praised the superiority
of village-based hand production over the evils of modern urban factory
industry, with leaders like Romesh Chunder Dutt setting the “dignity,
independence, and intelligence” of the individual hand weaver in contrast
to the exploitation and suffering of workers in European mill towns.80
Economically, as the largest sector of employment in India after agri-
culture, handloom weaving was simply too important to ignore. To give
a sense of the scale of the industry, as of 1909 there were some 300,000
weavers in the Bombay Presidency alone, with average annual production
for all of India totaling some 2 million yards of cloth.81 Given the sheer
numbers involved, the survival of the industry was a matter of grave con-
cern. As the government of Bombay declared in 1909, “Among indigenous
industries in Bombay the hand weaving industry stands first in point of
view of the extent of the population supported thereby, [and] the need
for assistance which recent competition from the power industry has
created.”82 Politically, the imperative for handloom survival rested on the

centrality of cloth to emerging critiques of colonial rule. Well before the
famous Swadeshi Movement in Bengal, industrial and political leaders in
western India from the 1870s on used boycotts of foreign cloth and pro-
motion of Indian cloth to protest unwelcome British policies.83 Although
part of the protest was directed against the slow growth of Indian mill
production, much was aimed at the decline of handloom weaving in com-
petition with British imports. For such activists, the fate of Indian hand-
looms stood as a potent sign of the destructive side of colonialism, indeed
the leading example of India’s deindustrialization under British rule.
These various desires for handloom survival took on new material
weight around 1900 because of the growing realization that perhaps han-
dlooms could hold their own against mill cloth. For years, most observ-
ers had assumed that first British and then Indian mills would drive all
handlooms out of the market, thanks to efficiencies of scale and technol-
ogy. Yet by the end of the nineteenth century, handlooms were not only
surviving in some regions and some sectors of the market, but actually
expanding, particularly in the bordered saris and complicated weaves
that could not be easily replicated in mills. And that was with very little
technical improvement in looms or other weaving equipment. As various
inventors began experimenting with improved technologies that could
render weaving faster and more efficient, the future of handloom weaving
seemed even more promising.
Taken together, all those factors contributed to enormous public invest-
ment in reviving handlooms. Indeed, Dutt argued in 1908 that “no object
has been pursued with a greater determination or more sustained endea-
vour by the people of India than the re-establishment of this industry,
which was India’s own in the past and which shall be India’s own again in
the future.”84 That determination was necessary, given the myriad techni-
cal problems preventing handloom efficiency. At first, many assumed that
loom speed was the major impediment to greater handloom productivity.
If only they had faster looms, the argument went, weavers could increase
their output anywhere from 70 percent to two or four times the produc-
tion possible on traditional looms, thereby increasing earnings and rescu-
ing weavers from poverty.85 Everyone soon realized, however, that looms
were only one factor in determining overall weaving speed and economic
viability. Just as important were the quality and preparation of the yarn
used in weaving. A faster weaving action put more stress on the thread;
that posed no problems if the yarn was strong, but if it was weak, weavers
had to stop regularly for repairs, thereby negating the speed advantage of
the new looms. Another barrier to speed was the traditional method of
preparing warps. While a long warp allowed long spurts of continuous

weaving, the common use of short warps meant frequent interruptions
for the time-consuming task of changing warps. As weaving grew faster it
outpaced warp preparation, thereby creating bottlenecks in production as
looms were left idle waiting for new warps.86 Then there was the quality
of the warp preparation itself. When prepared by hand, warp threads often
became tangled or broken, again necessitating frequent stops for repairs.
Finally, yarn sizing presented yet a further barrier to efficiency. Usually
done by hand by the women and children of a weaver’s household, this
was a slow and therefore costly process; a 1911 estimate put the cost of
preparing one pound of yarn by native methods at 300 percent more than
if it was done in a mill.87
Early-twentieth-century activists of all stripes tried to tackle all these
issues. Indeed, Dutt’s comment that it was “the people of India” who led
efforts to revive hand weaving is telling. For, unlike in pottery or dye-
ing, where the government monopolized technical experiments, weaving
improvements were spread out across a wide range of actors, including
missionary groups, provincial government institutes, princely states,
independent industrial activists, and private entrepreneurs. In western
India the government played a particularly minor role; unlike the Madras
and Bengal presidencies, Bombay had no central research institute devoted
to technical investigations in weaving.88 Some experiments on new looms
were conducted by instructors at the VJTI in the 1890s and early 1900s and
by officials at the Bombay Department of Industries in the late 1910s; oth-
erwise most of the activity in the region was conducted by missionaries or
private entrepreneurs. This diversity of agency was possible in part because
of the technical needs of weaving. An inspired tinkerer with no particular
training in science or engineering could hit upon a good solution to a
problem in weaving, and indeed many did so, developing improvements
to looms, sleys, warps, dobbies, and the like. In terms of looms alone, these
improvements resulted in an outpouring of new technologies, so that, by
the early 1900s, weavers could choose among an indigenous loom work-
ing with a fly-shuttle sley, the European fly-shuttle, the Hattersley, Jesop’s
Japanese loom manufactured in India, the Sayaji Cottage, the Salvation
Army Triumph, the Serampore, and the Ahmednagar loom.89
One of the first in western India to try his hand at solving the com-
bined problems of handloom weaving was D. C. Churchill of the American
Marathi Mission.90 Headquartered in western India at Ahmednagar, the
American Mission had long been an enthusiastic advocate of industrial
education, both as an economic means of training Christian converts into
remunerative, respectable occupations and as a moral means of inculcat-

ing discipline, honesty, humility, and resourcefulness into students seen
to be lacking those virtues.91 What launched the move into weaving in
particular was the great famine that struck western India in 1899–1900.
The American Mission was flooded with famine orphans; as of November
1900 more than 2,300 children were under mission care, with fears that
the numbers would increase if famine conditions did not let up soon.92 In
response to the crisis, the mission brought in Churchill to coordinate and
expand its industrial efforts.
A graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in mechanical
engineering, Churchill had no direct experience with or interest in weav-
ing when he arrived in India in late 1901. In considering possible indus-
tries that could be taught to famine orphans in Ahmednagar, however, he
quickly decided that weaving was the only appropriate option:
As raw material is a scarce commodity in this District such materials as

wood and other products of the soil are the determining factors in decid-
ing what industry to undertake; and since cotton is one of the chief of the
products of this region and since everybody, however poor, wears cotton
cloth, and since weaving is the chief indigenous industry outside of farming
in the Ahmednagar district, it seemed wise to undertake the development
of this art as a means of livelihood for those of our Christian community
who were in need of a trade.93
The challenge, as Churchill quickly discovered, was to make handloom

weaving economically viable when existing local weavers earned so little
at their craft. With ready access to raw materials and massive local mar-
kets, the stumbling block seemed to be weaving speeds. For Churchill, the
answer lay in technology: “[I]f we could find a suitable loom which should
be fast and simple enough so that it could be made and kept in order by
Indians, we could make the pursuit of hand weaving a profitable industry
for many of our Christian community and many of the recently acquired
famine orphans.”94 With that goal in mind and with a grant of Rs. 5,000
from the American Mission, Churchill launched a series of experiments
in 1902 to develop just such a loom. By the end of that year he had pro-
duced something capable of weaving coarse cloth at the rate of two or
three times the output of a traditional loom (see fig 4.1). When he tried
to get weavers to use the new loom for market production, however, he
discovered that the faster speeds could not be maintained due to problems
with the warp, “which is good and strong but too tangled to admit of fast
work.”95 He then set to work on new machines capable of creating more
even warps, while also continuing to tinker with his loom design.
Figure 4.1 A weaver working D. C. Churchill’s improved handloom

Source: Hazen, A Century in India, 1913. Courtesy of the Dallas Theological Seminary.
Churchill’s experiments quickly began to attract public attention.

Visiting dignitaries made his weaving workshop part of their district tour
while Churchill himself took his new loom around India, winning prizes
at different weaving competitions, including a gold medal at the Bombay
Agricultural and Industrial Exhibition of 1904 and first place at the All-
India Weaving Competition in Madras in March 1908. That attention was
matched by official support, with an initial grant of Rs. 3,518 from the
Government of Bombay in 1904 “in view of possible help to the weaving
industry at large,” expanding to a five year grant of Rs. 1,000 a month to
support Churchill’s experimental work, starting in 1908.96 Indeed, when
the Government of India called upon the Bombay government to fund
developments in handlooms, the provincial government did not appoint
its own expert but relied on Churchill to conduct experiments on its behalf.
Thanks to his success with the new loom, Churchill became acknowledged
as something of an expert on the handloom industry, advising officials in
Bombay on industrial matters, speaking on handlooms at annual indus-
trial conferences, and even being invited by Curzon to submit a proposal
for how to develop the handloom industry on an all-India basis.97 When
Alfred Chatterton, the industrial expert from Madras, visited Ahmednagar
in 1905, he was so impressed with what he saw that he ordered fifty of
Churchill’s looms for a new weaving factory he was setting up in Salem,
declaring in 1908 that they were the best available in India at the time.98
Churchill’s success, according to Douglas Haynes, lay in a relatively
simple, inexpensive series of attachments he came up with early on that
converted a traditional loom to a modified version of an English fly-
shuttle loom, improving weaving speeds by 50–100 percent.99 The advan-
tages of his inventions were such that Haynes gives Churchill credit for
introducing the fly-shuttle loom—which turned out to be one of the most
important technical innovations in handloom weaving—into western
India. Unfortunately, Churchill himself was not content with the modest
increases in production speeds he could get from his modified fly-shuttle
setup. Rather than concentrate on further adapting his invention to the
needs of local weavers, he developed ever more complicated mechanisms
that could increase weaving speeds still further. Ignoring the realities of
what it would be like to work or repair his loom in Indian workshops
using local mechanical skills and short staple Indian cotton, he continued
his attempts to come up with the perfect handloom and related machinery.
What he came up with was technically sound but economically impracti-
cal. Haynes estimates that the total cost of the Churchill loom was about
Rs. 200 in the 1910s, which was about eight times as expensive as a simple,
modified fly-shuttle loom; with the related supplementary machinery for
warping and winding yarn, the total cost came to about Rs. 800, which was
more expensive than a used powerloom.100
As Churchill’s inventions grew both more complex and less useful, gov-
ernment enthusiasm waned. Churchill’s grant was suspended in 1912 for
a year, and then funds were cut off for good in 1917. Indeed, by the early
1910s, government officials seem to have fixed on the simple fly-shuttle
loom as the most appropriate solution to basic local handloom weav-
ing needs. Attention therefore shifted to either preparatory equipment
or more complicated looms capable of fine weaves and fancy borders.
Thus, in 1911 teachers at the VJTI in Bombay returned to the problem
of machines for warping and sizing, something that they continued to
work on throughout the 1910s; like Churchill, these men focused on
developing machinery that could service many weavers, thereby assuming

some centralization at least for preparatory processes.101 For their part,
both Bombay government weaving demonstrator S. V. Wagh and weaving
teachers in Baroda State spent much of the later war years trying to perfect
a double fly-shuttle loom capable of producing bordered saris.102
These other experiments did not have much more success than did
Churchill. Indeed, for all the wide range of new looms and preparatory
equipment that emerged in the first two decades of the twentieth century,
very few of them made it into regular use. One key problem was price.
Churchill’s loom may have been a particularly extreme example, but most
others also remained far more expensive than traditional looms. When in
1904 the director of industries for the Baroda State Rao Patel announced
a prize for a new, faster loom that cost less than Rs. 20, he found no
competitors, aside from one designed by his own department.103 Another
issue was that many of the new looms were difficult to work, because they
either were too heavy or demanded too much attention from weavers.
Then there was the question of repairs; the more complicated the new
equipment became, the more difficult it was to find anyone locally who
could keep it in working order. Finally, as was suggested by the new tack
taken by experiments in the 1910s, most of the new equipment was only
suitable for weaving plain cloth in a single color. As of 1908, for instance,
Churchill’s much-touted new loom could only produce coarse, plain
cloth; Churchill never did successfully adapt the loom to produce the
elaborately bordered saris that represented the most profitable part of
the handloom market.104 As of the mid-1910s fly-shuttle looms could still
only weave quickly when doing one color; if two colors were desired, the
weaver had to switch shuttles by hand which slowed things down signifi-
cantly.105 As P. N. Mehta noted in his government-sponsored study of the
handloom industry in 1909, there was, in the end, no single loom which
met the needs of the majority of weavers in the Bombay Presidency; in his
mind it made more sense to make better use of existing technologies than
to endlessly invent new ones with limited utility.106
Government and private reformers had already set out to do just that
by 1909, pairing efforts to develop new technologies with attempts to pop-
ularize their use. By the turn of the century a range of new technologies
were available to handloom weavers, including new sleys, looms, dobbies,
warping mills and creels, weft winders, and machines for beaming and
sizing, all of which promised to improve output. Innovations in looms
in the early 1900s alone promised to increase weaving rates between
two and seven times—figures that, even if not entirely accurate, led to
enormous popular interest in spreading new equipment. Noting that “an

English handloom can do the work of four of our looms,” for instance,
Durgashankar P. Raval argued in 1911 that “the first priority therefore
is to introduce these improved looms to our workers in every home and
every village.”107 The problem was that, on their own, weavers did not
seem to be embracing these new implements. As suggested in Chapter 2
there were a range of structural reasons why this might have been the case,
including fears that merchants would monopolize new earnings. Most
reformers, however, assumed that weavers simply did not know about or
understand the new technologies. It was here that outsiders had to step
in; if weavers could not or would not innovate on their own, they should
be encouraged to do so by others. Members of the first Indian Industrial
Conference held in Banaras in 1905 thus passed a resolution calling for
“the establishment of weaving schools, where boys may learn the use of
such looms, with a view to their more extended use among the town and
villages of all Provinces in India.”108
To pave the way for such schools, early-twentieth-century instructors
first toured new technologies through weaving communities via short-
term traveling demonstrations. Throughout both the Bombay Presidency
and nearby princely states like Baroda, expert weavers circulated from
one handloom center to another visiting master weavers, demonstrating
new equipment, and encouraging local artisans to experiment with it. In
some cases demonstrators would make several trips, staying each time
for a period of a few days; in others, they would remain anywhere from
one to six months in a particular community, moving on either in the
face of weaver apathy or once the new technologies were well established.
In 1913–1914, for instance, Baroda State demonstrators mostly worked
in the town of Pattan and surrounding villages where they were able to
introduce 30 improved handlooms; in the Bombay Presidency in the same
year, demonstrators traveled much more widely, visiting Hubli, Belgaum,
Taminkatti, Appin-Betgeri, Ranibennur, Borsad, Ahmedabad, Parola,
Erandol, and Pathardi, with mixed success.109
Since demonstration parties were temporary, they could not help
artisans with all stages of the transition to new implements. As one study
of Punjabi efforts to improve handloom weaving concluded: “A traveling
exhibition can remain in one place only for a few weeks. A weaver who
has purchased an improved machine finds that he cannot at once turn
out as much as on his old loom; he has not the patience to persevere for
a few weeks, and, seeing his daily earnings dwindling, he throws aside the
new loom and returns to the old.”110 The solution arrived at in western
India was to use demonstration parties to pique weaver interest in new
technologies; only once it was clear that there was sufficient enthusi-
asm would the government open a more permanent weaving class that
demanded daily attendance from students for a fixed term of instruction.
As the director of the Bombay Co-operative Department put it, weaving
schools “are intended to consolidate and extend the ground gained by
demonstrations in the most promising centres.”111
Like demonstration parties, weaving schools aimed to popularize new
technologies among practicing weavers, most prominently the fly-shuttle
loom. By providing each set of students with thorough training in the use
and maintenance of improved looms, the schools hoped that graduates
would both adopt the looms themselves and then encourage others in
their communities to do likewise. More broadly, weaving schools served
as a conduit for introducing into small weaving centers a broad range
of innovations developed at the VJTI and elsewhere. If the first weaving
schools established in the early 1900s focused almost exclusively on teach-
ing simple weaving of plain cloth on the fly-shuttle loom, by 1917 the
seven schools operating in the Bombay Presidency had branched out in
several directions: first, they now taught more complicated fabrics, includ-
ing twill, towel, and sheet weaves as well as bordered dhotis and cotton
and silk saris; second, they now introduced additional implements like
iron dobbies and English healds, reeds and shuttles; third and finally, they
took on the task of teaching local carpenters to make the improved looms
and accessories.112 Those innovations made it out into weaving schools
via weaving instructors who were kept up to date through training at the
VJTI and through on-site visits by the senior government weaving assis-
tant.113 In 1912, for instance, the VJTI launched a series of experiments in
warping and sizing; by early 1914 more than half the weaving schools in
the presidency had introduced the resultant new warping and beaming
machines into their curricula.114
Although it is not clear if it was ever put into use in precisely this
form, a sample syllabus issued in 1925 by the Government of Madras
suggests how ambitious weaving classes had become by the 1920s. Much
of the proposed course focused on teaching a broad range of weaving
techniques and technologies, including how to create everything from
plain to oxford, twill, satin, double sateens, honeycomb, and canvas cloth,
how to work pit, frame, Salvation Army, and Hattersley looms, and how
to manage the mechanics of treadle and dobby weaving. Other sections of
the course, however, focused on preparation for weaving, including how
to test different kinds of yarn, how to calculate yarns, healds and reeds
for different weaves, and how to size, wind, and warp thread. And, finally,
some sections addressed design and equipment, including how to create
patterns for fabrics, how to draw plans for weaving appliances, and how
build and repair wooden weaving equipment. In all of these areas, new
technologies were prominent: looms, treadles, dobbies, healds, warping
machines, construction materials, and drawing instruments.115
Weaving schools were never large, usually training somewhere between
six and seventeen students at a time; the less popular ones often closed
quickly for lack of students.116 According to government accounts, how-
ever, many were able to achieve the most sought after marker of success:
obsolescence. In their annual reports, officials celebrated being able to
close schools in areas that thoroughly adopted new technologies. Thus,
the 1916 report on Bombay’s co-operative societies noted with pride
that, after successfully introducing more than 800 fly-shuttle looms with
English healds and iron dobbies in the town of Malegaon, the local weav-
ing school was transferred to Bhiwandi, “on the ground that it had taught
the former centre all that it has to teach.”117 Others followed a similar tra-
jectory, operating in a town for four to six years until the new implements
were well established and then moving onto fresh pastures.
Part of the appeal of weaving schools was that, unlike industrial schools
which sought—and generally failed—to expand and discipline labor,
handloom instruction had the much more practical and tangible goal of
spreading more efficient equipment. Indeed, efforts to develop and popu-
larize new technologies in handloom weaving appeared to answer many
of the criticisms leveled at general industrial education. Clearly oriented
toward existing industry, there was no question of a mismatch between
official aims and artisanal needs; exclusively focused on practicing artisans,
there was no fear that energies would be wasted on those aiming at cleri-
cal employment; offering concrete improvements in existing technologies
rather than a vague sense of work discipline, progress was easy to quan-
tify. Together, handloom experiments and weaving instruction offered a
compelling package, combining technical improvements addressed to the
needs of the industry with direct application to practicing artisans.
And yet, neither experiments nor classes secured the desired result
of sweeping changes in handloom efficiency and productivity. As noted
earlier, handloom experiments had a troubled record since many of the
resulting looms were poorly suited to local needs; the most glaring failure
was that new looms could not manage the bordered saris and dhotis in
which handlooms were most competitive against mill cloth. One reason
for that poor record was the great social and experiential gulf that existed
between the men conducting the experiments and the people who would
put their inventions into practice. Surveying the many people involved in
developing new handloom technologies in 1908, Chatterton found that

few were trained weavers or had particular inventive skills.118 As one of
the few who possessed the latter, Churchill might have been expected to
be more successful in pushing forward new technologies. But Churchill
got so caught up in his own experiments that he lost sight of their util-
ity. Nor did he seem to have any contact with local weavers in or around
Ahmednagar who might have been able to point out the flaws in his
ideas. Churchill was not alone in this failing. In a 1917 book detailing
industrial development in the Punjab, A. P. Badenoch issued a scathing
critique of teachers at the Salvation Army Weaving School in Ludhiana:
It must be admitted that they have absolutely failed to get into touch with
the Punjabi weaver. They have not consistently applied themselves to
his problems; though situated in Ludhiana they have not systematically
experimented on improved looms, with the finer counts the Ludhiana
weaver uses, and hence there is an absolute lack of combination between
the two.119
With little attention to the tools and equipments and thus the needs of
existing weavers, it is perhaps not surprising that technical experiments
yielded such limited results.
Weaving demonstrations and schools had similarly checkered careers.
Official reports based their claims to success on the spread of new looms
and equipment among weavers; from virtually no fly-shuttle looms in the
presidency as of 1910 there were 800 in use in Malegaon by 1916, 650 in
Dhulia by 1919, etc.120 But, as N. M. Joshi noted in 1936, those achieve-
ments lagged far behind those of other parts of India; compared to the
hundreds of new looms (along with some improved sizing machines and
beam-warping machines) introduced in the Bombay Presidency under
government promotional efforts, the Central Provinces managed to con-
vince weavers to adopt some 25,000 new fly-shuttle looms between 1915–
1929.121 Along with overstating the significance of their efforts, officials
often ascribed responsibility for change to the wrong sources. In his
1918–1919 annual report for the Government of Bombay’s Department
of Industries, director R. D. Bell admitted as much, noting that most of
the success of new weaving technologies was due to cooperative organiz-
ers than to weaving instructors.122 More broadly, as Douglas Haynes and
Tirthankar Roy have both pointed out, innovative artisans did far more
than any government officials to promote new technologies; by bearing
all of the social and financial risks as well as concretely demonstrating
the potential profits of change, such artisans made it possible for others
to follow far more effectively than mere classroom instruction could ever
do.123 Examples of just that effect can be read out of official reports. The
Baroda administrative report for 1924–1925, for instance, celebrated the
quick closure of a new weaving course established in Dabhel; although
weavers there only adopted ten new looms during the first cycle of the
course, by the end of the year all weavers had switched over to the new
looms. Given limited enrollment and the tendency to attract younger men
rather than established community leaders, it is likely that the school itself
was only one part of the larger story of the transition to new technologies,
with much of the initiative located among weavers themselves.
Another impediment to success in both developing better implements

and then popularizing them among weavers was a shared insistence on
crafts difference. From the technical side, men like D. C. Churchill were
obsessed with improving handloom speed and output, designing all kinds
of complicated mechanisms and attachments in order to make the indi-
vidual weaver more efficient with less effort. And yet they did not extend
their experiments to replacing human power with mechanical power, even
though applying a small engine to a simpler loom would have achieved
similar productivity at lower cost. Or, to give another example, handloom
courts set up as part of the Indian Industrial Conference’s industrial exhi-
bitions featured weavers from different schools and institutions around
the country displaying new looms and other preparatory equipment, with
competitions held in 1906 and again in 1908 to rank the latest equipment
by speed, output, ease of manipulation, and cost-effectiveness.124 Such
competitive displays pitted handlooms only against one another, not
against power looms, even though it was often the latter that represented
the real threat. As the Indian Industrial Commission put it in their report
in 1918, since “the hand-loom weaver directly competes with the power-
loom weaver . . . his success or failure depends on the first instance upon
the right selection of the appliances which he uses, even more than upon
the degree of skill which he acquires in working them.”125
If those developing new handloom improvements held the line
between crafts and industry by rejecting mechanization of weaving itself,
they also did so by perpetuating the ideal of the autonomous individual
weaver. A very few public officials—most prominently Alfred Chatterton
in Madras—advocated shifting weavers into small handloom factories
where they could better take advantage of economies of scale in purchas-
ing raw materials, sharing expensive preparatory machinery, investing
in new loom technologies, and more.126 But Chatterton’s position was
unpopular, particularly in western India where activists rejected the
industrial reorganization of weaving itself. For all the willingness on
the part of Churchill and others to centralize and mechanize prepara-

tory processes, including sizing, beaming, warping, and winding, they
continued to imagine weaving as an individual occupation, with one
person capable of mastering the use and maintenance of complicated
new attachments along with designing and implementing new patterns.
One of the common criticisms made of the most advanced foreign looms
was that they were too complicated for the average weaver to maintain:
hence the need for a simpler, modified version for the Indian market.
Arguing that the average weaver would need to perform common main-
tenance assumed decentralized individual production in artisanal homes
where it would be difficult to get skilled help to solve basic loom issues.
If, on the other hand, weavers worked together in large workshops of
many looms, specialized repair help might be available, thereby erasing
the need for the simpler looms altogether. Similarly, when handloom
instructors popularized new technologies, they assumed that one indi-
vidual would master the entire range of processes, from design to weav-
ing and finishing; no attempt was made to segment the labor process into
discrete stages meant for different workers. To give yet another example,
when handloom schools offered detailed instruction in a broad range
of new fabric types, they imagined a model in which individual weavers
would need almost comprehensive product flexibility, capable of shifting
into not only new patterns but whole new types of fabrics in response to
changes in consumer demand. That again far exceeded the more special-
ized needs of weavers operating within large workshops, who generally
focused on single fabric types.
The choice involved in developing technologies and training weavers
for individualized autonomous hand production is perhaps more obvi-
ous when compared to trends in the weaving industry more generally.
Roy and Haynes have both identified widespread consolidation and
specialization in handlooms and other traditional industries of the late-
nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. One of the most remarkable
shifts was in the growth of handloom factories under the direction of
master weavers. Generally operating with a combination of family and
wage labor, these factories tended to grow slowly, adding on looms and
introducing improved technologies over time in order to minimize the
need for scarce capital, and to stay attuned to highly fluctuating market
demands. With expansion came increased specialization, with single firms
often monopolizing the production of particular products or designs; it
also brought mechanization, with a few pioneering workshop owners
introducing modified power looms as early as 1900, followed by a major
shift toward the new technologies in the 1930s.127
Public advocates of handloom improvements were certainly aware of

such developments, noting the shift toward centralized production and
the potential for hierarchical organization within workshops. And yet,
in the end, they chose not to embrace those changes, preferring instead a
decentralized model of autonomous weavers who worked independently.
Indeed, they argued that one of the gravest threats facing weavers was the
loss of autonomy as formerly independent weavers became wage labor in
handloom factories; the hope was that faster looms and better implements
might rescue weavers from such dependence, not hurry them toward it.
In the end, reformers—whether out of a desire for social equality or out
of nostalgic sense of India’s artisanal past—resisted some of the key social
and technical changes that were enabling handlooms to stay competitive
against mill cloth. In doing so they operated not on the basis of strictly
economic arguments of efficiency and productivity, but instead on more
cultural assumptions about the identity and meaning of craft.
Conclusion
Taken together, industrial schools and handloom improvements repre-

sented some of the most prominent public interventions in crafts of their
day, expressing the industrial hopes of nationalist activists and govern-
ment officials alike. Industrial schools for craftsmen were the popular
face of education for industrial development in India down through the
1920s. Indeed, once the Government of India transferred both education
and industrial development to the control of Indian ministers at the pro-
vincial level in 1921, efforts to provide such training to artisans actually
increased, with new schools opening up to train weavers in particular,
but also to instruct workers in wood, metal, and leather. This was, how-
ever, perhaps more a financial decision than a sign that all of the issues
in general industrial or specialized weaving schools had been solved.
Of the three basic levels of education for industry—industrial schools
for artisans, technical schools for foremen, and technical institutes for
industrial leaders—schools for artisans were by far the cheapest. To give
a comparison from Baroda State, instruction in mechanical engineering,
chemical engineering, agriculture, teacher training, carpentry, and draw-
ing at the advanced technical institute, the Kala Bhavan, cost more than
Rs. 50,000—or around Rs. 262 per student—in 1896–1897.128 The total
cost for three Baroda district industrial schools then teaching dyeing, car-
pentry, and other general industrial work was, in comparison, only about
Rs. 10,000, or around Rs. 64 per pupil.129 Weaving schools were even more
inexpensive; in 1917 the total cost of the seven weaving schools operating
in the Bombay Presidency came to only Rs. 6,245.130 Per person, it was
obviously far cheaper to run industrial or weaving schools than schools
that taught more advanced types of knowledge. For the government, this
meant that in the face of public criticism, progress and development could
be duly noted in official reports at relatively little cost. For the many pri-
vate or municipal groups that founded artisanal schools, it was simply the
only industrially oriented education they could afford.
With the transfer of industrial portfolios to the provinces and the
budget retrenchment of 1922, even the possibility of large-scale funds
for opening new higher technical institutes disappeared.131 As the
paper Prajabandhu reported in 1926, the entire budget for the Bombay
Presidency’s Department of Industries was Rs. 2,39,000 in 1922–1923,
shrinking to Rs. 1,37,885 in 1923–1924, and then down to Rs. 65,800 in
1924–1925.132 Such limited funds left little opportunity for grand initia-
tives into engineering or technical schools. Given the political prominence
of handlooms in particular and crafts in general, continuing with artisanal
training was not only cost-effective but also politically expedient. That
translated directly into funding priorities. Thus, N. M. Joshi estimated
that in 1933–1934 some 43.6 percent of the Bombay Department of
Industries’ total budget went to developing and promoting weaving; as a
point of comparison, the second largest allotment was 35 percent spent
on administration.133
Public attempts to modernize artisanal industries aimed to correct the
negative aspects of crafts difference: inefficiency, disorganization, lack of
science, conservatism, hostility to outside ideas, and more. Indeed, many
aimed to close the gap between crafts and industry, taking the lessons of
modern factory production and applying them to artisanal workshops.
Some focused on labor, disciplining labor into rational precision to adapt
to new markets, without threatening the rigid boundaries of the colonial
social order or undermining the global demands of the imperial labor
market. Others aimed at artisanal methods, arguing that more efficient
tools and technologies could transform crafts from within, whatever the
cultural proclivities or working habits of artisans. Either way, reform-
ers tapped into the central themes of colonial development ideology:
first, the promise of modernization itself, by which the shortcomings of
Indian society could be fixed by proper contact with Western initiatives
and principles; and second, a fundamental faith in science as the crucial
means of that transformation, providing neutral assessment of problems
and presenting rational means for their solution.134
And yet, for all the talk about erasing the gap between crafts and
industry by borrowing the logic of the latter, public modernization
efforts often themselves operated on the basis of the idea of crafts dif-
ference. Reformers could rarely envisage a smooth path of transition
from artisanal to industrial production, by which traditional skills could
be reworked or reapplied into more modern contexts or products. Thus
industrial schools and handloom improvements alike taught hand skills
and rejected mechanization, operating on the assumption that produc-
tion would remain individual and autonomous.
The fate of an ambitious agenda for technical experiments across
traditional industries in western India provides a useful example of this
pattern. In response to new funds Curzon made available for the expan-
sion of technical education and promotion of industrial development, in
1904 JJ School officials proposed hiring four European experts in textiles,
wood work, metal work (including gold and silver as well as iron and
architectural lead work), and pottery. Those four experts were to be given
technical laboratories in which to investigate the materials and methods
needed for their industries: bleaches, mordants, and sizing materials for
cottons, the proper mixture of clays and glazes for different types of pot-
tery products, or preservatives, glues, and polishes for wood.135
Only one such laboratory ever made it past the planning stage: the Sir
George Clarke Technical Laboratories and Studios that opened in associa-
tion with the JJ School in 1909. Representing a total government invest-
ment of over one lakh rupees by the time it closed in 1926, the Clarke
Labs offered the most decisive application of science to the problems of
pottery production in western India to date; the Labs were fully equipped
for and completely focused on technical experiments, including testing
clays, adapting new kilns to use in India, and developing mechanized pro-
duction methods.136 In its first year, director E. R. Fern set to work testing
different clays available in the region, preparing glazes that could accom-
modate the expansion and contraction of earthenware pots, and building
different kilns suitable for his work.137 Over time, however, Fern and the
Clarke Labs shifted focus from hand to mechanical methods, devoting
increasing time to the problems of factory production of pottery dishes,
tiles, pipes, and the like. By the mid-teens there is little record of any inves-
tigations into the problems of the familiar earthenware made by potters
across the region; a 1957 history of the JJ School went so far as to argue
that Fern was ignorant of the merits of traditional techniques, approach-
ing “the problems of Crafts with an idea of modernising, rather than of
researches [sic] into the economic and decorative qualities achieved by
the traditional methods.”138 In keeping with that focus on modernization,
Fern consulted with men interested in opening up new pottery works. In
1910, for instance, a Mr. Pojut J. Punpyio requested Fern’s advice on how
to open a commercial pottery works near Bombay, while in 1918–1919

Fern visited Ahmedabad district in order to advise a local syndicate there
on how best to work a local kaolin deposit.139 More specifically, Fern spent
much of the 1920s developing plans for a demonstration pottery factory
to showcase the latest technologies and processes; while that never got off
the ground, he was able to help others start a new roofing tile factory in
Khanapur in 1919 and a new commercial pottery factory in Talegaon in
the early 1920s.140
That focus on modern factories rather than traditional artisanal work-
shops represented official policy as much as Fern’s personal preference.
Indeed, the Government of Bombay declared in a 1910 resolution that one
of the primary goals of the new workshops should be “to demonstrate to
the public that, given a complete installation of up-to-date machinery, . . .
plates, cups, tiles (especially the latter), which are imported into India in
large quantities, can be manufactured in India of suitable quality and at a
profit on a commercial basis.”141 Inspired by the goal of import substitution,
the Clarke Labs found it too problematic or unprofitable to reform craft
production. Reflecting a much larger process by which the colonial state
marginalized indigenous knowledge systems,142 Fern saw nothing to learn
from India’s potters and no way to build a bridge from traditional methods
to modern needs for sturdy, waterproof dishes and building materials; thus
he and his students focused on large scale production operating according
to new technologies adapted from European industrial models.
Modernization in pottery, at least at the beginning of the twentieth cen-
tury, in other words was built directly on the idea of crafts difference; crafts
were old, outmoded, and inefficient, to be replaced by all new methods and
technologies brought in from outside. But the idea of crafts difference also
functioned in slightly more subtle ways in modernizing efforts. Both indus-
trial schools and technological improvements tended to locate the problems
in crafts in the individual artisan, imagined to be inefficient, traditional, and
out of touch with modern developments. P. N. Mehta, for example, offered
the following summary of the “far from satisfactory” condition of hand-
loom weavers in the Bombay Presidency as of 1909:
The state of being constantly in want and dependence, kills all enterprise
and activity in them. This coupled with ignorance of any improved system
of manufacture and the want of even primary education helps to make them
what they appear to some, i.e., indolent, lazy, dissipated and extravagant.143
Here Mehta presents the familiar view of artisans as the opposite of mod-
ernized, efficient labor, with the roots of that difference expressed in the
thoughts and attitudes of artisans themselves; artisans are dependent and

therefore not entrepreneurial, artisans are ignorant of new technologies
and so lazy. Since the problems lay with artisans, it only made sense that
the solutions focused on them too: if only artisans could be disciplined
into precision and regularity through rigorous industrial education, labor
would improve; if only improved systems could be introduced, individual
productivity would increase. Had modernizers been able to abstract the
problems of craft from individual bodies, however, they would have had
to look beyond personal inefficiency and failure to adopt new technolo-
gies to address the many structural, market-based challenges facing tradi-
tional industries. Mehta himself argued as much, closing the observation
given above with the following disclaimer: “They may be all that they are
represented to be, but they are mere creatures of circumstances.” Those
circumstances involved control over the industry by nonweavers who
did not see the point of new technologies and who kept artisans in debt-
bondage by controlling raw materials, credit, and markets. To Mehta
this meant that “it is essential that the economic aspect of the question
[of helping handlooms] should take precedence over the technical,” with
cooperative societies being the most likely route to real change.144
Himself an earlier recipient of a government scholarship to study the
English textile industry, Mehta offered his assessment of handloom needs
in fulfillment of a official assignment to study “the present position of the
industry and the practical measures that commend themselves to him for
its assistance,” with specific attention to defects in existing technologies,
production, and marketing systems, and to the possibilities of introduc-
ing cooperatives into weaving.145 In giving Mehta that assignment, the
Government of Bombay had explained the importance of such a study
in terms of the large numbers of people involved in handlooms and “the
need for assistance which recent competition from the power industry
has created.” Large numbers of “improved processes and implements now
under trial” only underscored “the scope for such assistance,” necessitating
prompt attention to the topic.146
Implicit within the Government of Bombay’s calls for “assistance”
to weavers was a sense that new technologies did more to solve a short-
term social problem than they did to resolve a long-term economic one.
For all the talk of productivity and efficiency, many defined improving
handlooms first and foremost as a way to save millions of weavers fac-
ing immediate poverty in the ruthless competition against mill goods.
As Romesh Chunder Dutt put it in his presidential address to the first
Indian Industrial Conference in 1905, technologies and state support
would “relieve millions of weavers and other artisans from the state of
semi-starvation in which they have lived.”147 That relief was ultimately to

be temporary; to compete in a globalized marketplace Dutt and others
argued the need for modern machinery, factories, and companies, all of
which would ultimately replace less efficient, less productive handwork.148
The key was to ease the transition from one state to another, acknowledg-
ing the needs of artisans unprepared for modern factories while slowly
paving the way for the ultimate obsolescence of their way of life. As
another speaker at the 1905 industrial conference, a Mr. H. J. Tozer, put
it: “Although this ancient handicraft may ultimately be forced to give way
under the pressure of competition, it is of importance socially that the
process of decay should be gradual.”149
Assumptions by men like Dutt and Tozer, that modernizing efforts
served social welfare rather than economic development needs, points
to a real lack of faith in the future of crafts. At the same time, they also
reveal a fundamental lack of trust in artisans. Ignoring those actively and
creatively engaged in building up artisanal production from within—
adopting small machinery, centralizing production, and specializing
work—proponents of public crafts initiatives argued that only outsiders
like themselves could properly direct and engineer change. Just as trou-
bling, as Arindam Dutta has suggested in a different context, by offering
education and new technologies instead of addressing exploitative market
structures, reformers implied that responsibility for success or failure in
the colonial economy ultimately lay on artisanal shoulders. If they had
been more disciplined, or technologically savvy, artisans would have done
fine; it was their refusal to do so, not the workings of colonial capitalism,
that explained poverty, debt, and declining markets.150
Like preservationists, then, modernizers affirmed both the difference
of crafts from modern industry and the social distance separating elites
and artisans. Public leaders reserved for themselves superior vision, fore-
sight, and rationality while dismissing artisans as irrational, uneducated
men incapable of providing the direction needed for economic develop-
ment—differences that only confirmed the inevitable logic of outside
leadership over such a backward community. But, whereas preservation-
ists at least acknowledged traditional skills in design terms, modernizers
saw virtually no grounds on which to celebrate artisanal knowledge. Here,
outside authority was complete.
Conclusion
The Long Life of Difference:

Gandhi and the Politics of
Crafts after 1920
W hen the Indian National Congress staged an industrial exhibition

in association with its annual meeting in Ahmedabad in 1902, the
Gaekwar of Baroda Sayajirao III gave the opening speech. An acknowl-
edged leader in industrial matters, the Gaekwar had provided generous
support for industrial development in his state, including founding
the technical institute Kala Bhavan, launching experiments to improve
handlooms, introducing artisanal schools, starting demonstration facto-
ries, and providing scholarships to send promising students overseas to
investigate new technologies. In his speech at the exhibition, the Gaekwar
offered an overview of the current state of the Indian economy and sug-
gestions for future development. First, though, he established the need
for development via a direct contrast between India and the West on
industrial grounds. In Europe, he argued, technical knowledge, collective
effort, individual and national ambition, carefully honed intelligence, and
a general striving to make nature provide greater human comfort all came
together to produce dramatic technical and material achievements. In
India, by contrast, he recalled “the market in my own Baroda city—where
the artisans were preparing things in the same methods and same goods as
they have been doing for centuries, living in low and shapeless houses and
dreamless lives.” These vast differences in industrial knowledge, energy,
progress, and ambition defined India’s backwardness, preventing India
from reaching the level of Europe in comfort, wealth, or development.1
If the dreamless passivity of Indian artisans prevented economic suc-
cess in the present, the Gaekwar’s proposed solution was to adopt Western
methods of manufacture for the future. In a section outlining areas for
industrial improvement, the Gaekwar urged Indians to introduce new,

technically sophisticated factories to begin domestic production of daily
necessities then imported from overseas—things such as glassware, soap,
candles, furniture, steel implements, durries, paper, and leather goods. It
was not enough, he argued, to just issue emotional appeals for patriotic
consumption of second-rate Indian goods; sentiment could never com-
pete with hardheaded differentials in quality and cost. True growth would
only come when India was competitive on world markets. Thus, the
Gaekwar insisted that Indian goods be carefully compared with imports
to “find out their differences and also how to remove the defects of our
goods and how to increase their sale.”2
In this vision of the future, the Gaekwar did acknowledge traditional
artisanal manufactures. Lamenting that the condition of “old native
industries” such as wood carving and metalwork was now “so delicate”
when once those crafts had been world famous, he supported market
research to help artisans adapt to new demands. But he was clear that
such efforts emerged from pride in a beautiful native tradition rather
than real hope for development. For the Gaekwar, the real economic work
lay elsewhere, in “setting up big industries and producing goods for mass
consumption using large scale machinery.” Indeed, he insisted that “our
economic future and our prosperity are dependent” on modern industry;
“until we get into an economy of large-scale industries, we shall never
really prosper, ever.”3
Underlying the Gaekwar’s speech was an assumption of the essential
opposition between crafts and modern industry. One was culture: time-
less beauties representing the past heritage of the nation. The other was
economics: modern efficiency and novel technologies. For the former, one
looked to India’s past for expressions of national ideals. For the latter, one
looked overseas to Europe, America, and—increasingly—Japan. That idea
of difference did not serve, as in the Arts and Crafts Movement in England,
to resist the advance of modern factory industry or revolutionize social
relations. Instead the Gaekwar used it to encourage industrial growth,
allowing a segmented economic development by which artisanal produc-
tion sustained traditional social groups, while real economic progress
happened elsewhere—a segmentation that helped ease social upheavals
in the inevitable transition to modern methods. What made that growth
possible was outside leadership. Since “the lower classes of Hindustan are
deeply immersed in ignorance and hopelessness,” the Gaekwar argued
that change, rooted in proper understanding of the country’s economic
needs, “is something only you could bring about—you who know some-
thing of Western thinking and practices.”4
THE LONG LIFE OF DIFFERENCE 189
The Gaekwar’s speech demonstrates the full arrival of many of the

themes explored in this book: the new idea of crafts difference, its role in
the emerging hierarchies of colonial society, and its impact on develop-
ment efforts. Building on trends in the late nineteenth century, by 1902
crafts had become firmly established in national politics. But that was
hardly the end of the story. Indeed, the idea of crafts difference, once
in place, had a long and fruitful life. On the one hand, it provided the
framework for Mohandas Gandhi’s incredibly successful campaign to
promote the production and use of handspun, hand-woven khadi cloth
starting in the 1920s. Part of his larger village reconstruction movement
by which urban India would help revitalize rural communities through
economic development, education, sanitation, and community organiz-
ing, khadi was also much more: spiritual rejuvenation, moral purifica-
tion, and political engagement, all in ways celebrating Indian alternatives
to Western models. After independence, on the other hand, the idea of
crafts difference became public policy, enshrined at the heart of new
institutions such as the All-India Handicrafts Board, the Crafts Museum
in Delhi, the Calico Museum of Textiles, the National Institute of Design,
and various state-level crafts boards. Under the leadership of Kamaladevi
Chattopadhyaya, Jasleen Dhamijia, Ajit Mookerjee, D. N. Saraf, and oth-
ers, India’s crafts were to root the modernizing nation envisioned by
Nehruvian socialism in the rich, warm tones of cultural tradition.
These developments brought the idea of crafts difference into public
consciousness in ways never achieved earlier. The opposition between
Indian crafts and Western machine industry had, as suggested above,
achieved the status of common sense by the early twentieth century
among those interested in industrial development. Now, under Gandhi’s
influence men and women who never read industrial reform journals
looked to khadi to express their patriotism in tangible ways; those who
ignored policy debates about economic growth celebrated traditional
embroidery as an embodiment of Indian heritage and culture; those who
had bought imported mass-produced porcelain for its durability sought
out local artisanal pottery not just for its material values—of color, design,
strength—but for its production—its physical representation of hand
craftsmanship.
While building on earlier ideas and interventions, the new public
prominence of crafts in the 1920s and 1950s came about through some
significant innovations. In Gandhi’s case the most significant was the
transformation of crafts development from private economic initiative
to public test of political loyalty. Gandhi refused to choose between pres-
ervationist concerns about aesthetic purity and modernizing arguments
about economic imperative; instead, he combined both, weaving together

emotion and economics, romantic evocations of the dignity of hand labor
with biting critiques of the inequalities of colonial economic domination.
In doing so, he offered—via khadi—ordinary Indians the chance to con-
structively contribute to the nation while subverting British power. This
same interest in both aesthetics and economics characterized the new insti-
tutional interventions in crafts after independence. Then, design concerns
moved out of art schools and into development agendas, with designers
appointed to key positions in national and regional handicraft boards,
hired to advise income generation projects conducted by nongovernmen-
tal organizations (NGOs) and in some cases given the opportunity to start
their own NGOs to better meld aesthetic quality with concrete wage and
profit benefits for artisans. Whether under Gandhi’s leadership or after
his death, however, craft initiatives continued to structure their responses
around the idea of crafts difference, rejecting mechanization, insisting on
individual autonomy within the limits of larger cooperative structures, and
attempting to circumvent the market. At the same time, all continued to
replace artisanal leadership and authority with that of outsiders.
Gandhi’s Khadi Campaigns: Crafts Difference as

National Mobilization
Gandhi’s ideas and strategies for khadi developed over time, in some-
times contradictory directions. When he first returned to India from
South Africa in May 1915, Gandhi was content that all members of his
Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad take a vow to use only swadeshi prod-
ucts.5 By 1919, however, Gandhi was promoting a much narrower vision
of acceptable consumption. Insisting that all patriotic Indians reject not
only foreign cloth but also Indian-made mill cloth, he envisioned a nation
dressed entirely in handspun, hand-woven cloth. The Indian National
Congress (INC) followed Gandhi’s lead, making hand weaving and spin-
ning central to the swadeshi movement at the Amritsar Congress of 1919
and adopting an ambitious plan to revive hand spinning on a massive
scale at a special session in September 1920.6 By 1921 the INC started
working directly on the production and sale of khadi, opening a separate
department to focus on it in 1922 and forming the All-India Khaddar
Board later that year to coordinate work in every province.7 Through
Congress efforts, khadi stores and centers opened across the country, men
and women alike took up spinning, technical advisers introduced new
looms among weavers, and people from all walks of life began to wear the
fabric as a marker of national pride and honor.8
As his thoughts on the subject developed, Gandhi increasingly used

the social, economic, moral, and political differences between khadi and
modern mill cloth to justify his agenda. The most obvious point of dif-
ference, and thus perhaps most central, was the means of production.
Gandhi’s opposition to Western-style factories is well known. His 1909
tract Hind Swaraj lists factory work as one of the defining evils of Western
civilization; as he described it, mill laborers suffered in conditions that
were “worse than that of beasts. They are obliged to work, at the risk of
their lives, at most dangerous occupations, for the sake of millionaires.
Formerly, men were made slaves under physical compulsion. Now they
are enslaved by temptation of money and of the luxuries that money
can buy.”9 Creating khadi offered a complete contrast to such horrors:
it was done at home rather than in factories, so that working conditions
were pleasant, clean, and free from physical danger; it was simple, easy
to learn, and meant for personal use, so that labor was not alienated; it
was inexpensive and restrained, so that no temptation to indulgence was
posed. As an unnamed author wrote in a May 1922 article in Gandhi’s
mouthpiece Young India, khadi promised profound benefits to producers;
not only would hand spinning and hand weaving “set the Indian masses
economically on their feet,” they would allow villagers to revive economic
self-sufficiency, throw off political domination, and “forge the ties of
unity, brotherhood and tolerance among themselves.”10
More broadly, however, khadi promised change not just to those already
engaged in cloth production but to all Indians. At the heart of Gandhi’s
vision was the expectation that everyone would adopt the charkha11 and
devote part of every day to spinning cotton yarn. For poor people, spin-
ning served both individual and general goals: it supplemented family
incomes, thereby rescuing individuals from the twin vices of idleness
and gossip, on the one hand, and contributed to national development,
on the other. Just as importantly, for poor and rich alike, spinning was to
be purifying meditation, national devotion, and penance for the nation’s
poverty.12 What made spinning so ideal was that, since it required little
training or equipment, anyone could do it. This was in sharp contrast to
weaving, which Gandhi himself admitted was too highly skilled for most
to learn quickly, let alone practice regularly.13
That spiritual, ennobling labor, not surprisingly, created products
with distinctive material and moral qualities. Complaining that Indians
had a false sense of the artistic, Gandhi argued that “true art takes note
not merely of form but also of what lies behind.”14 In this light, khadi
was beautiful because it was created by hand, out of love and devotion
for country. It was a living fabric, uneven and individual, reflecting the
lack of uniformity in life itself; machine-made fabric, on the other hand,

was all “glossy smoothness,” “metallic hardness,” and “dull uniformity.”15
As “K. R.” instructed readers in Young India in 1922, “The gloss of the
mill-made cloth is the flame over the grave, the symbol of death. The soft
Khadi is instinct [sic] with life, hence a thing of beauty. Khadi is uneven.
Its surface is of living dimples. There can be nothing uniform in things
pertaining to life which is rich in its variety and mild heterogeneity.”16
While individual pieces might express organic variability, in aggregate
khadi affirmed political and moral unity. Unlike the intricately patterned
clothes ranging from simple to luxurious that divided wearers by class,
caste, and community, simple, plain, white khadi promised to unite
Indians visually.17 Indeed, as the khadi campaign intensified in 1920–
1921, Gandhi increasingly cautioned against the use of fine cloth. Noting
that coarse, white handlooms were the fabric of the poor, Gandhi argued
that they should thus be the fabric of all patriotic Indians of every class.
As P. C. Ray wrote in 1922, “Instead of keeping up a show of luxury, it is
necessary that we should all wear coarse Khadi, thereby acknowledging
our kinship with our poor countrymen and at the same time making a
positive move towards helping them out of their poverty.”18 Only when
the nation was clothed in a common cloth could internal divisions be
overcome and true national unity forged.
That national unity was to come through national means not just
in production but also in distribution. Ideally, Gandhi hoped that indi-
viduals would not need to rely on the market at all to get their cloth, but
would spin their own thread, bring that to a nearby weaver, and then
receive finished cloth suitable for their needs. When that kind of closed
production loop was impossible, purchase of locally made goods offered
the next best option. For, just as Gandhi argued that India as a nation
should become self-sufficient in cloth production, so too did he think
that each locality should make do with the cloth of its own looms. As he
put it in a speech in Ellore in 1921, “I regard as foreign cloth even that
which comes from Bombay and Ahmedabad. Our spinning mills must
be in our homes, our weaving mills must be in our villages. And just as it
will be sinful for you to have your bread baked at Bombay, so is it sinful
for you to have your cloth manufactured in Bombay.”19 Ellore’s consum-
ers must be content with what Ellore’s weavers could produce, working to
improve production if the goods were not up to standard. Such localized
production and consumption would distribute income evenly throughout
the countryside, giving each village the tools for its own economic inde-
pendence—thereby fulfilling Gandhi’s dream of a nation of independent
village republics.20 It would also distribute that income to all parts of the
population—thus preventing capitalistic exploitation of workers by mer-

chants or profiteers.21
Gandhi’s vision for khadi was, therefore, all-encompassing, integrat-

ing technologies, organization, distribution, and eventual consumption
of handspun, handwoven cloth. It is fitting, then, that Gandhi suggested
changes at every level as well. One of the central interventions was techni-
cal. For all his celebration of the ancient practices of hand spinning and
weaving, Gandhi was intensely dissatisfied with the limitations of existing
spinning wheels and looms. Building on earlier efforts in the 1900s and
1910s to improve looms and preparatory equipment discussed in Chapter
4, khadi activists tried to increase handloom efficiency, productivity, and
quality. In a series of articles in Young India, in 1921, for instance, Maganlal
Gandhi offered solutions to a number of problems weavers faced in try-
ing to work with handspun yarn—yarn that was often uneven and broke
easily. These suggestions included how to evaluate and use new looms and
how to properly prepare and size handspun yarn.22 On a more concrete
level, the Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad opened a khadi school in 1922
to teach the theory and practice of handloom spinning and weaving and
to work out improvements on all stages of production. The hundred or so
yearly graduates of the school were from all over India, the idea being that,
upon returning to their home provinces they would spread new technolo-
gies and new techniques among local weaving communities, working as
khadi organizers under Congress direction.23
Another key innovation was in distribution. Even at the height of the khadi
movement only a very few consumers spun enough yarn to meet their needs,
obliging most to buy cloth in one way or another. Some consumers made
purchases on their own doorsteps from activists—activists who included, in
some parts of India, groups of upper-class women who sold fabric in their
neighborhoods in defiance of police restrictions.24 More commonly, many
accessed khadi either through swadeshi stores that marketed only Indian-
made goods—whether mill- or hand-made—or through special Congress
khadi depots opened just to supply the national fabric. Both types of stores
operated on a strictly noncompetitive basis and on limited profit margins,
with the idea that all would work together to promote wider consumption of
the cloth. The Bombay Khadi Bhandar run by Narandas Purshottamdas and
Vithadas Jerajani, which Gandhi opened in June 1920, for instance, tried to
cover all modern consumer cloth needs by carrying bleached and dyed khadi
for use in shirts, trousers, saris, blouses, curtains, and cushions.25
Khadi stores, however, rarely could satisfy all needs. This gap neces-
sitated yet another innovation: in consumer desires. In the early years
khadi came in only very limited varieties, as poor yarn quality confined
producers to plain cloth in coarse weaves. Over time, as weavers around
the country developed their skills with handspun yarn and the quality of
that yarn improved, product ranges widened to include very fine muslins,
printed bedcovers, bordered saris and dhotis, and patterned silks.26 But
even as khadi activists tried to meet variegated demand, they also tried
to redirect demand into different channels. Thus, a 1931 survey of the
handloom industry declared it
the duty of the people to see to it that the hand-loom products are patron-
ized, in spite of their rough quality and decreased fineness and gloss. The
people will have to put a restraint on their fastidiousness in taste and extend
their patronage to cloth made out of coarse or medium yarns made within
the country.27
Gandhi recognized that this sacrifice would be significant for those accus-
tomed to luxurious, colorful fabrics. But he insisted that a wholesale revo-
lution in public taste was the duty of all, arguing to an audience of women
in 1921 that “I have not known a mother throwing away her baby even
though it may appear ugly to an outsider. So should it be with the patriotic
women of India about Indian manufactures.”28 To do otherwise, to wear
anything but the common cloth of the nation was nothing less than a sin.
All of these ideas for and interventions into khadi rested on the idea
of the fundamental opposition between cloth produced by hand and
cloth produced by modern mills. Reducing his focus down to one iconic
product—khadi—Gandhi offered a striking expansion in the concept
of crafts difference. Operating not just in terms of visual appearance or
labor composition or degree of mechanization or economic organization
or political implications, difference here incorporated all of those things
at once, with moral purity and spiritual practice bundled in as well. Thus
hand weaving done out of devotion to the nation was obviously superior
to sweated labor tending machines in a large mill; cloth sold at cost with-
out capitalist exploitation carried higher moral value than that made by
weavers who worked for pitiful wages while merchants grew rich on the
fruit of their labor. At the same time, Gandhi also expanded the impli-
cations of difference for development initiatives. Like his predecessors,
he rejected advanced machinery; whereas in modern mills the goal was
large-scale mechanized production to replace slow, inefficient hand work,
the technical experiments and advice offered by the Sabarmati Ashram
enshrined hand production as the ultimate goal to be perfected and
popularized, not done away with. But Gandhi also went beyond earlier
ideas to make difference central not just to production but also to distri-
bution and consumption. Whereas modern industrialists aimed to maxi-
mize profits and monopolize market share, khadi organizers rejected both
objectives: khadi prices ensured not profits but living wages for producers
and affordability for consumers; monopoly, in turn, was anathema in a
system that encouraged decentralized, small-scale, individuated produc-
tion. Finally, whereas modern industrial capitalism celebrated consumer
choice even while trying to excite ever-widening desires for the latest,
most fashionable goods, khadi promoters told consumers to be patient,
take what they were given, pare down their needs, embrace the rough
utilitarian goods of the poor rather than the finery of the rich, and reject
fashion for timeless, honest necessities.
Gandhi’s vision, with its underlying insistence on crafts difference, had
wide resonance in colonial India. By 1922, when Gandhi abruptly called
off the Non-Cooperation Movement in response to the violence at Chauri
Chaura, khadi was firmly in place at the heart of nationalist politics.
Indeed, in the lull in active nationalist politics immediately after 1922, pro-
duction activities only solidified, taking on more stable institutional forms,
particularly with the creation of the All-India Spinners’ Association in
1925. Promotion expanded likewise; as Lisa Trivedi has demonstrated, spe-
cial exhibitions, magic lantern slide shows, print advertisements, lectures,
spinning contests, and popular posters all helped enshrine the idea that
“khadi clothing transformed a colonized body into an Indian body.”29
This is not to say that all the main elements of Gandhi’s vision were
put into practice. The ultimate expression of development efforts often
fell far short of his ideals, thanks to diverging consumer preferences, dif-
ficulties with production and distribution, lack of funds, and the problem
of providing living wages to producers while still keeping cloth prices
low enough to compete with mill cloth.30 Very few people probably ever
fulfilled Gandhi’s ideals of daily spinning and total conversion to plain,
coarse, white khadi. Many who adopted the cloth were unwilling to give
up their desire for distinction or difference; indeed, as Emma Tarlo has
pointed out, consumers kept disrupting Gandhi’s vision of a nation united
in white by favoring printed, dyed, and otherwise patterned khadi, often
made up in Western fashions.31 Others refused to adopt khadi universally,
but only employed the cloth strategically and situationally, wearing it to
express nationalist loyalties in some contexts, but retaining mill or foreign
cloth for other settings, whether for reasons of politics or comfort.32
Even if not fully integrated into national practices, the ideal of a nation
spinning, weaving, and wearing khadi was well established in national
consciousness by the late 1920s. This national role for khadi represented
the full arrival of the idea of crafts difference onto the public stage. It
took Gandhi to render the common sense of difference into a compelling
campaign capable of arousing mass participation. It took Gandhi to tie
together the disparate strands of traditionalism and modernization, prod-
ucts and production, individualization and cooperation into one unified
program. Gandhi embraced the vision of India as socially and economi-
cally defined through crafts. But he widened the scope and power of that
vision considerably, making it the basis for an all-encompassing critique
of colonial rule and modernity itself.
Gandhi’s success with khadi was thus made possible by key divergences
from earlier attempts to understand and intervene in crafts. Most striking
was the politicization of crafts that rendered involvement with khadi a
matter not of economic theory but of political loyalty, with all the social
pressures brought to bear on such a choice. But Gandhi also diverged
from the past in other ways. Whereas preservationist art schools, exhibi-
tions, and publications tried to make national taste a matter of cultured
refinement, Gandhi rendered it a crucial test of political loyalty. Whereas
modernizing industrial schools and handloom experiments saw crafts
as a problematic section of the larger Indian economy to be reformed
into closer alignment with modern industry, Gandhi argued that crafts
were the ideal form of industry, representing what should be the entirety
of production for India and indeed for the world. On a different level,
Gandhi refused to choose between preservationism and modernization.
Earlier efforts had embraced one or the other; activists either held onto
the past through romantic evocations of handwork and individual creativ-
ity or aspired to push through a modern future by making crafts a more
productive part of the overall economy, even if only as a stopgap measure
until large-scale industrialization could take off. Rejecting the dichotomy,
Gandhi adopted elements of both, combining a love for handwork with
a desire to increase individual efficiency and making passionate emotions
perfectly compatible with a program for greater economic productivity.
Interestingly, one of the areas where Gandhi did not diverge from his
predecessors was on the question of external leadership. Given his empha-
sis on decentralized, local initiative, this support for outside authority
may seem counterintuitive. To his credit, Gandhi did open up the criteria
for leadership far wider than it had been before, decoupling authority
from Western education and knowledge to allow room for younger, less
educated men and women to step forward and assume control. And yet,
it is important to note the limits of that decentralization. On a practical
level, the need to coordinate production across millions of producers and
consumers demanded some form of centralized organization. Thus the

All-India Khaddar Board was founded in 1922—then reorganized as the
All-India Spinners’ Association in 1925—to provide technical instruc-
tion, facilitate the collection and distribution of yarn supplies, regulate
quality, certify authentic khadi dealers, and promote khadi products.33
More theoretically, even if the social scope of leadership widened, it still
did not embrace artisans themselves. Khadi activists were community
organizers first, weavers second. Indeed, by advocating the production of
only plain, coarse material, Gandhi devalued the role of master weavers
capable of producing the finest cloth; by insisting that anyone could learn
spinning—and indeed, that it was so simple that everyone should learn
it—Gandhi effectively denied the need for artisanal expertise. Himself
starting with no knowledge of weaving or spinning, Gandhi argued that
anyone could excel, that anyone could become a leader in the field.34 Thus
the Akila Khadi Vidyalaya established at Gandhi’s Satyagraha Ashram
in Ahmedabad in 1922 took in not practicing weavers but middle-class
urban students with no experience in textiles and trained them to be
khadi activists; on the completion of the course the students fanned out
into rural areas both to introduce new groups to weaving and to organize
existing weavers into khadi networks.35
As many scholars have pointed out, Gandhi was an innovator who
creatively deployed emotionally loaded symbols like salt and cloth to
call up new levels of political participation and passion.36 Without deny-
ing the crucial ways he transformed Indian politics, however, it is also
important to recognize the many ways in which he built on earlier ideas.
C. A. Bayly has argued just that, explaining Gandhi’s success with khadi
in terms of precolonial ideas about the transformative moral power of
cloth.37 Bayly does not push his point far enough, focusing his search
for the roots of Gandhi’s ideas on pre-colonial ideas of the materiality
of cloth. Gandhi, however, was never just interested in cloth as a prod-
uct, in the ability of individual items of clothing to impart particular
essences to their wearers. Instead, he also addressed the production,
organization, and commercial distribution of cloth—all of which had
traditionally been more peripheral to cloth’s moral power. In doing so,
Gandhi shifted attention away from the material specificity of cloth and
onto its theoretical resonance as a marker of India’s economic and cul-
tural alterity. For Gandhi, it mattered less that an individual dhoti was of
fine or coarse weave than that, by virtue of its thread being spun by hand
as part of national service, it represented a larger cultural alternative of
distinctively Indian national development compared with the modern,
industrial West.
Diverging from Bayly, I emphasize Gandhi’s debt to other sources: the

earlier discourses of crafts difference and practices of craft intervention
discussed in this book. Those did more than just provide the ground on
which Gandhi built his khadi campaigns; they conditioned his strategies.
Gandhi’s focus on individual laboring bodies, his insistence on hand
labor, and his attempts to extract artisans from the exploitative structures
of market capitalism all relied on those who had gone before him, fur-
ther developing issues that already had established appeal. In this light,
Gandhi’s innovations were less the individual achievement of a tradition-
alist longing for an earlier age than modern attempts to forge a tradition
in the face of widespread change.
Romanticized Artisanship in the Era of Nehruvian Socialism
The story of crafts development in the subcontinent hardly ends with

Gandhi. Indeed, the period after independence marks a radical expan-
sion in public interest in crafts. On the one hand, the Khadi and Village
Industries Commission (KVIC) expanded the scale of khadi work dra-
matically, assembling a massive staff and building an extensive network
of stores in every major town and city. The KVIC also widened the scope
of its focus from khadi to other “village industries”—including village
tanning and leather work, beekeeping, oil pressing, pickle making, rug
weaving, and mat making—considered to be true to Gandhian ideals
in terms of simple technologies, universal applicability, and decentral-
ized production. At the same time, a new range of craft boards, design
centers, export promotion bodies, museums, emporia, and exhibitions
sprang up to popularize the beauty of Indian decorative crafts—even
while encouraging artisans to adapt those crafts to the needs of mod-
ern consumers. Together, all of these sought to develop the full range
of craft products, from simple utilitarian mats and shoes to the finest
embroidered silks and woven carpets, to help Indian artisans prosper in
the new nation.
In many accounts, 1947 marks a decisive turning point when, building
on Gandhi’s commitment to crafts, Indians finally rejected destructive
British policies and forged a brand-new era of cultural development. Thus
in Som Benegal’s 1960 book for the All India Handicrafts Board (AIHB),
The Story of Handicrafts, Indian crafts began “The Fall” from earlier
golden times under the British who “set about deliberately destroyed cot-
tage crafts.” “The Revival,” by contrast, came when the “new Indian State”
began to tackle “the problem of putting a stop to the final disintegra-
tion of handicrafts, of giving them a legitimate place of their own in the
national economy and of helping them to organise themselves in a man-

ner capable of meeting changing trends and conditions.”38 Much more
recently, K. K. Subrahmanian credits the new government in independent
India for having “reversed the colonial trend” in crafts; “the indifference
of foreign rulers” that had left artisans alone “to deal with the onslaught
of market forces” was replaced by new policies “reviving the old and dying
craft-tradition and protecting and promoting artisans and handicraft
activities through planning and interventionist policies.”39
The financial and institutional interruption posed by 1947 should not,
however, efface larger continuities with earlier engagements with crafts.
That continuity is obvious with the KVIC, which drew directly from
Gandhi’s ideas and efforts even while bureaucratizing his vision. But it
is just as true for the major institutions devoted to decorative crafts: the
AIHB, the Crafts Museum, and the state-level crafts development agencies.
Interestingly, however, these institutions built not on Gandhian ideas but
on the very traditions they were supposed to have rejected: pre-Gandhian
efforts to document and improve crafts. For one, post-1947 crafts reform
focused not on the simple goods Gandhi advocated for use by the poor,
but on the sumptuous fineries promoted in the JIAI and elsewhere as lux-
uries for the upper classes—things such as jewelry, metalcraft, shawls, zari,
ivory carving, and carved woodwork. For another, development activists
after independence rejected Gandhi’s vision of crafts as the whole of the
economy, an ideal form of industry that would ultimately replace modern
factories; instead, hearkening back to the ideas of Romesh Chunder Dutt,
the Gaekwar of Baroda, Mahadev Govind Ranade, and others, post-1947
reformers positioned crafts as one sector of the economy along with
mechanized mills, so that promoting one was entirely compatible with
promoting the other. In both cases, post-independence activists offered
crafts as a way to ease the transition to modernity by providing a cru-
cial economic fillip as large-scale mills got off the ground and rooting
a denationalized population more firmly in its cultural traditions. The
opposition between crafts and industry still held; each offered distinctive
modes of production and links to the national past. But now this opposi-
tion was complementary rather than conflictual, with each side promising
to help toward the common goal of building India’s path to the future.
Industrialization was inevitable—it was merely up to crafts to make that
process easier, economically and culturally.
Economically, crafts offered two distinct benefits to the new nation of
India: generating employment and expanding exports. Whatever the long-
term goal of promoting modern factory work, in the short term jobs had
to come in forms compatible with a largely agrarian population. Crafts
fit this need perfectly; requiring little capital, relying on local technolo-
gies, and offering work in the slack season when farmers were otherwise
unoccupied, they could offer a whole new source of income in rural areas.
As J. M. Lobo Prabhu wrote in 1956, crafts and cottage industries more
broadly thus “represent the single largest field of employment for the rural
masses, who have, at best, other work for only eight months of the year.
When the national dividend is reduced by a third from such unemploy-
ment there should be no limits to the assistance which government and
the public should give.”40 At the same time they brought internal benefits,
crafts offered external ones as well. Badly in need of foreign exchange,
India had only a limited number of modern industrial goods that could
compete on world markets. Again, building on historic interest for dis-
tinctively Indian-looking things, crafts could earn the foreign currency
needed to build the country’s long-term strength in other areas.41
Culturally, crafts promised a new source of unity in a crucial period of
nation building. Industrialization brought, as Adris Banerji wrote in 1946,
“its associated restlessness and lack of tradition and its nomadic existence”
in which individual workers become “mere automatons of a soulless
master.” One solution to such dangers was to insist, as a nation, on pre-
serving “age old customs and traditions, in spite of progress; refusing to
be swept away with the tidal waves of modernism, nevertheless accepting
the best that modern civilization has to offer.”42 Crafts, many agreed, did
just that. Writers in the 1950s and 1960s returned again and again to how
deeply rooted crafts were in Indian culture; they also stressed that those
roots were essentially national, representing a collective unconscious that
tied together rich and poor, rural and urban, educated and illiterate across
the length and breadth of the country. Unlike stories or songs, crafts spoke
across linguistic lines; unlike other forms of visual arts like oil painting,
they appeared in the homes of all classes. According to crafts activists of
the time, this commonality spoke to an earlier age of community orienta-
tion rather than individualism, in which specific pieces of embroidery or
wood carving spoke to a general need for beauty rather than a particu-
lar desire to stand out—an age that, for the crafts pioneer Kamaladevi
Chattopadhyaya, resulted in “the toran being hung over the doorway to
welcome visitors, the colour painted on the horns of the cattle, the artistic
shape in which the scythe is made, . . . a hundred and one simple articles
touched gently, delicately, aesthetically.”43 Romanticizing India’s villages
as the natural reservoir of such disappearing values, writers offered crafts
as a means for urban consumers to return to their traditional roots. In
Benegal’s words, India’s myriad artisans offered “thousands of different
objects, each made with the time-tested craftsmanship of our workers,
each contributing a little more of the grace of the old world to enliven
your home of today.”44
Alive to these possibilities, numerous public and private institutions
sprang up after 1947 to preserve craft skills and develop new markets
for craft products. Most prominently the Government of India created
the AIHB in 1952 under the Ministry of Commerce to coordinate craft
development efforts at the national level, including apprenticeships to
train young people under master artisans, design development centers to
adapt traditional designs to modern needs, and experiments to improve
technologies.45 As crafts were designated a state-level subject under the
Indian Constitution, the national efforts of the AIHB were then mirrored
and supplemented by handicraft boards set up by the states in the late
1950s and early 1960s. Whether at the national and state level, activists
reached out to both artisans and consumers. Thus the AIHB and the
Handicrafts and Handlooms Export Corporation of India Ltd. (est. 1962)
launched exhibitions in India and overseas, opened state-run emporia,
and published books celebrating India’s craft heritage. Complementing
their efforts was the national Crafts Museum in New Delhi, on the one
hand, and the Calico Museum of Textiles in Ahmedabad, on the other;
public and private museums established in 1956–1957 and 1949, respec-
tively, each aimed to document and preserve fine specimens of crafts for
the benefit of artisans and customers alike.46
All these initiatives were rooted in the idea of crafts difference, carefully
preserving crafts as Indian culture and separating out industry as an influ-
ence from the modern West. That can be seen perhaps most clearly in the
paths not taken: most specifically in the fact that none of these initiatives
tried to help artisans make the transition into mechanized industry, even
when that might have represented the most profitable, viable economic
path.47 In handlooms, for instance, master weavers in the 1950s began
to introduce small power looms that they bought as low-priced cast-offs
from mills; this move helped the power loom sector expand dramati-
cally, with the result that as of the mid-1990s it represented 85 percent
of India’s fabric exports and employed more than 8 million people. And
yet, as Tirthankar Roy points out, that growth happened in spite—not
because—of public assistance; indeed, government regulations in the
1950s reserved all cotton saris for handloom production only, cutting off
power loom producers from competing in a profitable segment of the
textile market.48
Preserving crafts difference has served many of the same political needs
after independence as before 1920, particularly in allowing elite interven-
tion into the economic and social work of the lower classes. After 1947, the
Gandhian-era language—even if rarely put into practice—of individual

self-sufficiency and autonomy largely disappeared; now artisans appeared
in terms of their contribution—positive or negative—to national progress,
to be nurtured and rendered more efficient for the needs of the nation.
As one of the central figures in the early years of the AIHB, L. C. Jain, put
it in a 1986 article, “The craftsmen are hard at work—sweating for the
economy and the policy-maker. It is time for the policy-maker to lift his
little finger in their favour. We have a heritage to keep.”49 It was through
their contribution to the economy that artisans deserved recognition;
their bodies housed a national resource. But, as in the colonial era, it
was up to the policy maker to respect and use that resource properly, to
extend the protective arms of the benevolent state to save artisans from
the depredations of global capitalism. That meant supplying raw materi-
als at concessional rates, offering noncommercial marketing outlets, or
even providing pensions to elderly artisans in certain cases. It also meant
celebrating artisanal skills through official patronage, whether through
direct purchases or via national awards given to recognize mastery in
crafts. In most cases, artisans appeared not as economic agents of change,
but as welfare beneficiaries of state largesse. Indeed, the more the recogni-
tion, the more the largesse; a prestigious national award meant not just
a cash prize delivered in a public ceremony by the president of India but
also access to further income earned by training new artisans, developing
designs, representing India at international exhibitions, and more.50
This is not to discount the marked increase in the scale of official
patronage for crafts since 1947. This patronage does represent a much
larger public commitment to the crafts sector than under British rule.
And yet that commitment has not necessarily transformed the status of
India’s artisans; as many scholars have noted, crafts interventions since
1947 have had remarkably little success solving the basic problems of
artisanal poverty, poor education, archaic technologies, low social status,
and exploitation at the hands of middlemen.51 Part of this failure is due to
a continued reliance on colonial-era ideas of crafts—ideas that rendered
artisans more and more dependent on outsider leadership thanks to the
increased bureaucratic reach of the Indian state.
That continuity across the political divide of Indian independence

reminds us, again, of the commonalities in British and Indian views of
crafts before 1947. For all the close associations between crafts and the
nationalist movement, development initiatives rested on a great degree of
unanimity across the political divisions of colonial society. Whether British
or Indian, conservative or radical, modernizing or traditionalist, many
reformers by the early twentieth century shared Gandhi’s assumptions

with which this book opened: that crafts were important, national, declin-
ing, and somehow the responsibility of the public at large. Whatever the
solutions posed to the problems of crafts, almost everyone agreed that
crafts were a distinct sector of the economy characterized by traditional
styles, technologies, labor, and organization. It was precisely this defini-
tion by tradition that provided outsiders the excuse to intervene. For all
agreed that, while change was inevitable, artisans as a group were too
tradition bound to handle it on their own. Hence the need for outside
intrusion in the name of enlightened modernization—modernization
that would preserve the best elements of artisanal practices, while adapt-
ing those practices to new contexts.
As discussed throughout this book, such intrusion came in many
forms. Art schools, exhibitions, and publications sought to return artisans
to traditional design, under the close supervision of educated outsiders.
Factory managers and cooperative organizers tried to restore artisanal
autonomy, within new forms of group association. Industrial schools,
weaving experiments, and handloom training classes tried to first under-
stand artisanal work and then rationalize its technologies in the name of
scientific rationality. For all their modernizing impulses, all these inter-
ventions carefully maintained a boundary between craft and modern
industry. Preserving the “indigenous” in design was a way to resist the fact
that many crafts were starting to look like industrial goods; introducing
cooperatives fought the specter of industry by insisting that all mem-
bers be independent artisans, not members of workshops; teaching only
basic artisanship in industrial schools kept boys in hand skills and out of
modern industry; and finally, improving the handloom industry meant
focusing only on hand weavers and ignoring the advantages that lay in
motorized looms.
Ultimately, such interventions were part of a larger project by which
outsider reformers claimed public authority over Indian crafts—a key
sector of the economy then in the secretive hands of uneducated, conser-
vative, lower-class artisans. By doing so, British officials and Indian elites
hoped to reshape the economy and the social groups that drove it forward,
redefining craftwork in the process. Their efforts were determined, how-
ever, by their cultural understandings of what the economy was and how
it was divided—in other words, by the idea of crafts itself.
Notes
Introduction
1. Mohandas K. Gandhi, “Indian Art, Its Neglect,” Young India 1 no. 8 (May 31,
1919): 3.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. For details on these, see Lisa Trivedi, Clothing Gandhi’s Nation: Homespun and
Modern India (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007).
5. Karen Livingstone and Linda Parry, eds., International Arts and Crafts (London:
Victoria and Albert Museum, 2005).
6. For some of the major statements of this debate, see Marika Vicziany, “The
Deindustrialization of India in the Nineteenth Century,” Indian Economic and
Social History Review 16 no. 2 (1979): 105–146; Amiya Kumar Bagchi, “‘The
Deindustrialization of India’: A Reply,” Indian Economic and Social History
Review 16 no. 2 (1979): 147–161; and Colin Simmons. “‘De-industrialization,’
Industrialization and the Indian Economy, c. 1850–1947,” Modern Asian
Studies 19 no. 3 (1985): 593–622.
7. Tirthankar Roy, Traditional Industry in the Economy of Colonial India
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Tirthankar Roy, Artisans
and Industrialization: Indian Weaving in the Twentieth Century (Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 1993); Douglas Haynes, “The Logic of the Artisan Firm in a
Capitalist Economy: Handloom Weavers and Technological Change in Western
India, 1880–1947,” in Institutions and Economic Change in South Asia, ed.
Burton Stein and Sanjay Subrahmanyam (New Delhi: Oxford University Press,
1996), 173–205; Douglas Haynes, “Artisan Cloth-Producers and the Emergence
of Powerloom Manufacture in Western India, 1920–1950,” Past and Present
172 (2001): 170–198; and Willem van Schendel, Reviving a Rural Industry: Silk
Producers and Officials in India and Bangladesh, 1880s to 1980s (New Delhi:
Manohar, 1995).
8. Manu Goswami, Producing India: From Colonial Economy to National Space
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004). Other models have been pro-
vided, much earlier, in African studies, where scholars have looked at how
cultural values inform the meaning of wages, money, and work, thereby dem-
onstrating how core economic categories are shaped by cultural context. See
Keletso Atkins, The Moon is Dead! Give Us Our Money! The Cultural Origins
206 NOTES
of an African Work Ethic, Natal, South Africa, 1843–1900 (Portsmouth, NH:

Heinemann, 1993); John and Jean Comaroff, “Goodly Beasts, Beastly Goods:
Cattle and Commodities in a South African Context,” American Ethnologist 17
no. 2 (May 1990): 195–216; Jane Guyer, ed., Money Matters: Instability, Values,
and Social Payments in the Modern History of West African Communities
(Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1995); and Sharon Hutchinson, “The Cattle
of Money and the Cattle of Girls Among the Nuer, 1930–83,” American
Ethnologist 19 no. 2 (May 1992): 294–316.
9. For only a few of the most prominent examples, see Catherine Asher and
Thomas Metcalf, eds., Perceptions of South Asia’s Visual Past (New Delhi:
American Institute of Indian Studies, 1994); Bernard Cohn, Colonialism and Its
Form of Knowledge: The British in India (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1996); Nicholas Dirks, Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern
India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001); Sudipta Kaviraj, “Writing,
Speaking, Being: Language and the Historical Formation of Identities in India,”
in Nationalstaat und Sprachkonflikte in Sud-und Sudostasien, ed. Dagmar
Hellmann-Rajanayagam and Dietmar Rothermund (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner
Verlag, 1992): 25–65; Gyanendra Pandey, The Construction of Communalism in
Colonial North India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1990); Mrinalini Sinha,
Colonial Masculinity: The “Manly Englishman” and the “Effeminate Bengali” in
the Late Nineteenth Century (New York: Manchester University Press, 1995).
10. Maxine Berg, “In Pursuit of Luxury: Global History and British Consumer
Goods in the Eighteenth Century,” Past and Present 182 (2004): 104; and John
Styles, “Product Innovation in Early Modern London,” Past and Present 168
(2000): 129, 167.
11. Tapati Guha-Thakurta, The Making of a New “Indian” Art: Artists, Aesthetics
and Nationalism in Bengal 1850–1920 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1992); Partha Mitter, Art and Nationalism in Colonial India, 1850–1922:
Occidental Orientations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
12. Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya, “Painting with the Needle,” Marg 17 no. 2
(1964): 3.
13. Saloni Mathur, India By Design: Colonial History and Cultural Display
(Berkeley: University of California, 2007), 46.
14. Roy, Traditional Industry in the Economy of Colonial India, 6.
15. Arindam Dutta, The Bureaucracy of Beauty: Design in the Age of Its Global
Reproducibility (New York: Routledge, 2006), 275.
16. For similar design reform efforts in England see Adrian Rifkin, “Success
Disavowed: The Schools of Design in Mid-Nineteenth Century Britain (An
Allegory),” Journal of Design History 1 no. 2 (1988): 89, 101.
17. For an overview of the major divisions in the nationalist movement for
and against Western models of industrial and economic development, see
Ira Klein, “Indian Nationalism and Anti-Industrialization: The Roots of
Gandhian Economics,” South Asia 3 (August 1973): 93–104.
18. Goswami, Producing India, 240.
NOTES 207
19. Bipan Chandra, The Rise and Growth of Economic Nationalism in India:
Economic Policies of Indian National Leadership, 1880–1905 (New Delhi:
People’s Publishing House, 1966).
20. Sanjay Joshi, Fractured Modernity: The Making of a Middle Class in Colonial
North India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001); Veena Naregal, Language
Politics, Elites and the Public Sphere: Western India under Colonialism (London:
Anthem Press, 2002).
21. Gyan Prakash, Another Reason: Science and the Imagination of Modern India
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999); Sanjay Seth, Subject Lessons: The
Western Education of Colonial India (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007).
22. Partha Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought in the Colonial World: A Derivative
Discourse? (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986).
23. Mathur, India By Design, 48.
24. Dutta, The Bureaucracy of Beauty; Mathur, India by Design.
25. Sudipta Sen, Empire of Free Trade: The East India Company and the Making of
the Colonial Marketplace (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998);
Carla Sinopoli, The Political Economy of Craft Production: Crafting Empire in
South India, c. 1350–1650 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
26. Thomas Metcalf, An Imperial Vision: Indian Architecture and Britain’s Raj
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989); G. H. R. Tillotson, The
Tradition of Indian Architecture: Continuity, Controversy and Change since 1850
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989); and Raymond Head, “Bagshot Park
and Indian Crafts,” in Influences in Victorian Art and Architecture, ed. Sarah
Macready and F. H. Thompson (London: Society of Antiquarians: Occasional
Paper [New Series] VII, 1985), 139–149.
27. Mitter, Art and Nationalism in Colonial India, 1850–1922; Guha-Thakurta,
The Making of a New “Indian” Art.
28. For examples of works that largely ignore politics, see Ritu Kumar, Costumes
and Textiles of Royal India (London: Christie’s Books, 1999); Sherry Rehman
and Naheed Jafri, Kashmiri Shawl: From Jamavar to Paisley (Ahmedabad, India:
Mapin, 2006); B. N. Goswamy, Kalyan Krishna and Tarla P. Dundh, Indian
Costumes in the Collection of the Calico Museum of Textiles (Ahmedabad, India:
Calico Museum of Textiles, 1993); and Oppi Untracht, Traditional Jewelry of
India (New York: Henry N. Abrams, 1997). For politics as expressed in and
through dress, see Emma Tarlo, Clothing Matters: Dress and Identity in Modern
India (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1996).
29. Christopher Pinney, Camera Indica: The Social Life of Indian Photographs
(Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1997); Christopher Pinney, “Photos of the
Gods”: The Printed Image and Political Struggle in India (London: Reaktion,
2004); Kajri Jain, Gods in the Bazaar: The Economies of Indian Calendar Art
(Durham: Duke University Press, 2007); Priya Jaikumar, Cinema at the End of
Empire: A Politics of Transition in Britain and India (Durham : Duke University
Press, 2006); and Sumathi Ramaswamy, ed., Beyond Appearances? Visual
Practices and Ideologies in Modern India (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2003).
208 NOTES
30. C. A. Bayly, “The Origins of Swadeshi (Home Industry): Cloth and Indian
Society, 1700–1930,” in The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural
Perspective, ed. Arjun Appadurai (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1986), 285–321.
31. Trivedi, Clothing Gandhi’s Nation.
32. Svati Joshi, “Dalpatram and the Nature of Literary Shifts in Nineteenth-
Century Ahmedabad,” in India’s Literary History: Essays on the Nineteenth
Century, ed. Stuart Blackburn and Vasudha Dalmia (New Delhi: Permanent
Black, 2004), 327–357.
33. Goswami, Producing India, 67, 83.
34. A very expensive, double ikat silk in which color is applied by resist dyeing the
warp and weft yarn, traditionally made in Patan and Surat.
35. For various proposals, see George Wilkens Terry to Government of Bombay,
April 21, 1864. Maharashtra State Archives (hereafter MSA) General
Department (hereafter GD), 1862–64: v. 15, c. 420: 275–279; “The Sir Jamsetjee
Jeejebhoy School of Art and Industry.” MSA Education Department (hereafter
ED) 1875: v. 16, c. 12: 305; K. M. Chatfield to C. Gonne, May 8, 1880. MSA ED
1881: v. 27, c. 7: 140; K. M. Chatfield to Secretary to Government, Educational
Department, October 16, 1888. MSA ED 1889: v. 45, c. 8: 142; John Griffiths
to Director of Public Instruction, October 22, 1889. MSA ED 1889: v. 45,
c. 8: 237; Government of Bombay, Report of the Director of Public Instruction in
the Bombay Presidency for the Year, 1899–1900 (Bombay: Government Central
Press, 1900), lv; and E. Giles, “Report on the Industrial Conference held in
Bombay on 7th and 8th March 1904.” MSA ED 1905: v. 70, c. 7: 36. Hereafter
annual reports from that Director of Public Instruction will be referred to
as “Report of the DPI for xxxx,” with the Presidency location indicated by
author.
36. Lieutenant-Colonel J. Clibborn, C. A. Radice, R. E. Enthoven, and Rev. F.
Westcott, Report on Industrial Education: Part I (Calcutta: Superintendent of
Government Printing, 1903), 30.
37. Large, decorated wooden dowry boxes.
38. A warp-faced textile made with a silk warp and a cotton weft, often woven in
striped patterns and popular in Muslim communities.
39. Embroidery done with cotton thread that has been wrapped in wire; tradi-
tionally the wire was gold or silver, but cheaper metals are now more com-
monly used.
40. Government of India, Census of India 1961: Vol. V, Part VII-A(21): Selected
Crafts of Gujarat—Bandhani or Tie and Dye Sari of Jamnagar (New Delhi:
Manager of Publications, 1969), xi.
41. Asok Mitra, Preface in Government of India, Census of India, 1961: Vol. V, Part
VII-A(1): Selected Crafts of Gujarat—Agate Industry of Cambay (New Delhi:
Manager of Publications, 1967), ix.
42. Government of Bombay, Report of the DPI for 1900–1901, 35.
43. Government Resolution from the Revenue Department, no. 572, 20 January
1911, appended to the end of Government of Bombay, Annual Report on the
NOTES 209
Working of Co-operative Societies in the Bombay Presidency (Including Sind) for

the Twelve Months Ending March 31st, 1910 (Bombay: Government Central
Press, 1910).
44. N. M. Joshi, Urban Handicrafts of the Bombay Deccan (Poona: Gokhale
Institute of Politics and Economics, Publication No. 5, 1936), 7.
45. See John Griffiths, “The Brass and Copper Wares of the Bombay Presidency,”
Journal of Indian Art and Industry (hereafter JIAI) 7 no. 55 (July 1896):
13–22. For changes in the brassware industry as a whole, see chap. 5 in Roy,
Traditional Industry in the Economy of Colonial India, particularly pages
134–136.
46. Literally “flower-work”: usually done on veil cloths, worked from the back of
the fabric generally in a flat, satin stitch, often filling the whole ground of the
design.
47. See, for instance, the article on the topic by British novelist Flora Annie Steel
in the JIAI: “Phulkari Work in the Punjab,” JIAI 2 no. 24 (1888): 71–72.
48. Michelle Maskiell, “Embroidering the Past: Phulkari Textiles and Gendered
Work as ‘Tradition’ and ‘Heritage’ in Colonial and Contemporary Punjab,”
Journal of Asian Studies 38 no. 2 (May 1999): 361–388.
49. For details on differentiation and development within crafts generally, see
Roy, Traditional Industry in the Economy of Colonial India; for information on
differentiation within the handloom industry in particular, see chap. 3.
50. Haynes, “The Logic of the Artisan Firm in a Capitalist Economy.”
51. See, for instance, Rosalind O’Hanlon, “Recovering the Subject: Subaltern
Studies and Histories of Resistance in Colonial South Asia,” Modern Asian
Studies 22 no. 1 (1988): 189–224; also the introduction in Nita Kumar,
Lessons from Schools: The History of Education in Banaras (New Delhi: Sage
Publications, 2000).
52. A workshop or small factory owner.
53. Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson, “Beyond ‘Culture’: Space, Identity and the
Politics of Difference,” Cultural Anthropology 7 no. 1 (1992): 16.
54. Roy, Traditional Industry in the Economy of Colonial India; Roy, Artisans and
Industrialization; Haynes, “The Logic of the Artisan Firm in a Capitalist
Economy”; and Haynes, “Artisan Cloth-Producers and the Emergence of
Powerloom Manufacture in Western India.”
55. Lata Mani, “Contentious Traditions: The Debate on Sati in Colonial India,” in
Recasting Women: Essays in Colonial History, ed. Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh
Vaid (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1988): 88–126.
Chapter 1
1. Official Descriptive and Illustrated Catalogue, vol. 2 (London: Royal Commission

for the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, 1851), 858.
2. For descriptions of the contents of the Indian Court, see The Crystal Palace
and its Contents: Being An Illustrated Cyclopaedia of the Great Exhibition of the
210 NOTES
Industry of All Nations, 1851 (London: W. M. Clark, 1852), 65–69 and 100–
103; and Official Descriptive and Illustrated Catalogue, vol. 2, 857–937.
3. Carol Breckenridge, “The Aesthetics and Politics of Colonial Collecting: India at
World Fairs,” Comparative Studies of Society and History 31 no. 2 (1989): 205.
4. Quoted in Tallis’s History and Description of the Crystal Palace and the
Exhibition of the World’s Industry in 1851 (London: John Tallis & Co., 1852),
239. See also John Forbes Royle writing in the Official Descriptive and
Illustrated Catalogue, vol. 2, 859–860.
5. For early European attempts to document Indian dyeing and printing see the
work of Paul R. Schwartz, including Printing on Cotton at Ahmedabad, India,
1678 (Ahmedabad: Calico Museum of Textiles, Museum Monograph No. 1,
1969); “French Documents on Indian Cotton Painting: The Beaulieu ms., c.
1734,” Journal of Indian Textile History 2 (1956): 5–23; and “The Roxburgh
Account of Indian Cotton Painting, 1795,” Journal of Indian Textile History 4
(1959): 47–56. See also George Watt, “Note on a Red and a Yellow Dye Said to
Have Been Prepared in Bombay During 1787,” in Selections from the Records
of the Government of India, Revenue and Agricultural Department, vol. 1, part
1:1888–89 (Calcutta, 1889): 53–58.
6. Schwartz, Printing on Cotton at Ahmedabad.
7. Buchanan’s survey was only finally edited and published some thirty years
later by Montgomery Martin as The History, Antiquities, Topography, and
Statistics of Eastern India (London: Wm. H. Allen & Co., 1838).
8. Carla Sinopoli, The Political Economy of Craft Production: Crafting Empire in
South India, c. 1350–1650 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003),
chap. 5; Tripta Verma, Karkhanas Under the Mughals from Akbar to Aurangzeb:
A Study in Economic Development (Delhi: Pragati Publications, 1994).
9. C. A. Bayly, “‘Archaic’ and ‘Modern’ Globalization in the Eurasian and African
Arena, ca. 1750–1850,” in Globalization in World History, ed. A. G. Hopkins
(New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2002), 50–51.
10. C. A. Bayly, Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social
Communication in India, 1780–1870 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1996).
11. David Ludden, “India’s Development Regime,” in Colonialism and Culture, ed.
Nicholas Dirks (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1992), 252.
12. Bernard Cohn, Colonialism and Its Form of Knowledge: The British in India
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 5.
13. Quoted in Lala Baji Nath, “Some Factors in the Industrial and Commercial
Development of India,” in Report of the First Indian Industrial Conference Held
at Benaras on Saturday, the 30th December, 1905 (Allahabad: The Indian Press,
1906), 299.
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004).
15. See, for instance, David Arnold, Colonizing the Body: State Medicine and
Epidemic Disease in Nineteenth Century India (Delhi: Oxford University Press,
NOTES 211
1995); James Mill and Satadru Sen, eds., Confronting the Body: The Politics of
Physicality in Colonial and Post-Colonial India (London: Anthem Press, 2004).
16. For a more extended discussion of the emergence of a new definition of what
constituted “traditional” Indian design, see Abigail McGowan, “‘All That
is Rare, Characteristic or Beautiful’: Design and the Defense of Tradition
in Colonial India, 1851–1903,” Journal of Material Culture 10 no. 3 (2005):
263–287.
17. John Forbes Royle, On the Culture and Commerce of Cotton in India and
Elsewhere (London: Smith, Elder, & Co., 1851), Appendix: “Papers Referring
to the Proposed Contributions from India for the Industrial Exhibition of
1851,” 590–591.
18. Paul Greenhalgh, Ephemeral Vistas: The Expositions Universelles, Great
Exhibitions and World’s Fairs, 1851–1939 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988);
Lara Kriegel, “Narrating the Subcontinent in 1851: India at the Crystal Palace,”
in The Great Exhibition of 1851: New Interdisciplinary Essays, ed. Louise
Purbrick (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001), 149; Lara Kriegel,
Grand Designs: Labor, Empire, and the Museum in Victorian Culture (Durham:
Duke University Press, 2007), 115–117.
19. Official Descriptive and Illustrated Catalogue, vol. 2, 857; Jeffrey A. Auerbach,
The Great Exhibition of 1851: A Nation on Display (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1999), 100.
20. John Forbes Royle, “Lecture XI: The Arts and Manufactures of India,” in
Lectures on the Results of the Exhibition: Delivered before the Society of Arts,
Manufactures and Commerce (London: David Bogue, 1852), 397.
21. Owen Jones made his comments as chair of John Forbes Royle’s lecture to
the Society of Arts. (Forbes Royle, “Lecture XI: The Arts and Manufactures of
India,” 401).
22. Owen Jones, The Grammar of Ornament (London: Day & Son, 1856).
23. Tallis’s History and Description of the Crystal Palace, 240, 238.
24. The Cambridge scientist William Whewell spoke for many when he dismissed
the beauty of India’s crafts as a sign of barbarism. Thus he argued that, within
India, “the arts are mainly exercised to gratify the tastes of the few; with us,
to supply the wants of the many. There, the wealth of a province is absorbed
in the dress of a mighty warrior; here, the gigantic weapons of the peaceful
potentate are used to provide clothing for the world.” William Whewell, “The
General Bearing of the Great Exhibition on the Progress of Art and Science,”
in Lectures on the Results of the Exhibition: Delivered before the Society of Arts,
Manufactures and Commerce (London: David Bogue, 1852), 14.
25. Official Descriptive and Illustrated Catalogue, vol. 2, 936.
26. Matthew Digby Wyatt, “Orientalism in European Industry,” Macmillan’s
Magazine 21 (1870): 553.
27. Matthew Digby Wyatt, The Industrial Arts of the Nineteenth Century: A Series
of Illustrations of the Choicest Specimens Produced by Every Nation at the Great
Exhibition of Works of Industry, 1851, 2 vols. (London: Day & Son, 1851, 1853).
212 NOTES
28. Larry D. Lutchmansingh, “Commodity Exhibitionism at the London Great

Exhibition of 1851,” Annals of Scholarship 7 no 2 (1990): 207, 208.
29. Royle, “Lecture XI: The Arts and Manufactures of India,” 391.
30. Tallis’s History and Description of the Crystal Palace, 239.
31. Auerbach, The Great Exhibition of 1851, 133–134.
32. Official Descriptive and Illustrated Catalogue, vol. 2, 857–937.
33. Ibid., 932.
34. The Crystal Palace and Its Contents, 101.
35. Royle, On the Culture and Commerce of Cotton in India, Appendix, 586–587.
36. Gottfried Semper, “Science, Industry and Art: Proposals for the Development
of a National Taste in Art at the Closing of the London Industrial Exhibition,”
in The Four Elements of Architecture and Other Writings, trans. Harry Francis
Mallgrave and Wolfgang Herrman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1989 [1852]), 142.
37. John Ruskin, Modern Painters (vol. 3, 1856) as quoted in Partha Mitter, Much
Maligned Monsters: History of European Reactions to Indian Art (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1977), 240–241.
38. Royle. “Lecture XI: The Arts and Manufactures of India,” 331.
39. See, for example, Schwartz, Printing on Cotton at Ahmedabad; Schwartz,
“French Documents on Indian Cotton Painting”; Schwartz, “The Roxburgh
Account of Indian Cotton Painting”; and Maxine Berg, “In Pursuit of Luxury:
Global History and British Consumer Goods in the Eighteenth Century,” Past
and Present 182 (February 2004): 85–142.
40. Tallis’s History and Description of the Crystal Palace, vol. 2, 163.
41. Ibid., 193.
42. Official Descriptive and Illustrated Catalogue, vol. 2, 931.
43. Compared with the 30,000 square feet allotted to India in 1851, the Indian
Courts at the 1886 Colonial and Indian Exhibition in London occupied
some 103,000 square feet; the space given over to the subcontinent at the
Empire Exhibition of 1924 was larger still, totaling five acres. (Government
of India, Revenue and Agricultural Department, Resolution, Cir. No.
15/5–8, February 17, 1888. Baroda Public Records Office [hereafter BPRO],
Huzur English Office, Misc. Dept. section 65, file 8A. Arindam Dutta, “The
Politics of Display: India 1886 and 1986,” Journal of Arts and Ideas 30–31
[1997]: 120).
44. Other major Indian exhibitions in the nineteenth century included Madras
(1855), Hyderabad (1856), Coimbatore (1857), Calcutta (1864, 1873, and
1883), Lahore (1864, 1881, and 1893), Nagpur (1865), Jubbulpore (1866),
Agra (1867), Akola (1867), Karachi (1869), and Mysore (1888). For a discus-
sion of Indian incorporation into a global exhibitionary project, see Peter H.
Hoffenberg, An Empire on Display: English, Indian and Australian Exhibitions
from the Crystal Palace to the Great War (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2001).
NOTES 213
46. Ibid., 30.

47. Royle, On the Culture and Commerce of Cotton in India, Appendix, 593–595.
48. For a listing of major international exhibitions, with a focus particularly on
England, Australia, and India, see the bibliography in Hoffenberg, An Empire
on Display.
49. S. F. Markham and H. Hargreaves, The Museums of India (London: Museums
Association, 1936), 6–7.
50. See John Forbes Watson, The International Exhibition of 1862: Classified
and Descriptive Catalogue of the Indian Department (London: Her Majesty’s
Commissioners, 1862), iv; Report on the Jubbulpore Exhibition of Arts,
Manufactures and Produce, December 1866 (Nagpur: Central Provinces
Printing Press, 1867), 2; General Report of the North-West Provinces Exhibition,
Held at Agra, February 1867 (Roorkee: Thomason Civil Engineering College
Press, 1868), 20; and Dr Birdwood to Government of Bombay, July 14, 1880.
MSA: ED 1880: v. 21, c. 277.
51. Lieut. A. Y. Shortt to Henry Carter, July 8, 1854. MSA: GD 1856: v. 73, c. 92.
52. “The Carved Teak Wood Screen of the Bombay Court,” JIAI 1 no. 11 (May
1886): 82.
53. Henry Y. D. Scott, Memorandum: International Exhibition of 1872:
Representation of Peasant Jewellery, August 8, 1871. MSA: GD 1871: v. 21, c. 8.
54. T. C. Hope, Report on the Broach Exhibition of 1868–69 (Bombay: Education
Society’s Press, 1869), 8–9.
55. Ibid., 14.
56. Ibid.
57. Ibid., 11–12. Organizer of the machinery exhibits, the Khandesh collector L.
R. Ashburner specifically excluded from the exhibition anything he thought
unsuitable for Indian conditions, fearing that the “impression on the native
mind would have been such as seriously to check the introduction of machin-
ery generally.” (Ibid., 11–12).
58. Elphinstone, Letter to Minute No. 4739 of 1855, August 31, 1855. MSA: GD
1855: v. 61, c. 814.
59. Dr. Henry Carter to Secretary to the Local Committee of Surat and Broach,
August 21, 1854. MSA: GD 1856: v. 73, c. 92.
60. Ibid.
61. Reverend Dr. Alexander Garden Fraser to W. Hart, June 19, 1857. MSA: GD
1857: v. 55, c. 34.
62. Dr. Wellington Gray to K. M. Chatfield, April 21, 1876. MSA: GD 1876: v. 67,
c. 485. Dr. D. MacDonald to Deputy Municipal Commissioner for the City of
Bombay, December 17, 1898. MSA: ED 1898: v. 54, c. 534.
63. David Washbrook, “Agriculture and Industrialization in Colonial India,”
in Agriculture and Industrialization, ed. Peter Mathias and John A. Davis
(Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1996), 168.
64. Dr. Wellington Gray to Director of Public Instruction, Bombay, November 22,
1873. MSA: GD 1874: v. 42, c. 316; Dr. Wellington Gray to K. M. Chatfield,
April 21, 1876. MSA: GD 1876: v. 67, c. 485.
214 NOTES
65. Dr. George Birdwood to William Hart, July 19, 1858. MSA: GD 1858: v. 64,
c. 15.
66. Dr. George Birdwood to Secretary to Government, General Department, May
15, 1861. MSA: GD 1861: v. 7, c. 82.
67. Italics in the original. John Forbes Watson, The Textile Manufactures and the
Costumes of the People of India (reprinted by the Indological Book House,
Varanasi, 1982 [1866]), 3.
68. Deborah Swallow, “The India Museum and the British-Indian Textile Trade in
the Late Nineteenth Century,” Textile History 30 no. 1 (1999): 29–45.
69. Governor Fitzgerald quoted in Hope, Report on the Broach Exhibition of 1868–
69, Appendix D: Address of the Broach Exhibition Committee and Reply of
His Excellency the Governor, 31–32.
70. Ibid., Appendix G: Selections from Reports of the Jurors, 53–55.
71. Ibid., Appendix F: List of Prizes Awarded at the Broach Exhibition of 1868,
44–48.
72. Ibid., Appendix G, 50.
73. George Wilkins Terry and E. W. Ravenscroft to Chief Secretary to Government,
General Department, July 30, 1872. MSA: GD 1872: v. 24, c. 588: 73.
74. C. Bernard, Report on the Arts, Manufactures and Produce at the Nagpur
Exhibition (Nagpur, 1866), 22.
75. Elphinstone, Minute No. 4739 of 1855, August 31, 1855. MSA: GD 1855: v. 61,
c. 814; 128.
76. Nicholas Dirks, Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), chaps. 7–10.
77. Tony Ballantyne and Antoinette Burton, ed., Bodies in Contact: Rethinking
Colonial Encounters in World History (Durham, NC: Duke University Press,
2005); Mill and Sen, eds., Confronting the Body.
78. Thomas Holbein Hendley, London Indo-Colonial Exhibition of 1886: Handbook
of the Jeypore Courts (Calcutta: Calcutta Central Press, 1886), 26.
79. “Sir George C. M. Birdwood, K.C.I.E., C.S.I, M.D., LL.D.: His Life and Work,”
JIAI 8 no. 65 (1899): 45–47.
80. George Birdwood, The Industrial Arts of India (London: Chapman & Hall,
1880), 1–2.
81. Ibid., 154–162.
82. Ibid., 312.
83. Government of Bombay, General Department, Resolution No. 3395 of 1880,
November 10, 1880. MSA: ED 1880: v. 27, c. 505.
84. Birdwood, The Industrial Arts of India, vi.
85. P. S. Melvill to Acting Minister of the Baroda State, February 12, 1881. BPRO:
Huzur English Office, Rev. Dept. section 238, file 1.
86. Government of Bombay, Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency, Vol. XVIII, Part
II: Poona (Bombay: Government Central Press, 1885), 173–210.
87. Government of Bombay, General Report on the Administration of the Bombay
Presidency for the Year 1871–72 (Bombay: Government Central Press, 1873),
364–368.
NOTES 215
88. Swallow, “The India Museum and the British-Indian Textile Trade in the
Late Nineteenth Century.” This lack of interest in production was revealed
in the basic organizing principles of the project, which separated goods out
“according to function, quality, material and decoration.” (Watson, The Textile
Manufactures and the Costumes of the People of India, 4.) Since weaving tech-
niques were not part of his basic classification structure, silk-bordered cottons
woven on identical looms appeared scattered throughout the survey accord-
ing to their use as turbans, saris, or dhotis.
II: Poona, 186–191.
90. Ibid., Vol. XVI: Nasik (Bombay: Government Central Press, 1883), 51–53,
145–146.
91. Ibid., Vol. V: Cutch, Palanpur, and Mahi Kantha (Bombay: Government
Central Press, 1880), 123–124.
92. See, for instance, H. J. R. Twigg’s monograph on carpet weaving in the
Bombay Presidency, the first chapter of which summarizes information
on carpet weaving from all the district gazetteers of the presidency. H. J. R.
Twigg, A Monograph on the Art and Practice of Carpet-Making in the Bombay
Presidency, 1908 (reprinted in Art and Industry Through the Ages: Monograph
Series on Bombay Presidency [New Delhi: Navrang, 1976]). As the Diwan of
Baroda, Kazi Shahabudin, argued in 1881, because crafts changed little from
year to year, “a description of them once given will hold good for a long
period.” (Kazi Shahabudin to P. S. Melvill, February 24, 1881. BPRO: Huzur
English Office, Rev. Dept. section 238, file 1.)
93. Government of Bombay, Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency, Vol. XX: Sholapur
(Bombay: Government Central Press, 1884), 269.
94. Ibid., 103–118, 138.
95. Government of India, Home Department (Education), Resolution No. 1999,
June 18, 1888. MSA: ED 1888: v. 64, c. 563: 102.
96. John Griffiths to L. Harvey, January 8, 1894. MSA: ED 1894: v. 33, c. 70: 267;
Government of Bombay, Resolution No. 776, March 2, 1894. MSA: ED 1894:
v. 33, c. 70: 307. See his report “Brass and Copper Wares of the Bombay
Presidency,” JIAI 7 no. 55 (July 1896): 13–22.
97. Government of India, Home Department (Education), Resolution No. 1999,
June 18, 1888. MSA: ED 1888: v. 64, c. 563: 102.
98. J. R. Martin, A Monograph on Tanning and Working in Leather in the Bombay
Presidency, 1903 (reprinted in Art and Industry Through the Ages, 318–319);
E. Maconochie, A Monograph on the Pottery and Glass-Ware of the Bombay
Presidency, 1895 (reprinted in Art and Industry Through the Ages, 263); R.
R. F. Kirk, A Monograph on Paper-Making in the Bombay Presidency, 1907?
(reprinted in Art and Industry Through the Ages, 306, 309).
99. Five of the monographs (on silk, dyeing, pottery, iron and steel, and leather)
had separate sections devoted to the key castes involved in production; the
remaining studies only named different castes, without giving ethnographic
detail on their customs, habits, or general characteristics.
216 NOTES
100. C. G. H. Fawcett, A Monograph on Dyes and Dyeing in the Bombay Presidency,

1908 (reprinted in Art and Industry Through the Ages, 87).
101. Ibid., 90.
102. In his monograph on carpet weaving in the Bombay Presidency, H. J. R.
Twigg laid even more emphasis on the embodied, experiential nature of
dyeing knowledge. His section on dyeing of wool for carpets, for instance,
included no recipes for dyes at all, as he declared they would only be “espe-
cially wearying and of no practical use whatsoever. It is only in the dye-shed
itself that dyeing can be learned.” (Twigg, A Monograph on the Art and
Practice of Carpet-Making in the Bombay Presidency, 180.)
103. Quoted in John Griffiths to K M. Chatfield, June 22, 1883. MSA: ED 1883:
v. 21, c. 706: 187.
104. Government of India, Revenue and Agricultural Department, Resolution No.
1, January 3, 1884. MSA: ED 1892: v. 51, c. #583: 1.
105. The Story of the Sir J. J. School of Art (Bombay: Government Central Press,
1958), 47–54.
106. K. M. Chatfield to C. Gonne, May 8, 1880. MSA: ED 1881: v. 27, c. 7;
Government of Bombay, General Department. Letter to Resolution, No.
2526 of 1884, July 19, 1884. MSA: ED 1884: v. 25, c. 115.
107. Government of Bombay, General Department. Letter to Resolution, No.
2526 of 1884, July 19, 1884. MSA: ED 1884: v. 25, c. 115, 42.
108. Ibid.
109. Dr. D. Macdonald to Municipal Commissioner for City of Bombay, May 25,
1886. MSA: ED 1886: v. 28, c. 534.
110. Thomas Holbein Hendley, Memorials of the Jeypore Exhibition 1883, vol. 1
(London: W. Griggs, 1884), v.
111. G. H. R. Tillotson, The Tradition of Indian Architecture: Continuity, Controversy
and Change since 1850 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 66.
112. Quoted in “The Opening of the Albert Hall and Museum at Jeypore,” JIAI
2 no. 19 (1888): 21; Thomas Holbein Hendley, Handbook to the Jeypore
Museum (Calcutta: W. Griggs, 1895), 2. For a similar description of the
carving work at the Jaipur Museum, see Rudyard Kipling, Letters of Marque
(Allahabad: A. H. Wheeler & Co., 1891), 23.
113. For an analysis of its role in documenting and defining traditional design
see Deepali Dewan, “Scripting South Asia’s Visual Past: The Journal of Indian
Art and Industry and the Production of Knowledge in the Late Nineteenth
Century,” in Imperial Co-Histories: National Identities and the British and
Colonial Press, ed. Julie Codell (London: Associated University Presses, 2003),
29–44.
114. Government of India, Revenue and Agricultural Department, Resolution No.
1, January 3, 1884. MSA: ED 1892: v. 51, c. 583: 1.
115. Dewan, “Scripting South Asia’s Visual Past,” 35. “An Annotated Index to the
Arts and Industries of India: The North-West Provinces and Oudh,” JIAI 1
no. 7 (July 1885): 1.
NOTES 217
116. “An Annotated Index to the Arts and Industries of India,” 3.

117. Dewan, “Scripting South Asia’s Visual Past,” 36.
118. For an overview of Hendley’s contributions to Indian arts, see “The Late
Colonel Thomas Holbein Hendley,” JIAI 17 no. 136 (1917): 82–86.
119. Hendley, Memorials of the Jeypore Exhibition 1883, vol. 1, v.
120. B. A. Brendon, “Woollen Fabrics of the Bombay Presidency,” JIAI 10 no. 82
(April 1903): 17–18; S. M. Edwardes, “Silk Fabrics of the Bombay Presidency,”
JIAI 10 no. 81 (January 1903): 1–6.
121. Compare, for instance, Edwardes’ 1900 A Monograph upon the Silk Fabrics
of the Bombay Presidency and his article “Silk Fabrics of the Bombay
Presidency,” which appeared in the JIAI in January 1903.
122. Quoted in Government of Bombay, Report of the DPI for 1890–91, 27.
123. Hendley, London Indo-Colonial Exhibition of 1886, 12.
124. Ibid., 13.
125. Clare Wilkinson-Weber, “Women, Work and the Imagination of Craft
in South Asia,” Contemporary South Asia 13 no. 3 (September 2004):
296–297.
126. J. R. Royle quoted in E. C. Buck, Resolution, Cir. No. 15/5–8, Government
of India, Revenue and Agricultural Department, February 17, 1888. BPRO:
Huzur English Office, Misc. Dept. section 65, file 8A.
127. Quoted in Hoffenberg, An Empire on Display, 186.
128. L. R. W. Forest to John Griffiths, July 3, 1890. MSA: ED 1890: v. 24, c. 624.
129. Director of Public Instruction to Secretary to Government, General
Department, October 17, 1904. MSA: ED 1904: v. 27, c. 579: 55.
130. “Appendix VIII: Speeches made at opening ceremony of industrial and
agricultural exhibition at Benaras,” in Report of the First Indian Industrial
Conference Held at Benaras, lxxxvii–lxxxviii.
131. Dewan, “Scripting South Asia’s Visual Past,” 40.
132. Sanjay Seth, Subject Lessons: The Western Education of Colonial India
(Durham: Duke University Press, 2002), 4, 30, 31.
133. Arjun Appadurai, “Number in the Colonial Imagination” in Modernity at
Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Delhi: Oxford University Press,
1997), 133.
134. Bernard Cohn, “The Census, Social Structure and Objectification in South
Asia” in An Anthropologist among the Historians, and Other Essays (Delhi:
Oxford University Press, 1987), 228–229.
135. Ludden, “India’s Development Regime,” 270.
136. Seth, Subject Lessons, 172–176.
137. John Styles, “Product Innovation in Early Modern London,” Past and Present
168 (August 2000): 124–169.
138. “Deshi Karigarine Uttejan Aapva Vishe” [Regarding encouragement to be
given to native arts and crafts], Buddhiprakash 23 no. 8 (1876): 170. To give
but one example, the 1879 government gazetteer noted that Muslim paper
makers in Ahmedabad bound community members to secrecy on production
218 NOTES
matters, while in other crafts parents refused to teach their daughters for fear
that the latter would divulge family secrets to their husband’s household after
marriage. (Government of Bombay, Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency, Vol.
IV: Ahmedabad [Bombay: Government Central Press, 1879], 134.)
139. Michele Archambault, “Blockprinted Fabrics of Gujarat for Export to Siam:
An Encounter with Mr. Maneklal T. Gajjar,” Journal of the Siam Society 77
no. 2 (1989): 71–74. For other examples of such family pattern books, see Jim
Masselos, “The Artist as Patron: Women’s Embroidery in Gujarat,” in Popular
Art in Asia: The People as Patrons, ed. Jim Masselos (Sydney: University of
Sydney, 1984): 34–46.
140. Manecklal Gajjar, Interview, November 9, 2000, Pethapur, Gujarat. For more
on the transition from private to public design in the late nineteenth century,
see Abigail McGowan, “Private Goods in the Public Eye: Design Books for
Crafts in Late Nineteenth Century India,” paper presented at the 34th Annual
Conference on South Asia, Madison, Wisconsin, October 6–9, 2005.
141. Tirthankar Roy, “Music as Artisan Tradition,” Contributions to Indian
Sociology 32 no. 1 (1998): 21–42.
142. Deepali Dewan, “The Body at Work: Colonial Art Education and the Figure
of the ‘Native Craftsman,’” in Confronting the Body, 127.
143. Saloni Mathur, “Living Ethnographic Exhibits: The Case of 1886,” Cultural
Anthropology 15 no. 4 (2001): 507.
144. T. N. Mukharji, A Visit to Europe (London: Edward Stanford, 1889), 99.
145. Griffiths, “Brass and Copper Wares of the Bombay Presidency,” 14.
Chapter 2
1. “Deshi Karigarine Uttejan” [Encouragement to native crafts and industry],

Buddhiprakash, 24 no. 1 (January 1877): 10–14.
2. “Udhyog” [Industry], Buddhiprakash 44 no. 7 (July 1897): 205–212.
3. “Deshi Karigarine Uttejanne Lagti Babad” [Regarding the encouragement
and promotion of native crafts and industry], Buddhiprakash 24 no. 7 (July
1877): 152.
4. “Hunnar” [Industry], Stri Bodh 37 no. 9 (September 1893): 193.
5. “Masik Nondh” [Monthly notes], Buddhiprakash 50 no. 3 (March, 1903): 91.
6. “Hunnar,” Stri Bodh (September 1893): 193.
7. See, for example, the suggestions offered in “Udhyog,” Buddhiprakash (July
1897): 205.
8. “Masik Nondh,” Buddhiprakash (March, 1903): 91.
9. Arindam Dutta, The Bureaucracy of Beauty: Design in the Age of Its Global
Reproducibility (New York: Routledge, 2007), 255–256.
11. David Ludden, ‘India’s Development Regime,” in Colonialism and Culture, ed.
Nicholas Dirks (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992), 252.
NOTES 219
12. “Deshi Karigarine Uttejan-Part 1” [Encouragement to native crafts and

industries-Part 1] Buddhiprakash 24 no. 4 (April 1877): 76.
13. Sumit Sarkar, The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal, 1903–1908 (New Delhi:
People’s Publishing House, 1973), 124–131.
14. Glyn Barlow, Industrial India (Madras: G. A. Natesan, 1904), 69.
15. Ibid., 118.
16. Romesh C. Dutt, “Industrial India: A Review,” The Indian Review 5 no. 7 (July
1904): 440.
17. “Hunnar na Chupavi Rakhva Vishe: Bhashan” [Regarding keeping industry
secret: A speech], Buddhiprakash, 2 no. 2 (February 1856): 33–34.
18. “Hunnar na Chupavi Rakhva Vishe: Bhashan” [Regarding keeping industry
secret: A speech] (continued from previous issue), Buddhiprakash 2 no. 3
(March 1856): 46.
19. “Deshi Karigarine Uttejan-Part 2” [Encouragement for native arts and crafts-
Part 2], Buddhiprakash, 23 no. 10 (October 1876): 238.
20. David Ludden, “Orientalist Empiricism: Transformations of Colonial
Knowledge,” in Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament: Perspectives from
South Asia, ed. Carol A. Breckenridge and Peter van der Veer (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), 251.
21. Official Descriptive and Illustrated Catalogue, Vol. II (London: Royal
Commission for the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations,
1851), 936, 929.
22. Quoted in John Forbes Royle, “Lecture XI: The Arts and Manufactures of
India,” in Lectures on the Results of the Exhibition: Delivered before the Society
of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (London: David Bogue, 1852), 398.
23. See, for example, Gottfried Semper, “Science, Industry and Art: Proposals
for the Development of a National Taste in Art at the Closing of the London
Industrial Exhibition,” in The Four Elements of Architecture and Other
Writings, trans. Harry Francis Mallgrave and Wolfgang Herrman (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1989 [1852]), 130–167.
24. For a sense of these influences, see Karen Livingstone and Linda Parry,
eds., International Arts and Crafts (London: Victoria and Albert Museum,
2005).
25. George Birdwood, Two Letters on the Industrial Arts of India (London: W. B.
Whittington and Co., 1879), 3–4.
26. Naazia Ata-Ullah, “Stylistic Hybridity and Colonial Art and Design Education:
A Wooden Carved Screen by Ram Singh,” in Colonialism and the Object:
Empire, Material Culture and the Museum, ed. Tim Barringer and Tom Flynn
(New York: Routledge, 1998), 70.
27. Birdwood, The Industrial Arts of India, 312.
28. Flora Annie Steel, “Phulkari Work in the Punjab,” JIAI 2 no. 24 (1888):
71, 72.
29. “The British Indian Section, Paris Universal Exhibition, 1889,” JIAI 3 no. 28
(1890): 22.
30. Steel, “Phulkari Work in the Punjab,” 71, 72.
220 NOTES
31. Thomas Wardle, “The Indian Silk Culture Court,” JIAI 1 no. 15 (1886): 117.
32. Ibid., 122.
33. Birdwood, The Industrial Arts of India, 312.
34. Ibid., 334, 336.
35. Ananda Coomaraswamy, Medieval Sinhalese Art (Broad Campden: Essex
House Press, 1908); Rajput Painting (New York: Oxford University Press,
1916); The Dance of Siva (New York: Sunwise Turn, 1918); The History of
Indian and Indonesian Art (New York: E. Weyhe, 1927).
36. On issues unrelated to crafts, Coomaraswamy and Birdwood had much less in
common. Their sharpest differences arose around the question of Indian fine
arts; Coomaraswamy was one of the earliest, most impassioned defenders of
the beauty, sophistication, and worth of Indian painting and sculpture, while
Birdwood, as his infamous comparison of an image of the Buddha to a suet
pudding demonstrated, found no value in them whatsoever.
37. Roger Lipsey, Coomaraswamy, vol. 3: His Life and Work (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1977), chap. 5.
38. Ananda Coomaraswamy, The Indian Craftsman (New Delhi: Munshiram
Manoharlal Publishers Pvt, Ltd, 1989 [1909]), 58.
39. Alvin C. Moore, Jr., “Foreword,” The Indian Craftsman, xii–xiii.
40. T. N. Mukharji, A Visit to Europe (London: Edward Stanford, 1889), 222–223.
41. Tallis’s History and Description of the Crystal Palace and the Exhibition of the
World’s Industry in 1851 (London: John Tallis & Co., 1852), 193.
42. Ibid., 236. See also The Crystal Palace and Its Contents: Being An Illustrated
Cyclopaedia of the Great Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations, 1851
(London: W. M. Clark, 1852), 101.
43. William Whewell, “The General Bearing of the Great Exhibition on the
Progress of Art and Science,” in Lectures on the Results of the Exhibition:
Delivered before the Society of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (London:
David Bogue, 1852), 15.
44. Prem Behari, “Industrial Development of India,” in Report of the First Indian
Industrial Conference Held at Benaras on Saturday, the 30th December, 1905
(Allahabad: the Indian Press, 1906), xxxiii.
45. Ibid.
46. Alfred Chatterton, “The Salem Weaving Factory,” in Report of the Third
Industrial Conference Held at Surat on the 30th December 1907 (Madras:
Indian Industrial Conference, 1908), 196.
47. Behari, “Industrial Development of India,” xxxiii.
48. Thomas Wardle, Tissue or Textile Printing as an Art: A Lecture Delivered at the
Manchester Municipal School of Art Museum on Wednesday, March 15, 1890
(Manchester: Marsden & Co., 1890), 13.
49. Brenda M. King, Silk and Empire (Manchester: Manchester University Press,
2005), pt. 2.
50. Government of Bombay, Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency, Vol. IV:
Ahmedabad (Bombay: Government Central Press, 1879), 141, 111.
NOTES 221
51. See, for instance, D. A. Shah, An Historical Summary and Critical Examination
of the Indian Point of View in Economics: Being the Manockjee Limjee
Gold Medal Essay of the University of Bombay, for the Year 1916 (Bombay:
Bombay Vaibhav Press, 1920), 55; and “Hunnar Vishe” [Regarding industry],
Buddhiprakash 17 no 2 (February 1870): 32.
52. “The Exigencies of Progress in India,” Journal of the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha
15 no. 4 (April 1893): 23.
53. R. N. Mudholkar, “Presidential Address,” in The Industrial Conference held at
Madras, December 1908 (Madras: G. A. Natesan & Co., 1909), 19.
54. Quoted in B. G. Kale, “Small Industries in India,” The Indian Review 12 no. 1
(January 1911): 77.
55. Alfred Chatterton, Agricultural and Industrial Problems in India (Madras: G.
A. Natesan & Co., 1904), 137.
56. Indian Industrial Commission, Minutes of Evidence Taken before the Indian
Industrial Commission, 1916–1918, Vol. IV: Bombay (London: His Majesty’s
Stationery Office, 1919), 245, 323.
57. “The Exigencies of Progress in India,” 16–17.
58. Mukharji, A Visit to Europe, 77–78. No less a person than the great chem-
ist P. C. Ray agreed; see S. Irfan Habib, “Science, Technical Education and
Industrialisation: Contours of a Bhadralok Debate, 1890–1915,” in Technology
and the Raj: Western Technology and Technology Transfers to India, ed. Roy
MacLeod and Deepak Kumar (New Delhi: Sage, 1993), 119. See also Barlow,
Industrial India, 57, 61.
59. Alfred Chatterton, Industrial Evolution in India (Madras: “The Hindu” Office,
1912), 54. See also Calcutta International Exhibition of 1883–84: Reports of
the Bombay Committee and Others (Bombay: Times of India Press, 1884),
Appendix E., Mr. Griffiths’ Report, 14.
60. John Wallace, “Technical Education for the Workman,” in Report of the Third
Industrial Conference Held at Surat, 47–48.
61. Lala Baji Nath, “Some Factors in the Industrial and Commercial Development
of India,” in Report of the First Indian Industrial Conference Held at Benaras,
300. See also Charles Harvey as quoted in “The Art Crafts of India,” The Indian
Review 17 no. 2 (February 1916): 140.
62. “Udhyog,” Buddhiprakash (July 1897): 209.
63. “The Gaekwar on the Industrial Development of India,” The Indian Review 3
no. 12 (December 1902): 633.
64. For a discussion of the development and content of the village republic
ideal and its implications for South Asia, see Jan Breman, The Shattered
Image: Construction and Deconstruction of the Village in Colonial South Asia,
(Providence, RI: Foris Publications, 1988); Ronald Inden, Imagining India
(Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1990).
65. See for instance B. R. Grover, “An Integrated Pattern of Commercial Life in
the Rural Society of North India during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth
Centuries,” in Money and the Market in India, 1100–1700, ed. Sanjay
222 NOTES
Subramhmanyam (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1990): 219–255; David

Ludden, “Craft Production in an Agrarian Economy,” in Making Things in
South Asia: The Role of Artist and Craftsman, Philadelphia: Department of
South Asia Regional Studies, ed. Michael Meister (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania, 1988), 103–113.
66. Christopher Baker, An Indian Rural Economy: The Tamilnad Countryside
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), 331–332.
67. That specificity of taste had motivated John Forbes Watson’s compilation of
The Textile Manufactures and the Costumes of the People of India, discussed in
Chapter 1.
68. Government of Bombay, Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency, Vol. IX, Part I:
Gujarat Population—Hindus (Bombay: Government Central Press, 1901),
191, 202.
69. C. G. H. Fawcett, A Monograph on Dyes and Dyeing in the Bombay Presidency,
1908, (reprinted in Art and Industry Through the Ages: Monograph Series on
Bombay Presidency [New Delhi: Navrang, 1976], 84.
I: Poona (Bombay: Government Central Press, 1885), 343, 340.
71. Government of India, Census of India 1961, Vol. V, Part VII-A(2): Selected
Crafts of Gujarat—Wood Carving of Gujarat (New Delhi: Manager of
Publications, 1967), 34–36.
72. G. P. Fernandes, Report on the Art-Crafts of the Bombay Presidency (Bombay:
Government Central Press, 1932), 28–30, 70.
73. See Tirthankar Roy, “Acceptance of Innovations in Early Twentieth-Century
Indian Weaving,” Economic History Review 60 no. 3 (2002): 507–532;
and Douglas Haynes, “The Logic of the Artisan Firm in a Capitalist
Economy: Handloom Weavers and Technological Change in Western India,
1880–1947,” in Institutions and Economic Change in South Asia, ed. Burton
Stein and Sanjay Subrahmanyam (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996):
173–205.
74. Interview with Manecklal Gajjar, Pethapur, December 2000. See also Jyotindra
Jain, “Saudagiri Prints: Textiles for Far-Off Siam,” The India Magazine
(October 1985): 54–63.
75. Douglas Haynes, “The Dynamics of Continuity in Indian Domestic Industry:
Jari Manufacture in Surat, 1900–1947,” in Cloth and Commerce: Textiles in
Colonial India, ed. Tirthankar Roy (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1996), 304–
305; Tirthankar Roy, Traditional Industry in the Economy of Colonial India
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 107–109, 114–115; J. Nissim,
A Monograph on Wire and Tinsel in the Bombay Presidency, 1909, (reprinted in
Art and Industry Through the Ages), 298–302.
II: Poona (Bombay: Government Central Press, 1885), 176, 184.
77. See Roy, “Acceptance of Innovations in Early Twentieth-Century Indian
Weaving”; and Haynes, “The Logic of the Artisan Firm in a Capitalist
Economy.”
NOTES 223
78. Haynes, “The Logic of the Artisan Firm in a Capitalist Economy,” 175.
79. Tirthankar Roy, “Out of Tradition: Master Artisans and Economic Change in
Colonial India,” Journal of Asian Studies 66 no. 4 (November 2007): 966.
80. Ibid., 975–977.
81. Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, “Cultural and Social Constraints on Technological
Innovation and Economic Development,” Indian Economic and Social History
Review 3 no. 3 (1966): 250–252.
82. Ibid., 261.
83. Nita Kumar, The Artisans of Banaras: Popular Culture and Identity, 1880–1986
(Delhi: Orient Longman, 1988).
84. Similar obscurantism operated in agriculture. As David Ludden has argued:
“The Company collected data that could have been used to construct very dif-
ferent images of rural India. . . . But alternative formations were obscured and
marginalized . . . by the political process that wielded authority in the produc-
tion of knowledge about India.” (Ludden, “Orientalist Empiricism,” 262.)
85. See, for example, Report of the Work of the Indian Industrial Conference,
Including a Record of General Industrial Activity in the Country (Madras:
Thompson & Co., 1907), 42.
86. See, respectively, D. C. Churchill, “The Hand-loom in Ahmednagar,” 208–217;
and Alfred Chatterton, “The Salem Weaving Factory,” 190–208; see also
Chunilal B. Desai, “Hand-loom Weaving in India,” 217–225. All are in Report
of the Third Industrial Conference Held at Surat.
87. Quoted in “Hindi Hunnar Udyog Parishad” [The Indian industrial confer-
ence], Buddhiprakash 53 no. 1 (January 1906): 27.
88. Birdwood, The Industrial Arts of India, 1–2, 320.
89. For a discussion of this as a common practice in colonial writings about
Indian society, see Bernard Cohn, “Notes on the History of the Study of
Indian Society and Culture,” in An Anthropologist among the Historians and
Other Essays (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1987), 143.
90. Ananda Coomaraswamy, Art and Swadeshi (New Delhi: Munshiram
Manoharlal Publishers, 1994 [1912]), 3–4.
91. Coomaraswamy, “Young India,” in Dance of Siva, 132.
92. Ibid., 134.
93. Carol Breckenridge and Peter van der Veer, “Introduction: Orientalism and the
Postcolonial Predicament,” in Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament:
Perspectives from South Asia, 12.
94. Vasudha Dalmia, The Nationalization of Hindu Traditions: Bharatendu
Harischandra and Nineteenth-Century Banaras (Delhi: Oxford University
Press, 1997).
95. Veena Naregal, Language Politics, Elites and the Public Sphere: Western India
Under Colonialism (London: Anthem Press, 2001.)
96. Svati Joshi, “Dalpatram and the Nature of Literary Shifts in Nineteenth-
Century Ahmedabad,” in India’s Literary History: Essays on the Nineteenth
Century, ed. Stuart Blackburn and Vasudha Dalmia (New Delhi: Permanent
Black, 2004), 327–357. See also R. L. Raval, “Tradition and Modernity in
224 NOTES
the Context of Social Reform Movements in Gujarat during the Nineteenth

Century,” Vidya 19 no. 2 (August 1976): 88–102.
97. “Deshi Karigarine Uttejan Aapva Vishe,” Buddhiprakash (August 1876), 173.
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 231–232; Ludden, “India’s
Development Regime,” 268–269.
99. Mahadev Govind Ranade, “Industrial Conference,” in Essays on Indian
Economics: A Collection of Essays and Speeches (Bombay: Thacker &
Company, Ltd., 1899), 181.
100. Joshi, “Dalpatram and the Nature of Literary Shifts,” 332.
101. Report of the First Indian Industrial Conference Held at Benaras, 5.
102. Prakash, Another Reason, 157, 160.
103. Goswami, Producing India, 274–276.
104. Government of Bombay, Report on Native Papers Published in the Bombay
Presidency for the Week Ending 28 September 1895, 9.
105. “Udhyogoddhar” [Uplift of industry], Buddhiprakash 50 no. 10 (October
1903): 300.
106. Ranade, “Industrial Conference,” 203–204.
Chapter 3
1. Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy to Viscount Falkland, May 9, 1853. MSA: GD 1853: v. 85,

c. 527.
2. Cutch State. Report on the Administration of the Cutch State for 1885–86
(Bombay: Bombay Gazette Steam Press, 1886), 80.
3. Pandit Natesa Sastu, “The Decline of South Indian Arts: Continued,” JIAI, 3
no. 29 (1890): 28.
4. Ibid., 31.
5. Ibid., 30, 32.
6. Annie E. Coombs, Reinventing Africa: Museums, Material Culture and Popular
Imagination (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994).
7. George Birdwood, The Industrial Arts of India (London: Chapman and Hall,
1880), 132.
8. George Birdwood, Two Letters on the Industrial Arts of India (London: W. B.
Whittington and Co., 1879), 9.
9. Samarendra Nath Gupta, “The Place of Art in Indian Industries,” in Report of
the Ninth Indian Industrial Conference: Held at Karachi on the 25th December
1913 (Amraoti: Indian Industrial Conference, 1914), 242.
10. Glyn Barlow, Industrial India (Madras: G. A. Natesan, 1904), 115.
11. As Annie Coombes has noted, this was hardly confined to India; indeed, fears
about racial purity informed wide-ranging discussions of degeneration in art
in this period. (Coombes, Reinventing Africa, 41, 56.)
12. Homi Bhabha, “Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial
Discourse,” in The Location of Culture (New York: Routledge, 1994), 85–92.
NOTES 225
13. Thomas Metcalf, Ideologies of the Raj (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1995); Bernard Cohn, “Cloth, Clothes and Colonialism,” in Cloth and
Human Experience, ed. Annette Weiner and Jane Schneider (Washington,
D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989), 303–353; Thomas Metcalf, An
Imperial Vision: Indian Architecture and Britain’s Raj (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1989).
14. Birdwood, The Industrial Arts of India, 334, 336.
15. Thomas Wardle, “The Indian Silk Culture Court,” JIAI 1 no. 15 (1886): 122.
16. Ananda Coomaraswamy, The Indian Craftsman (New Delhi: Munshiram
Manoharlal Publishers Pvt, Ltd, 1989 [1909]), 35–36.
17. Ibid., 52.
18. Ibid., 41.
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 272.
20. Romesh Chunder Dutt, “The Economic Condition of India” in Speeches and
Papers on Indian Questions 1901 and 1902 (Calcutta: Elm Press, 1902), 81.
21. Romesh Chunder Dutt, “Industrial India: A Review,” The Indian Review 5 no.
7 (July 1904): 440.
22. As Annie Coombes notes for the case of Africa, arguments about cultural
decline appealed to audiences across the racial divide of colonial societies,
supporting British claims to the need for continued power over backward
natives as well as native critiques of imperial rule. (Coombes, Reinventing
Africa, 38–39.)
23. Cecil Burns, “The Function of Schools of Art in India,” Journal of the Royal
Society of Arts (June 18, 1909): 629.
24. Ibid., 630.
25. Ibid., 631.
26. Ibid.
27. J. A. Crowe to Venayek Wassordeo, July 14, 1857. MSA: GD 1857: v. 36, c. 95:
219.
28. Emphasis in the original. Ibid.
30. Barbara Whitney Keyser, “Ornament as Idea: Indirect Imitation of Nature
in the Design Reform Movement,” Journal of Design History 11 no. 2 (1998):
127–144; Arindam Dutta, The Bureaucracy of Beauty: Design in the Age of Its
Global Reproducibility (New York: Routledge, 2007), 103–106.
31. Drawing classes also formed the core of education for artisans in Britain,
although for slightly different reasons. See Adrian Rifkin, “Success Disavowed:
The Schools of Design in Mid-Nineteenth Century Britain (An Allegory),”
Journal of Design History 1 no. 2 (1988): 89–102; Dutta, The Bureaucracy of
Beauty, 22.
33. Tapati Guha-Thakurta, The Making of a New “Indian” Art: Artists, Aesthetics
and Nationalism in Bengal 1850–1920 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1992); Partha Mitter, Art and Nationalism in Colonial India, 1850–1922
226 NOTES
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Dutta, The Bureaucracy of

Beauty.
34. George Terry, “Appendix M: Extract Report from the Acting Superintendent
of the Sir Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy School of Arts and Industry” in Government
of Bombay, Report of the DPI for 1858–59, 394.
35. Harry Rivett-Carnac, “Report of the Chairman of the Internal Decoration and
Arrangement Committee” in Report on the Arts, Manufactures and Produce at
the Nagpur Exhibition, 1865 (Nagpur, 1866), 74.
36. George T. Molecey to Venayeek Wassoodeojee, April 9, 1868. MSA: GD 1868:
v. 1, c. 155: 96.
37. John Griffiths to Venayak Wassordeo, April 8, 1868. MSA: GD 1868: v. 1, c.
155: 93–94.
38. Guha-Thakurta, The Making of a New “Indian” Art; and Mitter, Art and
Nationalism in Colonial India.
39. For an overview of the Ajanta project and its influence on the JJ School, see
The Story of the Sir J. J. School of Art (Bombay: Government Central Press,
1958), 47–54.
40. Quoted in Ibid., 51.
42. Quoted in Ibid.
43. Burns, “The Function of Schools of Art in India,” 637.
44. For a recent exploration of hybrid designs in silver specifically, see Vidya Dehejia,
Delight in Design: Indian Silver for the Raj (Ahmedabad: Mapin, 2008).
45. Report of the Conference as Regards Museums in India, Held at Calcutta on
Dec. 27th to 31st, 1907 (Calcutta: Superintendent of Government Printing,
1908), 24.
46. Mahrukh Tarapor, “John Lockwood Kipling and British Art Education in
India,” Victorian Studies 24 (Autumn 1980): 53–80; Naazish Ata-Ullah,
“Stylistic Hybridity and Colonial Art and Design Education: A Wooden
Carved Screen by Ram Singh” in Colonialism and the Object: Empire, Material
Culture and the Museum, ed. Tim Barringer and Tom Flynn (New York:
Routledge, 1998): 68–81; and Raymond Head, “Bagshot Park and Indian
Crafts” in Influences in Victorian Art and Architecture, ed. Sarah Macready and
F. H. Thompson (London: Society of Antiquarians, 1985): 139–149.
47. “Memoir of the Late Colonel T. H. Hendley, CIE,” JIAI 17 no 136 (1917):
82–86.
48. Lockwood de Forest to Louis Tiffany, April 24, 1881. Lockwood de Forest
papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution (hereafter LDFP-
AAA). Reel 2731: Correspondence 1858–1931: 261 and 821–826.
49. Thomas Holbein Hendley, Memorials of the Jeypore Exhibition 1883, vol 1
(London: W. Griggs, 1884), v.
50. Hendley, Memorials of the Jeypore Exhibition 1883, vol 1, vi.
51. “Extract from the Proceedings of the Government of India, in the Revenue and
Agricultural Department (Museums and Exhibitions), dated January 3, 1884,”
JIAI 1 no. 1 (1884): 5, 4; “Extract from the Proceedings of the Government of
NOTES 227
India in the Department of Revenue and Agriculture, dated Calcutta, the 14th
March, 1883,” JIAI 1 no. 1 (1884): 4.
52. E. C. Buck, “Proceedings of the Arts and Museums Committee held on Friday
the 7th December 1883.” MSA: ED 1892: v. 51, c. 583: 38.
53. E. C. Buck, Report on Practical and Technical Education (Calcutta: Office of the
Superintendent of Government Printing, 1901), 40.
54. Buck, “Proceedings of the Arts and Museums Committee held on Friday the
7th December 1883,” 38.
55. Volume one, number 6 of 1884, for instance, included articles on Bidri ware,
“Rustic Ornamentation” and “Japanese and Indian Lacquer”.
56. Vikramaditya Prakash, “Between Copying and Creation: The Jeypore Portfolio
of Architectural Details” in Colonial Modernities: Building, Dwelling and
Architecture in British India and Ceylon, ed. Peter Scriver and Vikramaditya
Prakash (New York: Routledge, 2007): 115–125.
57. Technical Art Series of Illustrations of Indian Architectural Decorative Work
(Calcutta: Survey of India Offices, 1892).
(Calcutta: Survey of India Offices, 1894), plate 2.
(Calcutta: Survey of India Offices, 1886–1892), plate 17.
60. Thomas Holbein Hendley, Asian Carpets: XVI and XVII Century Designs from
the Jaipur Palaces from Material Supplied with Permission of the Maharaja of
Jaipur and Other Sources (London: W. Griggs, 1905), 7.
61. For the central provinces, see C. E. Low, “The Central Provinces and Berar
Exhibition” in The Industrial Conference Held at Madras, December 1908
(Madras: G. A. Natesan & Co., 1909), 161; for Bengal and Assam, see Percy
Brown, “The Artistic Trades of Bengal and Their Development,” in Report of
the Fifth Indian Industrial Conference: Held at Lahore on the 30th December
1909 (Amraoti: Indian Industrial Conference, 1910), 121; for Madras,
see W. S. Hadaway, Cotton Painting and Printing in the Madras Presidency
(Madras: Government Press, 1917), iii. For an overview of the demand for
such books, as well as for museums and exhibitions to display type collections
of the best of regional art manufactures, see Proceedings of the Art Conference
Held in the Technical Institute at Lahore (Calcutta: Government Central
Printing Office, 1894).
62. Percy Brown, “Artistic Trades of the Punjab and Their Development,” in The
Industrial Conference Held at Madras, December 1908, 178–79.
63. Ibid., 179.
64. Hendley, Asian Carpets, 8.
65. H J. R. Twigg, A Monograph on the Art and Practice of Carpet-Making in the
Bombay Presidency (Bombay: Government Central Press, 1907) (reprinted in
Art and Industry Through the Ages: Monograph Series on Bombay Presidency
[New Delhi: Navrang, 1976], 146, 198–99.) A similar system operated in the
Punjab, where Amritsar carpet firms looked to the Lahore jail factory for
designs. (C. Latimer, “Carpet Making in the Punjab,” JIAI 17 no. 131, [1916]: 24.)
228 NOTES
For a discussion of the role jails played in the creation and circulation of tradi-
tional designs, see Abigail McGowan, “Convict Carpets: Jails and the Revival of
Historic Carpet Design in Colonial India,” paper presented at the 37th Annual
Conference on South Asia, Madison, Wisconsin, October 2008.
66. Colonel Jacobs to Lockwood de Forest, January 25, 1894. LDP-AAA, Reel
2731: Correspondence 1858–1931: 632–636.
67. Proceedings of the Art Conference Held in the Technical Institute at Lahore, 11.
68. J. Sime to Secretary to the Government of India, Home Department, March 1,
1895. MSA: ED 1896: v. 81, c. 345.
69. Hendley, Memorials of the Jeypore Exhibition 1883, vol 1, v.
70. Thomas Holbein Hendley, London Indo-Colonial Exhibition of 1886: Handbook
of the Jeypore Courts (Calcutta: Calcutta Central Press, 1886), 34.
71. Twigg, A Monograph on the Art and Practice of Carpet-Making in the Bombay
Presidency, 144, 135; K. M. Chatfield to Secretary to Government, Educational
Department, October 16, 1888. MSA: ED 1889: v. 45, c. 8.
72. For supervision of jail industries, see K. M. Chatfield to Secretary to
Government, Educational Department, October 16, 1888. MSA: ED 1889:
v. 45, c. 8: 141–144. For the exhibition of past students’ work, see E. Giles to
Secretary to Government, Educational Department, August 13, 1900. MSA:
ED 1900: v. 21, c. 509: 333. For the industrial arts normal school, see John
Wallace to Government of Bombay, Educational Department, April 15, 1910.
MSA: ED 1919: v. 77, c. 7.
(Calcutta: Survey of India Offices, 1886–1892), 1.
74. Buck, “Proceedings of the Arts and Museums Committee held on Friday the
7th December 1883.”
75. Government of India, Revenue and Agricultural Department, “Resolution No.
1: Extract from the Proceedings of the Government of India, in the Revenue
and Agricultural Department (Museums and Exhibitions),” January 3, 1884.
MSA: ED 1892: v. 51, c. 583: p. 3.
76. Lord Ripon, “Opening the Industrial and Fine Arts Exhibition at Simla” in
Speeches and Published Resolutions of Lord Ripon, ed. Ram Chandra Palit
(Calcutta: Baptist Mission Press, 1882), 109.
77. “The Viceroy on the Delhi Arts Exhibition,” The Indian Review 4 no. 1
(January 1903): 51.
78. Lord Ripon, “Opening the Industrial and Fine Arts Exhibition at Simla,” 109.
79. Twigg, A Monograph on the Art and Practice of Carpet-Making in the
Bombay Presidency, 201–208. Twigg opened the chapter—titled “The Carpet-
Purchaser’s ‘Vade-mecum’”—with the following explanatory note: “The
introduction of such a subject into an Industrial Monograph may seem
unwarranted, but as not a few would-be purchasers refrain from buying from
ignorance of the points which indicate a good carpet, a few very simple guides
calling for little technical knowledge may be of use.” (Ibid., 201).
80. “Extract from the Proceedings . . . the 14th March, 1883,” 1.
NOTES 229
81. Dr. Henry Carter to Secretary to the Local Committee of Surat and Broach,
August 21, 1854. MSA: GD 1856: v. 73, c. 92.
82. Dr. George Birdwood to William Hart, August 31, 1858. MSA: GD 1858: v. 65,
c. 736.
83. Thomas Holbein Hendley, Handbook to the Jeypore Museum (Calcutta: W.
Griggs, 1895), 68.
84. “Kachchh Pradarshan” [The Kutch Exhibition], Buddhiprakash 31 no. 2
(February 1884): 10.
85. L. R. W. Forest to John Griffiths, July 3, 1890. MSA: ED 1890: v. 24, c. 624.
86. Report of the Conference as Regards Museums in India, Held at Calcutta on Dec.
27th to 31st, 1907 (Calcutta: Superintendent of Government Printing, 1908), 27.
87. Ibid.
88. Government of India, Revenue and Agricultural Department, Resolution, July
20, 1892. MSA: ED 1892: v. 51, c. 583: 1. For a similar statement of goals at
the end of the century, see John Griffiths to Secretary to Government, General
Department, April 5, 1897. MSA: ED 1898: v. 54, c. 534: 238.
89. Northwest Frontier Provinces and Oudh Provincial Museum, Lucknow,
Minutes of the Managing Committee from August 1883 to 31 March 1888
with Introduction (Allahabad: Northwest Frontier Provinces and Oudh
Government Press, 1889), 281.
90. For information on these emporia, see as follows. For Lahore and Nagpur:
A. G. Clow, The State and Industry (1920-27) (Calcutta: Government of
India, 1928), 64–65; for Lahore and Bangalore: Report of the Conference as
Regards Museums in India, 26–27; for Kanpur: V. N. Mehta, “The Government
School of Arts and Crafts, Lucknow,” Journal of Indian Industries and Labour
2 no. 1 (February 1922): 48–54; for Madras and Rangoon: Indian Industrial
Commission, Report (Calcutta: Government Printing, 1918), 198; and, for
Madras: Dr. J. R. Henderson, “Note on the Victoria Technical Institute,
Madras” in The Book of the Madras Exhibition, 1915-16 (Madras: Madras
Government Press, 1916), 409–411.
91. Mahadeo Ballal Namjoshi to J. Nugent, December 4, 1888. BPRO: Huzur
English Office, Misc. Dept. section 65, file 1.
92. F. S. Lely to Secretary to Government, General Department, April 21, 1897.
MSA: ED 1898: v. 54, c. 534: 223.
93. Baroda State, Baroda Administration Report, 1911–12 (Bombay: Caxton
Works, 1913), 147.
94. Baroda State, Baroda Administration Report, 1916–17 (Bombay: Times Press,
1918), xxxii, 230.
95. “The Viceroy on the Delhi Arts Exhibition,” 51.
96. George Watt, Indian Art at Delhi, 1903: Being the Official Catalogue of the Delhi
Exhibition, 1902–1903 (Calcutta: Superintendent of Government Printing,
1903), 4.
97. Prepared at the Bombay School of Art, the Bombay room was considered
a big success; the room won the gold medal for the best example of Indian
230 NOTES
Art furnishing, and the entire contents were purchased by the Nizam of
Hyderabad. (Watt, Indian Art at Delhi, 4–5.)
98. Lord Curzon, “Indian Art Exhibition at Delhi” in Lord Curzon in India: Being
a Selection from His Speeches as Viceroy and Governor-General of India, 1898–
1905, ed. Sir Thomas Raleigh (New York: Macmillan Company, 1906), 208.
99. Emphasis added. “The Viceroy on the Delhi Arts Exhibition,” 51.
100. For details on de Forest’s efforts on behalf of Indian arts, and his contacts
with others involved in similar attempts, see his unpublished manuscript,
Indian Domestic Architecture (hereafter referred to as IDA). LDFP-AAA, Reel
2732: Writings.
101. Lockwood de Forest to Mr. Pritchett, March 22, 1920. LDFP-AAA, Reel 2731:
Correspondence 1858–1931: 923.
102. Lockwood de Forest, Illustrations of Design: Based on Notes of Line as Used by
the Craftsmen of India (Boston: Ginn and Co., 1912), iii.
103. Lockwood de Forest to Mr. M. D. C. Crawford, November 30, 1918. LDFP-
AAA, Reel 2731: Correspondence 1858–1931: 862.
104. Lockwood de Forest to Louis Tiffany, July 9, 1881. LDFP-AAA, Reel 2731:
Correspondence 1858–1931: 276.
105. de Forest, IDA, 1140–1141. Looking back in 1911 on his family’s long involve-
ment with the AWCC, Muggunbhai’s youngest son, Purushottambhai, wrote to
de Forest that “it was through your angelic hand that my father began his new
life after the adversity was tired of our family and became the victim of your
business rod. Those days and your presence in my house on that memorable
day I shall never forget.” (Purushottambhai Hutheesing to Lockwood de Forest,
June 16, 1911. LDFP-AAA, Reel 2731: Correspondence 1858–1931: 695.)
106. de Forest, IDA, 1158.
107. Workman or artisan.
108. de Forest, IDA, 1146; de Forest to Muggunbhai, March 30, 1881. LDFP-AAA,
Reel 2731: Correspondence: 254. See also de Forest to Muggunbhai, June 3,
1881. LDFP-AAA, Reel 2731: Correspondence: 269.
110. Meta de Forest to Mother, March 22, 1882. LDFP-AAA, Reel 2731:
Correspondence: 417.
111. de Forest, IDA, 1143–1144.
112. de Forest to Tiffany, December 28, 1881. LDFP-AAA, Reel 2731:
Correspondence: 302. de Forest himself was so pleased with the pieces from
the workshop that he later declared in his memoirs that they had been “the
most important things in the exhibition.” (de Forest, IDA, 1250.)
113. de Forest to Tiffany, March 17, 1882. LDFP-AAA, Reel 2731: Correspondence:
318; Meta de Forest to Mother, June 30, 1882. LDFP-AAA, Reel 2731:
Correspondence: 446.
114. de Forest to Tiffany, November 15, 1881. LDFP-AAA, Reel 2731:
Correspondence 1858–1931: 294; Calcutta International Exhibition of 1883–
84: Reports of the Bombay Committee and Others (Bombay: Times of India
Press, 1884), Appendix E, Mr. Griffiths’ Report, 8–9.
NOTES 231
115. For the Jaipur orders, see de Forest to Tiffany, July 13, 1882. LDFP-AAA,
Reel 2731: Correspondence 1858–1931: 340. For the Rajkot and other
orders, see Muggunbhai Hutheesing, “Invoice of (100) one hundred
Wooden panels kept here in reserve by Muggunbhai Hutheesing by the
order of Lockwood de Forest,” no date (ca. 1883). LDFP-AAA, Reel 2733:
Financial material: 668, 673.
116. de Forest to Tiffany, July 13, 1882. LDFP-AAA, Reel 2731: Correspondence:
341.
118. Caryl Coleman, “India in America,” The Decorator and Furnisher 6 (March
1885): 202–203; William Henry Shelton, “The Most Indian House in
America,” House Beautiful 8 no. 1 (June 1900): 422. See also Raymond Head,
“Indian Crafts and Western Design from the Seventeenth Century to the
Present,” Royal Society of Arts Journal (January 1988): 125.
119. de Forest, “Exhibition of Pictures and Sketches by Lockwood de Forest,
National Academician,” LDFP-AAA, Reel 2732: Writings: 742.
122. See, for instance, Purushottambhai Hutheesing to de Forest, April 14, 1911.
LDFP-AAA, Reel 2731, Correspondence: 691–693; Purushottambhai to
Messrs. Tiffany Studios, June 2, 1911. LDFP-AAA, Reel 2731, Correspondence:
699–701; and Purushottambhai to de Forest, June 16, 1911. LDFP-AAA, Reel
2731, Correspondence: 695–698.
123. Purushottambhai Hutheesing to de Forest, June 16, 1911. LDFP-AAA, Reel
2731, Correspondence: 697.
125. Meta de Forest to Mother, December 11, 1892. LDFP-AAA, Reel 2730:
Correspondence 1858–1931: 254. Calcutta International Exhibition of
1883–84, Appendix E, Mr. Griffiths’ Report, 8.
127. Government of India, Report of the Committee on Co-Operation in India
(Simla: Government Central Press, 1915), 1, 2.
128. E. M. Edwardes, Monograph Upon the Silk Fabrics of the Bombay Presidency,
1900, (reprinted in Art in Industry Through the Ages [New Delhi: Navrang,
1976], 48.)
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
130. P. N. Mehta, Report on the Handloom Industry (Bombay: Government Press,
1909), 1.
131. V. N. Mehta, “Co-Operation and Cottage Industries,” The Bombay
Co-Operative Quarterly 5 no. 4 (March 1922): 194.
132. Alfred Chatterton, “Hand-loom Weaving,” Journal of Indian Industries and
Labour 1 no. 3 (August 1921): 391.
133. Mehta, “Co-Operation and Cottage Industries,” 195.
134. Chatterton, “Hand-Loom Weaving,” 391.
232 NOTES
135. K. R. Kulkarni, “The Spinning Wheel and the Co-Operative System,” The
Bombay Co-Operative Quarterly 5 no. 1 (June 1921): 9–10.
136. H. W. Wolff, “The Small Industries of India,” The Bombay Co-Operative
Quarterly 3 no. 3 (December 1919): 133–134.
137. P. G. Shah, “Cottage Industries in India,” The Bombay Co-Operative Quarterly
2 no. 3 (December 1918): 141.
138. Shah, “Cottage Industries in India,” 146.
139. Government of Bombay, Annual Report on the Working of Co-Operative
Societies in the Bombay Presidency Including Sind for the Twelve Months Ending
March 31st, 1915 (Bombay: Government Central Press, 1915), 17. Hereafter
annual reports from that series will be referred to as “Annual Report on the
Working of Co-Operative Societies,” with the different years indicated by
publication date, and the presidency location indicated by author.
140. H. W. Wolff, “Introduction” in Indian Co-Operative Studies (University
of Bombay Economic Series No. 2), ed. R. B. Ewbank (Bombay: Oxford
University Press, 1920), 5.
141. Quoted in Goswami, Producing India, 251–252.
Societies (1917), 3, 20.
143. Proceedings of the Conference of Registrars of Co-Operative Credit Societies
Held at Simla on the 25th September 1906, and Following Days (Simla:
Government Central Printing Office, 1906), 18–19.
Societies (1915), 5.
Societies (1912), 11; Government of Bombay, Annual Report on the Working
of Co-Operative Societies (1919), 17; Baroda State, Report of the Committee
on the Economic Development of the Baroda State, 1918–19 (Bombay: Times
Press, 1920), 163.
Societies (1912), 11. Government of Bombay, Annual Report on the Working
of Co-Operative Societies (1919), 17.
149. For government faith in the prospects for cooperatives among leather work-
ers, see Government Resolution from the Revenue Department, no. 572,
20 January 1911, appended to the end of Government of Bombay, Annual
Report on the Working of Co-Operative Societies, 1910. Six leatherworkers’
cooperatives are mentioned in the 1908 annual report by the Registrar of
Cooperatives for the Bombay Presidency (Government of Bombay, Annual
Report on the Working of Co-Operative Societies, 1908: 4); by 1911 there was
a total of 17 such societies (Government of Bombay, Annual Report on the
Working of Co-Operative Societies, 1911, 16.)
NOTES 233
150. A caste name, usually denoting leather workers.

151. Government of Bombay, Annual Report on the Working of Cooperative
152. Merchant-moneylenders.
153. Proceedings of the Provincial Co-Operative Conference Held in Poona, August
29–30, 1912 (Bombay: Government Central Press, 1912), 46.
154. Proceedings of the Provincial Co-Operative Conference Held in Poona, September
1–2, 1910 (Bombay: Government Central Press, 1910), 6. For other dangers
posed by sowkars if cooperatives failed to provide full services, see Government
of Bombay, Annual Report on the Working of Cooperative Societies (1914), 2.
155. See, for instance, G. K. Chitale, “Note on Nagar Weavers’ Union and Weavers’
Societies in Nagar District” in Proceedings of the Provincial Co-Operative
Conference Held in Poona, August 29–30, 1912, Appendix XVI, 48–49.
156. See, for instance, N. M. Joshi’s assessments of the problems facing artisanal
cooperatives in Urban Handicrafts of the Bombay Deccan (Poona: Gokhale
Institute of Politics and Economics, Publication No. 5, 1936), 161–162; also
S. K. Raja, “Handicrafts in India,” International Labour Review 35 (1937): 501.
158. Douglas Haynes, The Making of Small-Town Capitalism: Artisans, Merchants
and the Politics of Cloth Manufacture in Western India, 1870–1960, unpub-
lished book manuscript, chapter 6, pp. 38–39.
159. Government of Bombay, Report of the DPI for 1894–95, lxii.
160. Quoted in Government of Bombay, Report of the DPI for 1890–91, 27.
161. Proceedings of the Art Conference Held in the Technical Institute at Lahore, 31. For
similar views, see also Hendley’s comments at the same conference ibid., 12–13.
163. Government of India, Census of India 1961, Vol. V, Part VII-A(2): Selected
Crafts of Gujarat—Wood Carving of Gujarat (New Delhi: Manager of
Publications, 1967), 32.
164. H. Clayton, “The Position of the Registrar,” Indian Co-Operative Studies,
(University of Bombay Economic Series No. 2), ed. R. B. Ewbank (Bombay:
Oxford University Press, 1920), 171.
165. Indian Cooperative Union, “Survey of Associations of Handicraft Artisans,
Dealers and Exporters,” unpublished survey sponsored by the All India
Handicrafts Board, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Government of
India, December 1958, 160.
Chapter 4
1. “Deshi Kala Uttejanna Bhashanma Boleli Kavita” [A poem recited at the speech
for the encouragement of native arts], Buddhiprakash 36 no. 7 (July 1889): 161.
2. “The Exigencies of Progress in India,” Journal of the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha 15
no. 4 (April 1893): 6, 13–14.
234 NOTES
3. Hemendra Prasad Ghose, “Swadeshi-cum-Boycott,” The Indian Review 9 no. 4

(April 1908): 267, 266.
4. Pudomjee made his argument in the context of written testimony submitted
to the 1902 Clibborn commission appointed by government to consider the
question of technical education. (Dorabji Pudomjee to H. O. Quin, Secretary
to Government, Educational Department, February 5, 1902. MSA: ED 1902:
v. 62, c. 7: 186.)
5. Michael Adas, Machines as the Measure of Man: Science, Technology, and
Ideologies of Western Dominance (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989).
6. Government of Bombay, Report of the DPI for 1889–90, Appendix F, xl.
7. See for instance the complaints of Rai Saheb Lala Girdhari Lal, the managing
director of a mill in Delhi, at the first Indian Industrial Conference in 1905.
(Report of the First Indian Industrial Conference Held at Benaras on Saturday,
the 30th December, 1905 [Allahabad: The Indian Press, 1906], 379.)
8. Report of the Third Industrial Conference Held at Surat on the 30th December
1907 (Madras: Indian Industrial Conference, 1908), xi.
9. “Deshi Karigarine Uttejan Aapva Vishe” [Regarding encouragement to be
given to native crafts and industry], Buddhiprakash 23 no. 8 (August 1876):
173. See also the Bombay weekly paper the Rast Goftar for November 1898;
Report on Native Newspapers Published in the Bombay Presidency for the Week
Ending 19 November 1898 (hereafter RNN with the week indicated in the title)
(Bombay), 16; and G. Sabramania Iyer in Report of the First Indian Industrial
Conference Held at Benaras, 367.
10. “Deshi Karigarine Uttejan” [Encouragement to native crafts and industry],
Buddhiprakash 24 no. 11 (November 1877): 250.
11. Quoted in Report of the Third Industrial Conference Held at Surat, 15–16.
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 171–172.
13. On technical education see, for example, “Education in India: A Tale of
Obscurantism and Failure, Sir Sankaran Nair’s Indictment,” Young India 1 no.
7 (May 28, 1919): 7.
14. See, for example, Deepak Kumar, ed., Science and Empire: Essays in Indian
Context, 1700–1947 (New Delhi: Aramika Prakashan, 1991), 126–138;
Makrand Mehta, “Science versus Technology: The Early Years of the Kala
Bhavan, Baroda, 1890–1896,” Indian Journal of History and Science 27 no.
2 (1992): 145–169; Deepak Kumar, Science and the Raj, 1857–1905 (Delhi:
Oxford University Press, 1995).
15. See, for instance, Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, “Introduction: An Approach to
Education and Inequality,” in Education and the Disprivileged: Nineteenth
and Twentieth Century India, ed. Sabyasachi Bhattacharya (Delhi: Orient
Longman, 2002): 1–32; Veena Naregal, Language Politics, Elites and the Public
Sphere: Western India under Colonialism (London: Anthem Press, 2001).
16. Governor General in Council, Memorandum, August 20, 1857. MSA: GD
1857: v. 43, c. 441.
NOTES 235
17. Dr. George Buist to the Court of Directors, January 1, 1850. MSA: GD 1850:
v. 94, c. 102.
18. Government of Bombay, Report of the DPI for 1875–76, 50; Government of
Bombay, Report of the DPI for 1891–92, 29.
19. William Hunter to William Hart, March 25, 1857. MSA: GD 1857: v. 43, c. 441;
Abdala David Sassoon, Elinor David Sassoon, David Sassoon, Reuben David
Sassoon to William Hart, March 25, 1857. MSA: GD 1857: v. 43, c. 441.
20. Governor General in Council, Memorandum. August 20, 1857. MSA: GD
1857: v. 43, c. 441.
21. Edward Howard to William Hart, July 25, 1857. MSA: GD 1857: v. 43, c. 441.
22. Arthur Crawford to John Nugent, April 2, 1883. MSA: ED 1883: v. 32, c. 353.
23. For lists of the industrial schools in western India, giving their dates of open-
ing, see E. Giles, “Replies to the Interrogations of the Industrial Commission,”
January 16, 1902. MSA: ED 1902: v. 62, c. 7; and Mehta, “Science Versus
Technology,” 147–149. For a more extended discussion of industrial educa-
tion for artisans in this period, see Abigail McGowan, “Educating Artisans
as Colonial Modernity: Industrial Education in Late Nineteenth Century
Western India,” in Claiming Power from Below: Dalits and the Subaltern
Question in India, ed. Manu Bhagvan and Anne Feldhaus (Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 2008): 84–100.
24. Government of Bombay, Report of the DPI for 1874–75, 149–150.
25. K. M. Chatfield to Chief Secretary to Government, Educational Department,
November 11, 1879. MSA: ED 1880: v. 19, c. 8.
26. Government of Bombay, Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency, Vol. IV:
Ahmedabad (Bombay: Government Central Press, 1879), 141.
27. E. Giles, A. W. Thomson, and Cecil Burns to Secretary to Government,
Educational Department, January 13, 1902. MSA: ED 1902: v. 62, c. 7.
November 11, 1879. MSA: ED 1880: v. 19, c. 8: 7; H. W. Lewis to Educational
Inspector, Southern Division, April 22, 1880. MSA: ED 1880: v. 19, c. 8: 151.
November 11, 1879. MSA: ED 1880: v. 19, c. 8: 7, 12.
30. Col J. R. Mannsell to Col. C. J. Merriman, February 24, 1881. MSA: ED 1881:
v. 30, c. 335: 600–601. For Mannsell’s other complaints about the Dharwar
school, see Col J. R. Mannsell to Col. C. J. Merriman, January 16, 1881. MSA:
ED 1881: v. 30, c. 335: 588–596.
31. H. W. Lewis to J. Elphinston, September 20, 1879. MSA: ED 1880: v. 19, c. 8: 87.
32. Report from J. R. Middleton included in Arthur Crawford to C. Gonne,
September 5, 1881. MSA: ED 1882: v. 31, c. 37: 227.
33. See for instance, Lieutenant-Colonel J. Clibborn, C. A. Radice, R. E. Enthoven,
and Rev. F. Westcott, Report on Industrial Education: Part II: Proceedings of
Conferences (Calcutta, Superintendent of Government Printing, 1903), 6.
34. Nita Kumar, Lessons from Schools: The History of Education in Banaras (New
Delhi: Sage Publications, 2000), 120–150 and chap. 1.
236 NOTES
35. K. M. Chatfield to C. Gonne, November 24, 1876. MSA: ED 1876: v. 25,

c. 50: 137.
36. H. G. Pollisen to J. Elphinston, September 23, 1879. MSA: ED 1880: v. 19,
c. 8: 46.
November 11, 1879. MSA: ED 1880: v. 19, c. 8: 3.
38. See H. G. Pollisen to J. Elphinston, September 23, 1879. MSA: ED 1880: v. 19,
c. 8: 54; H. W. Lewis to J. Elphinston, September 20, 1879. MSA: ED 1880:
v. 19, c. 8: 62–63.
39. For problems recruiting artisans to the Ratnagiri School of Industry, see
Report included in Arthur Crawford to C. Gonne, September 5, 1881. MSA:
ED 1882: v. 31, c. 37: 191, 285. For retention problems across industrial
schools, see Clibborn et al., Report on Industrial Education: Part I (Calcutta:
Superintendent of Government Printing, 1903), 8–9.
40. Quoted in Papers Relating to Technical Education: 1886–1904 (Calcutta: Office
of the Superintendent of Government Printing, 1906), 29.
41. “Resolution on Industrial Schools in India,” The Indian Review 5 no. 1
(January 1904): 57.
42. Quoted in Syed Nurullah and J. P. Naik, A History of Education in India dur-
ing the British Period (Bombay: Macmillan & Co., 1951), 696. For a general
overview of the problems with industrial education in the Bombay Presidency
in particular, see E. Giles, A. W. Thomson and Cecil Burns to Secretary to
Government, Educational Department, January 13, 1902. MSA: ED 1902: v.
62, c. 7: 98–100.
43. Sanjay Seth, Subject Lessons: The Western Education of Colonial India (Durham:
Duke University Press, 2002), 160.
44. RNN for the Week Ending 26th November 1898 (Bombay), 15.
45. The Industrial Conference held at Madras, December 1908 (Madras: G. A.
Nateson, 1909), 48–49.
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 6.
47. Government of Bombay, Report of the DPI for 1885–86, cxx–cxxi; Government
of Bombay, Report of the DPI for 1889–90, 32; E. Giles, “Replies to the
Interrogations of the Industrial Commission,” January 16, 1902. MSA: ED
1902: v. 62, c. 7.
48. A Compendium of Art, Arts and Crafts, Technical, Industrial, Commercial,
Agricultural and Veterinary Institutions in the Province of Bombay (Bombay:
Government Central Press, 1939), 20, 37.
49. E. C. Buck, Report on Practical and Technical Education (Calcutta: Office of the
Superintendent of Government Printing, 1901).
50. For the recommendations of the Simla conference, see J. F. Hewett to the
Government of Bombay, November 20, 1901. MSA: ED 1902: v. 62, c. 7.
51. See Clibborn et al, Report on Industrial Education: Part I and Part II.
52. Clive Dewey, “The Government of India’s ‘New Industrial Policy’, 1900–1925:
Formation and Failure,” in Economy and Society: Essays in Indian Economic
NOTES 237
and Social History, ed. K. N. Chaudhuri and Clive Dewey (Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 1979), 219.
53. Clibborn et al, Report on Industrial Education: Part II, 3. For the full text of
the Government resolution, see “Resolution on Industrial Schools in India,”
57–62.
54. Lord Curzon, “Speech delivered at the opening of the Educational Conference
at Simla on the 2nd September 1901.” MSA: ED 1902: v. 22, c. 427.
55. Quoted in Clibborn, et al., Report on Industrial Education: Part II, 6.
56. “Resolution on Industrial Schools in India,” 61.
57. For the new standards and exams, see E. Giles, A. W. Thomson and Cecil
Burns to Secretary to Government, Educational Department, January 13,
1902. MSA: ED 1902: v. 62, c. 7, 99. For the drawing course, see Government
of Bombay, Educational Department, Resolution No. 1456 of 1902, August 7,
1902. MSA: ED 1902: v. 22, c. 427.
58. Government of Bombay, Educational Department, Resolution No. 3000,
December 12, 1908. MSA: ED 1910: v. 77, c. 7.
59. R. N. Mudholkar, “Education and Industrial Development,” in The Congress
and Conference of 1905, Being a Collection of all the Papers Read and Submitted
to the First Industrial Conference at Benares (Madras: G. A. Natesan & Co.,
1906), 34. John Wallace, the editor of the Indian Textile Journal in Bombay,
agreed, arguing to the Indian Industrial Conference at Surat in 1907 that the
only proper object of industrial education was “to improve the efficiency of
the native craftsman so that he may turn out more and better work and get a
better return for his labour.” (Report of the Third Industrial Conference Held at
Surat on the 30th December 1907, 52.)
60. Clibborn et al., Report on Industrial Education: Part II, 107.
61. Alfred Chatterton, Agricultural and Industrial Problems in India (Madras: G.
A. Natesan, 1904), 136.
62. David Arnold, Colonizing the Body: State Medicine and Epidemic Disease in
Nineteenth Century India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995); James Mills
and Satadru Sen, Confronting the Body: The Politics of Physicality in Colonial
and Post-Colonial India (London: Anthem Press, 2004); Rachel Tolen,
“Colonizing and Transforming the Criminal Tribesman: The Salvation
Army in British India” American Ethnologist 18 no. 1 (February 1991):
106–125.
63. For a recent collection on the imperial context, see Tony Ballyntyne and
Antoinette Burton, Bodies in Contact: Rethinking Colonial Encounters in World
History (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005). For artisanal education in
Britain, see Arindam Dutta, The Bureaucracy of Beauty: Design in the Age of Its
Global Reproducibility (New York: Routledge, 2007), 133; and Adrian Rifkin,
“Success Disavowed: The Schools of Design in Mid-Nineteenth Century
Britain (An Allegory)” Journal of Design History 1 no. 2 (1988): 96–97.
64. Quoted in Buck, Report on Practical and Technical Education, 4.
65. Deepali Dewan, “The Body at Work: Colonial Art Education and the Figure of
the ‘Native Craftsman,’” in Confronting the Body, ed. James Mills and Satadru
238 NOTES
Sen, 130; Saloni Mathur, “Living Ethnographic Exhibits: The Case of 1886”
Cultural Anthropology 15 no. 4 (2001): 507.
66. Satadru Sen, “Schools, Athletes and Confrontation: The Student Body in
Colonial India,” in Confronting the Body, ed. James Mills and Satadru Sen, 58;
Tolen, “Colonizing and Transforming the Criminal Tribesman,” 117, 119–20.
67. Quoted in Buck, Report on Practical and Technical Education, 26.
68. As the association’s secretary put it, the group aimed to ameliorate “the condi-
tion of the artisan class in general which, when compared with that of the self-
opinionated and self-conceited so-called foremost races of the present day, owing
to their having possessed manifold opportunities and diverse means to keep us
back by the exercise of legal repressive—rather oppressive—measures at their
command, socially, intellectually, politically and in various other ways.” (S. V.
Kulkarni to W. Lee-Werner, February 22, 1893. MSA: ED 1893: v. 27, c. 313.)
69. A. Satyanarayana, “Growth of Education among the Dalit-Bahujan
Communities in Modern Andhra, 1893–1947,” in Education and the
Disprivileged, ed. Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, 50–83.
70. Commissioner of Police, Bombay, to W. Lee-Werner, March 17, 1893. MSA:
ED 1893: v. 27, c. 313.
71. Mudholkar, “Education and Industrial Development,” 38.
72. See, for instance, Lala Baji Nath, “Some Factors in the Industrial and
Commercial Development of India” in Report of the First Indian Industrial
Conference Held at Benaras, 290; and R. N. Mudholkar, “Presidential Address”
in The Industrial Conference Held at Madras, December 1908 (Madras: G. A.
Natesan & Co., 1909), 50.
73. Quoted in Report of the First Indian Industrial Conference Held at Benaras, 30.
74. E. Giles, “Report on the Industrial Conference Held in Bombay on 7th and 8th
March 1904,” May 11, 1904. MSA: ED 1905: v. 70, c. 7.
75. Tolen, “Colonizing and Transforming the Criminal Tribesman,” 107.
76. For sericulture, see Dr. George Birdwood to Secretary to Government, General
Department, May 1, 1860. MSA: GD 1860: v. 27, c. 123, 312–331. For efforts
to investigate clays, see Dr. J. P. Leith, Dr. Henry Carter, and Dr. Lourdes to
Secretary to Government, General Department, Bombay, October 20, 1853.
MSA: GD 1853: v. 85, c. 527. For attempts to modernize Sindi pottery, see
“Bombay Pottery,” Journal of Indian Art and Industries 2 no. 17 (1888): 2–5.
77. For efforts in silk, for instance, see Brenda King, Silk and Empire (Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 2005); and Willem van Schendel, Reviving a
Rural Industry: Silk Producers and Officials in India and Bangladesh, 1880s to
1980s (New Delhi: Manohar, 1995).
78. For tanning and sericulture, see S. K. Raja, “Handicrafts in India,” International
Labour Review 35 (1937): 497. For dyeing and printing, see “Summaries of
Industrial Intelligence for the Quarter Ending 31st March 1922,” Journal of
Indian Industries and Labour 2 no. 2 (May 1922): 267.
79. Govindbhai H. Desai and A. B. Clarke, Gazetteer of the Baroda State, vol. 1
(Bombay: Times Press, 1923), 411–413.
NOTES 239
80. Romesh C. Dutt, “Industrial India: A Review,” The Indian Review 5 no. 7 (July
1904): 440.
81. For employment numbers, see P. N. Mehta, Report on the Handloom Industry
(Bombay: Government Press, 1909), 2. For overall production, see Roy,
Traditional Industry in the Economy of Colonial India, 62.
82. Quoted in Mehta, Report on the Handloom Industry, Appendix, 1.
83. Shirin Mehta, “Social Background of Swadeshi Movement in Gujarat, 1875–
1908,” Vidya, 14 no. 1 (January 1981): 31–46.
84. Quoted in Chunilal B. Desai, “Hand-loom Weaving in India,” in Report of the
Third Industrial Conference Held at Surat, 217.
85. The different estimates came, respectively, from W. T. Pomfret, “Note on
the Progress and the Future Working of the Hand Loom Weaving Industry,”
in Proceedings of the Provincial Co-Operative Conference Held in Poona,
June 23–24, 1911 (Bombay: Government Central Press, 1911), 28; Alfred
Chatterton, Indian Trade Journal, April 9, 1908; and Durgashankar P. Raval,
“Hindustanma Udhyogni Bhav Sthiti” [The price conditions of Indian indus-
tries], Buddhiprakash 58 no. 1 (January 1911): 5.
86. A. G. Clow, The State and Industry (1920–27) (Calcutta: Government of India,
1928), 60.
87. Proceedings of the Provincial Co-Operative Conference Held in Poona, June
23–24, 1911, 28.
88. S. V. Telang, Report on Handloom Weaving Industry in the Bombay Presidency
(Bombay: Government Central Press, 1932), 19.
89. Alfred Chatterton, Indian Trade Journal, April 9, 1908.
90. Established in Ahmednagar in 1813, the mission eventually had major posts
in western India in Satara, Bombay, Sirur, Sholapur, Vadala, and Wai; activity
at those sites included hospitals, dispensaries, primary and secondary schools,
teachers’ colleges, industrial schools, agricultural extension, and camps for
criminal tribes.
91. James Smith to William Hazen, August 18, 1908. American Board of
Commissioners for Foreign Missions records Houghton Library, Harvard
University (hereafter ABCFM). Unit 4, vol. 31: Reel 425 (1901–1909, letters
M–W from the Marathi mission). See also James Smith to Dr. Barton, January
7, 1901, ABCFM, Unit 4, vol. 31: Reel 425.
92. H. Fairbank to Dr. Gregg, November 29, 1900, ABCFM, vol. 28: Reel 422.
93. D. C. Churchill to Rev. James Barton, August 18, 1908, ABCFM, vol. 28:
Reel 422.
94. Ibid.
95. Ibid., March 18, 1904, ABCFM, vol. 28: Reel 422.
96. Ibid., May 29, 1908, ABCFM, vol. 28: Reel 422.
97. For the advice to the government of Bombay, see James Smith to Dr. Barton,
March 25, 1904, ABCFM, vol. 31: Reel 425. For the invitation from Curzon, see
D. C. Churchill to Dr. Barton, November 8, 1904, ABCFM, vol. 28: Reel 422.
98. D. C. Churchill to Dr. Barton, November 2, 1908, ABCFM, vol. 28: Reel 422.
240 NOTES
99. Douglas Haynes, “The Churchill Loom” unpublished essay, 4.

100. Ibid., 7.
101. Government of Bombay, Financial Department, Resolution no. 4087,
December 15, 1911. MSA: ED 1912: v. 71, c. 206; Government of Bombay,
Department of Industries, Annual Report, 1918–19 (1919), 4.
102. Government of Bombay, Annual Report on the Working of Co-Operative Societies
(1917), 21; Baroda State, Baroda Administration Report, 1915–16 (1917), 155;
Baroda State, Baroda Administration Report, 1916–17 (1918), 141.
103. Rao Bahadur Raojibhai Patel, “Hand-loom Weaving in India,” in Report of
the First Indian Industrial Conference Held at Benaras, 200.
104. Alfred Chatterton, Indian Trade Journal; Haynes, “The Churchill Loom”.
105. Registrar of Co-Operative Societies to Government of Bombay, General
Department, September 13, 1915. MSA: ED 1915: file 206, 23.
106. Mehta, Report on the Handloom Industry, 10.
107. Raval, “Hindustanma Udhyogni Bhav Sthiti,” Buddhiprakash, 5.
108. Report of the First Indian Industrial Conference Held at Benaras, “Resolutions,” 2.
109. Baroda State, Baroda Administration Report, 1913–14 (1915), 124–125;
Government of Bombay, Annual Report on the Working of Co-Operative
110. A. P. Badenoch, Punjab Industries (Lahore: Government Printing, Punjab,
1917), 5.
112. Ibid., 16; Government of Bombay, Annual Report on the Working of Co-
Operative Societes (1917), 21.
113. Pomfret, “Note on the Progress and the Future,” 27–29. Government of
Bombay, Financial Department, Resolution no. 4087, December 15, 1911.
MSA: ED 1912: v. 71, c. 206.
115. Government of Madras, Department of Industries, Notes on Starting
Industrial Schools, with Specimen Syllabuses of Instruction: Bulletin No. 17
(Madras: Superintendent, Government Press, 1925), 17–18.
116. Registrar of Co-Operative Societies to Government of Bombay, General
Department, September 13, 1915. MSA: ED 1915: file 206.
118. Chatterton, Indian Trade Journal.
119. Badenoch, Punjab Industries, 4.
Societies (1916), 17; Government of Bombay, Department of Industries,
Annual Report, 1918–19 (1919), 4.
121. N. M. Joshi, Urban Handicrafts of the Bombay Deccan (Poona: Gokhale
Institute of Politics and Economics, Publication No. 5, 1936), 150.
NOTES 241
122. Government of Bombay, Department of Industries, Annual Report, 1918–19

(1919), 3.
123. Douglas Haynes, “The Logic of the Artisan Firm in a Capitalist Economy:
Handloom Weavers and Technological Change in Western India, 1880–
1947,” in Institutions and Economic Change in South Asia, Burton Stein and
Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ed., (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996), 173–205;
Tirthankar Roy, “Acceptance of Innovations in Early Twentieth Century
Handloom Weaving,” Economic History Review 55 no. 3 (August 2002):
507–532.
124. For handloom courts at the 1905 and 1906 exhibitions, see Report of the
First Indian Industrial Conference Held at Benaras, lxxxvii; and Baroda State,
Baroda Administration Report, 1906–07 (1908), 78. For the handloom com-
petitions, see Report of the Work of the Indian Industrial Conference, Including
a Record of General Industrial Activity in the Country (1907), 98–105; and
Chatterton, Indian Trade Journal.
125. Indian Industrial Commission, Report (Calcutta: Government Printing,
1918), 111.
126. See, for example, Alfred Chatterton, “The Salem Weaving Factory,” in Report
of the Third Industrial Conference Held at Surat, 190–208.
127. Haynes, “The Logic of the Artisan Firm in a Capitalist Economy,” 180–188;
Roy, “Acceptance of Innovations,” 513–514.
128. Baroda State, Report on the Administration of the Baroda State for the Official
Year Ending 31st July 1897 (1901), 147–149.
129. Baroda State, Report on the Administration of the Baroda State for the Official
Year Ending 31st July 1895 (1898), 138.
131. Clive Dewey, “The Government of India’s ‘New Industrial Policy,’” 244.
132. “The Department of Industries,” Prajabandhu 29 no. 13 (March 28, 1926): 1.
133. Joshi, Urban Handicrafts of the Bombay Deccan, 158–159.
134. Prakash, Another Reason.
135. “Report on the Industrial Conference held in Bombay on 7th and 8th March
1904,” May 11, 1904. MSA: ED 1905: v. 70, c. 7.
136. The Story of The Sir JJ School of Art, 1857–1957 (Bombay: Government
Central Press, 1958), 156; Government of Bombay, Sir George Clarke
Technical Laboratories and Studios: Pottery Department—Prospectus. MSA:
ED 1915: file 12; C. P. Shah, Report on the Possibility of Pottery Manufacture in
the Province of Bombay (Bombay: Government Central Press, 1941), 4.
137. Cecil Burns to Director of Public Instruction, June 9, 1910. MSA: ED 1910:
v. 77, c. 12.
138. The Story of the Sir JJ. School of Art, 191.
139. Cecil Burns to Director of Public Instruction, May 5, 1910. MSA: ED 1910: v.
77, c. 12; Government of Bombay Department of Industries, Annual Report,
1918–19 (1919), 5–6.
242 NOTES
140. Shah, Report on the Possibility of Pottery Manufacture in the Province of

Bombay, 4.
141. Government of Bombay, Educational Department, Resolution no. 2520,
December 13, 1910. MSA: ED 1912: v. 73, c. 12.
142. Bhattacharya, “Introduction: An Approach to Education and Inequality,” 6.
143. Mehta, Report on the Handloom Industry, 7.
144. Ibid.; and Government of Bombay Resolution (General Department no.
4710, September 7, 1909), p. 2 (appended to the end of Mehta’s report.)
145. Government of Bombay Resolution (General Department no. 4710,
September 7, 1909), p. 1 (appended to the end of Mehta, Report on the
Handloom Industry.)
146. Ibid.
147. Romesh C. Dutt, “Presidential Address” in The Congress and Conference of
1905, 4.
148. “Hindi Hunnar Udyog Parishad” [The Indian industrial conference],
Buddhiprakash 53 no. 1 (January 1906): 27.
149. Quoted in Report of the First Indian Industrial Conference Held at Benaras,
38. For similar sentiments fifteen years later, see Baroda State, Report of
the Committee on the Economic Development of the Baroda State, 1918–19
(Bombay: Times Press, 1920), 162–163.
150. Dutta, The Bureaucracy of Beauty, 241.
Conclusion
1. “Udhyogoddhar” [The uplift of industry], Buddhiprakash 50 no. 3 (March

1903): 69.
2. Ibid., Buddhiprakash 50 no. 8 (August 1903): 241.
3. Ibid., Buddhiprakash 50 no. 10 (October 1903): 300.
4. Ibid., Buddhiprakash 50 no. 11 (November 1903): 341.
5. Emma Tarlo, Clothing Matters: Dress and Identity in Modern India (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1996), 87.
6. Jaju Shrikrishnadas, The All India Spinners’ Association and Its Work: A Brief
Account (Up to 1951) (Wardha: All-India Spinners’ Association, 1951), 8.
7. Shrikrishnadas, All India Spinners’ Association and Its Work, 9–10.
8. For a thorough overview of khadi activities and agencies, see Lisa Trivedi,
Clothing Gandhi’s Nation: Homespun and Modern India (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 2007).
9. Mohandas Gandhi, “Hind Swaraj,” in The Penguin Gandhi Reader, ed.
Rudrangshu Mukherjee (1909; New York: Penguin Books, 1993), 17.
10. “Swaraj and Khaddar,” Young India 4 no. 18 (May 11, 1922): 228, 227.
11. Traditional spinning wheel favored by Gandhi.
12. See Mohandas K. Gandhi, “The Uses of Khaddar,” Young India 2 no. 17 (April
28, 1920): 5; P. C. Ray, “Dr. Ray on Charkha,” Young India 4 no. 5 (February 2,
1922): 71; “Public Life In Godhra: Swadeshi and Suppressed Classes,” Young
NOTES 243
India 1 no. 31 (August 20, 1919): 1; B. Chowdary, “Recreation in the Charkha,”

Young India 3 no. 29 (July 21, 1921): 227; Mohandas K. Gandhi, “Wanted
Experts,” Young India 3 no. 38 (September 22, 1921): 304; Ibid., “The Great
Sentinel,” Young India 3 no. 41 (October 13, 1921): 324; Shrikrishnadas, All
India Spinners’ Association and Its Work, 6; “Greater Use of Handlooms,” Young
India 3 no. 19 (May 11, 1921): 152.
13. Mohandas K. Gandhi, “The Spinning Wheel,” Young India 4 no. 14 (April 6,
1922): 185.
14. Mohandas K. Gandhi, “To the Women of India,” Young India 3 no. 32 (August
11, 1921): 253.
15. K. R., “The Beauty of It,” Young India 4 no. 31 (August 3, 1922): 324.
16. Ibid.
17. Susan Bean, “Gandhi and Khadi: The Fabric of Indian Independence,” in
Cloth and Human Experience, ed. Annette. B. Weiner and Jane Schneider
(Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989), 355–376.
18. P. C. Ray, “Khadi for Seva Work,” Young India 4 no. 24 (June 15, 1922): 270.
19. “Mr. Gandhi’s Ellore Speech,” Young India 3 no. 19 (May 11, 1921): 150.
20. “The Potency of the Spinning Wheel,” Young India 3 no. 27 (July 6, 1921):
216.
21. “Swaraj and Khaddar,” 228.
22. Maganlal K. Gandhi, “A Model Weaving School: III,” Young India 3 no. 36
(September 3, 1921): 287.
23. Jamanlal Bajaj, “Khaddar Scheme,” Young India 4 no. 23 (June 8, 1922): 264.
24. Mohandas K. Gandhi, “Selling Khadi,” Young India 3 no. 51 (December 22,
1921): 526.
25. “Progress of Swadeshi,” Young India 2 no. 22 (June 9, 1920): 1. For more on
swadeshi stores, see Abigail McGowan, “Developing Traditions: Crafts and
Cultural Change in Modern India, 1851–1922,” unpublished Ph.D disserta-
tion, University of Pennsylvania, 2003, chap. 4.
26. T. A. Chettier, “A Peep into My Wardrobe,” Young India 4 no. 32 (August 10,
1922), 334–335; Trivedi, Clothing Gandhi’s Nation, 30–31.
27. M. P. Gandhi, How to Compete with Foreign Cloth: A Study of the Position of
Hand-Spinning, Hand-Weaving and Cotton Mills in the Economics of Cloth
Production in India (Calcutta: The Book Company, 1931), 46–47.
28. Mohandas K. Gandhi, “To the Women of India,” 253.
29. Trivedi, Clothing Gandhi’s Nation, 68. See also Tarlo, Clothing Matters, 94–117.
30. Shrikrishnadas, All India Spinners’ Association and Its Work, 12–14.
31. Tarlo, Clothing Matters, 94–128.
32. See Ibid., 117–118.
33. Trivedi, Clothing Gandhi’s Nation, 12–37.
34. Saloni Mathur, India by Design: Colonial History and Cultural Display
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 46–47.
35. Trivedi, Clothing Gandhi’s Nation, 14.
36. See, for instance, Bean, “Gandhi and Khadi”; Bernard Cohn, “Cloth, Clothes
and Colonialism,” in Cloth and the Human Experience, ed. Annette. B. Weiner
244 NOTES
and Jane Schneider (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989),

303–353; Tarlo, Clothing Matters.
37. C. A. Bayly, “The Origins of Swadeshi (Home Industry): Cloth and Indian
Society, 1700–1930,” in The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural
Perspective, ed. Arjun Appadurai (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1986), 285–321.
38. Som Benegal, The Story of Handicrafts (Delhi: All India Handicrafts Board,
Ministry of Production, 1960), 3.
39. K. K. Subrahmanian, “Introduction: An Overview of the Handicrafts Industry,”
in The Handicrafts Industry in Kerala: Blending Heritage with Economics, ed.
K. K. Subrahmanian (Delhi: Centre for Development Studies, 2006), 4.
40. J. M. Lobo Prabhu, “New Thoughts on Cottage Industry,” Roopa-Lekha 27 no.
1 (1956): 57.
41. D. N. Saraf, Indian Crafts: Development and Potential (New Delhi: Vikas
Publishing House, 1982), 253.
42. Adris Banerji, “Folk Museums in India,” Modern Review 80 (1946): 200, 199.
43. Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya, “Origin and Development of Embroidery in
Our Land,” Marg 17 no. 2 (1964): 3.
44. Benegal, Story of Handicrafts, 14.
45. Saraf, Indian Crafts, 22, 257.
46. D. N. Saraf, In the Journey of Craft Development (New Delhi: Sampark, 1991),
59–60; Ajit Mookerjee, “Crafts Museum,” Marg 19 no. 1 (1965): 18; Hermann
Goetz, “Calico Museum of Textiles at Ahmedabad,” Marg 3 no. 4 (1949):
57–61.
47. H. Kumar Vyas, “The Designer and the Socio-Technology of Small-Production,”
Journal of Design History 4 no. 3 (1991): 194.
48. Tirthankar Roy, “Development or Distortion? Powerlooms in India, 1950–97,”
Economic and Political Weekly 33 no. 16 (1998): 898, 900.
49. L. C. Jain, “A Heritage to Keep: The Handicrafts Industry, 1955–1985,”
Economic and Political Weekly 21 no. 20 (1986): 883.
50. Saraf, In the Journey of Craft Development, 48, 56; P. N. Sankaran, “Wood
Carving Artisans in Thiruvananthapuram City: A Study of Beneficiaries
vis-a-vis Non-Beneficiaries of Institutional Intervention,” in The Handicrafts
Industry in Kerala, ed. K. K. Subrahmanian, 75.
51. Maureen Liebl and Tirthankar Roy, “Handmade in India: Preliminary Analysis
of Crafts Producers and Crafts Production,” Economic and Political Weekly 38
no. 51–52 (2003): 5366–5376; K. A. Stephanson, “Socio-Economic Aspects of
Labour in Household Handicrafts in Thrissur District,” in The Handicrafts
Industry in Kerala, ed. K. K. Subrahmanian, 191–208.
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The Indian Review (IR)
Journal of Indian Art and Industries (JIAI)
Journal of Indian Industries and Labour (JIIL)
Journal of the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha
Prajabandhu
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Index
Ahmedabad Wood Carving Company brasswork and copperwork, 11, 16,

(AWCC), 20, 122, 131–138, 135 42, 47, 50, 51–52, 60, 66, 91–92
fig. 3.6, 137 fig. 3.7, 145, 146–147 Buck, E. C., 118, 132, 161, 164
All-India Handicrafts Board Buist, George, 39
(AIHB), 189, 198–199, 201 Burns, Cecil, 88, 110–111, 115, 123
American Marathi Mission, 14, 21, 94,
170–171 Calico Museum, Ahmedabad, 189,
art schools, government, 8–9, 201
110–112, 138, 155–156 capitalism, as foreign to India, 79–80,
Arts and Crafts Movement, 4, 19, 28, 108, 142, 145
44, 48, 73, 77–78, 80, 188 carpets, 11, 14, 52, 105, 119, 121–122,
Ashbee, C. R., 28, 77, 80 123, 125
autonomy/independence of caste, 49–50, 51, 81, 85–87, 90–91, 158
artisans, 20, 79, 90, 93, 104–105, Chatterton, Alfred, 5, 7, 85–87, 88,
109, 110, 115, 123–124, 131–132, 132, 140, 163, 165, 173, 177–178,
133–135, 138, 139–142, 144–145, 179
146, 147–148, 156, 167, 179–181 Chattopadhyaya, Kamaladevi, 5, 189,
artisanship, superiority to mill 200
work, 71, 94–95, 140–141, 168, Chhotalal (Ranchhodlal) Technical
191–192 Institute, Ahmedabad, 166
Churchill, D. C., 7, 21, 170–174, 178,
Baroda State, 128, 143, 168, 174, 175, 179
179, 181–182 Clarke, Purdon, 132, 136
Sayajirao III, Gaekwar of, 89, 100, Clarke (Sir George) Technical
187–189, 199 Laboratories and Studios,
Bayly, C. A., 9–10, 26, 197–198 183–184
Birdwood, George, 5, 37, 39–40, 46, Clibborn Commission of 1903, 12–13,
48–49, 53, 78, 90, 94–96, 126, 161–162
131, 132 conservatism, 19, 72, 74, 85–86, 88,
Industrial Arts of India, The, 46–49, 90–93
53, 78, 79–80, 95, 106, 107 Coomaraswamy, Ananda, 5, 8, 80, 90,
block printing, 12, 14, 64–65, 91 96–97, 131
body, 5, 19, 29, 43, 52–53, 74, 94–95, Indian Craftsman, The, 80–82, 94,
164, 184–185 96, 107–108
262 INDEX
consumers/patronage, 124–130, 133, de Forest, Lockwood, 117, 122,

189–190, 192–195 132–138
cooperatives, 14, 104–105, 131–132, design
138–145, 178, 185 celebration, 28, 30–35, 54, 77, 105,
crafts 109–110, 132–133
backward/timeless nature of documentation, 54–57, 117
production, 34–35, 43, 53, instinctual, 33–34, 111, 132
61–62, 71, 83–85, 95–96, instruction in, 111–115, 132–133
149–152 preservation, 20, 104, 109–110,
cultural roots of production, 46–54, 118, 145
62, 74, 77, 94 promotion, 116–130
definitions of, 11–18 reform movement in Britain, 28,
difference/opposition to modern 30, 77
industry, 14–15, 18, 19–21, Westernization/hybridity in, 54,
28–29, 63, 71–89, 93–98, 57, 74, 105–107, 111, 115,
103–104, 109, 111–112, 124, 117–118, 147
128, 132, 138, 148, 151, 156, development, public interest in and
166–167, 179–186, 187–189, responsibility for, 2–4, 67–70,
194–196, 199, 201, 203 146, 169, 175, 189–190
economic importance of, 2, 5–6, Dharwar
45, 67–69, 71, 126, 142, 150, cooperatives, 144–145
160–161, 168, 199–200 School of Industry, 156–159, 167
gendering of production, 16, 59 Dutt, Romesh Chunder, 5, 71–72, 94,
as national culture, 2, 5, 6, 31, 108, 168, 169, 185–186, 199
105, 109, 188, 189, 196, Dutta, Arindam, 6, 8, 69, 186
200–201 dyeing, 51, 52–53, 64, 85–86,
problems within, 1, 41–42, 53, 57, 87–88, 91
62–63, 73, 74, 105–109, 115,
132, 140, 149–152, 169–170, embroidery, 16–17, 78, 91
184–185, 202 exhibitions
reorganization within, 14, 17–18, Ahmedabad 1902, 100, 187
20, 90–93, 139, 178–179, 180, artisans on display, 19, 43, 60–61,
201 61 fig. 1.5, 62 fig. 1.6, 66
technology, need for modern, Bombay 1904, 60, 172
140–141, 149–151, 152–154, Broach 1868–69, 38–42
168, 171 Calcutta 1883, 55, 136
unity among crafts as a sector, collecting systems for, 36–37
13–14, 63–64, 75, 163–165 Colonial and Indian Exhibition of
Crafts Museum, New Delhi, 189, 201 1886, 38, 45, 58, 59 fig. 1.4, 60,
Curzon, Viceroy of India, Lord, 124, 66, 79, 82, 116
128–130, 161, 162, 173, 183 Delhi Durbar Exhibition of
1903, 128–130, 129 fig. 3.5
Deccan Artisans’ Association, 165 Great Exhibition of 1851, 19,
decline, rhetoric of, 106–109, 111, 133 23–24, 28, 30–36, 38, 77, 83,
deindustrialization, 4, 6, 169 103, 109
INDEX 263
international exhibitions, 29, Banaras 1905, 84, 89, 94, 99, 163,
35–38, 42, 78, 79 165, 175, 185–186
Jaipur Art and Industrial Exhibition Madras 1908, 87, 160
of 1883, 55, 57, 116–117 Surat 1907, 85, 94
objectives of Indian exhibitions, 29, Indian National Congress, 60, 94, 99,
35–36, 38–39, 41–43, 126–127 187, 190, 193
Punjab Art and Industry Exhibition Industrial Art Pattern Books,
of 1881–1882, Lahore, 120–121
116–117, 136 industrial education, 14, 15–16,
20–21, 153, 154–167, 181
Gandhi, Mohandas K., 1–3, 7, 8, 9–10, differences from art
11, 21, 189–199 education, 155–156
government role in crafts limitations of earlier artisanal
craft monographs, 51–54, 57–58, education, 87–88
125 preservation of artisanal difference
1883 Draft Scheme for the within, 21, 154, 156, 166–167
Promotion of Industrial problems with, 157–160, 177
Art, 54–55, 117–118, reform of, 160–164, 166
123–124, 127 restrictions within, 162, 164–166,
gazetteers, 29, 44, 49–51, 57–58, 167
63–64 for upper classes, 166, 181–182
post-independence, 10, 201–202 industrialization, need for, 70–71,
pre-British support for crafts, 8–9, 82–84, 94, 148, 149–151, 186,
25–26 187–188, 199
responsibility for economic ivory, 14, 52
development, 26–27, 28, 67,
70, 99–100, 160 Jacob, Colonel Swinton, 55, 58,
technical investigations, 168, 170, 118–119, 132
172–174, 181–182, 183–184, jail industries, 121–122
201 Jaipur, 136
Goswami, Manu, 4, 6, 10, 27, 108 exhibition, 55, 57, 116–117
Griffiths, John, 51–52, 54–55, 58, 66, museum, 55, 116, 117, 122, 123,
113, 114, 123, 132, 138, 146–147 126
publications by the Maharaja, 57,
Haynes, Douglas, 17, 92, 145, 173, 119, 121
178, 180 school of art, 60, 115
Hendley, Thomas Holbein, 45, 55, 57, Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy School of
58, 116–118, 119, 121, 123, 126, Art, 11–13, 15, 20, 60, 103,
127, 132 110–115, 126, 127, 183
Hutheesing, Muggunbhai, 133–136 JJ School museum, 54–55, 113
Reay Art Workshops, 11, 16, 58,
indebtedness, artisanal, 90, 139, 143 104, 114–115, 123, 146–147
Indian industrial conferences, 60, use of Indian art in instruction,
94, 179 54–55, 112–114
Allahabad 1910, 87 jewelry, 38, 47, 105
264 INDEX
Jones, Owen, 28, 31, 32 fig. 1.2 Mathur, Saloni, 5, 8, 66

Journal of Indian Art and Industry Mayo School of Art, Lahore, 78, 120,
(JIAI), 20, 55–58, 60–61, 118, 123
125–126, 128, 146 middlemen, 131, 139, 144
Morris, William, 4, 10, 28, 44, 73,
khadi, 2, 10, 21, 189, 190–198 77–78, 80, 81, 116
Kala Bhavan, 152, 155, 166, 181, 187 Mukharji, T. N., 66, 82–83, 88
Khadi and Village Industries museums, 36–37, 45–46,
Commission (KVIC), 198–199 117–118, 124
Kipling, John Lockwood, 55, 78, emporia at museums, 127–128
116–118, 120, 122–123, 132, 136
knowledge, paper, 29, 52
of design, 30–34, 54–57 pottery, 12, 14, 52, 167–168, 183–84
limitations of artisanal Prakash, Gyan, 7, 36, 152
knowledge, 61–62, 65–66, 69
of production not just products, 34, Ranade, Mahadev Govind, 5, 70, 99,
43–54, 58 100–101, 199
shift from private to public, 28, Reay Economic Museum,
64–66, 67 Poona, 128
systematization, centralization, Roy, Tirthankar, 17, 65, 92, 178, 180,
24–28, 29–30, 46, 52, 58, 63–64 201
Kutch, 105, 126 Royle, John Forbes, 30–34, 37
Ruskin, John, 4, 10, 34, 44, 81
labor,
improvement of, 151–155, Sassoon (David) Industrial and
163–164, 167 Reformatory Institution
shortages in, 137–138, 151–152, (Bombay School of
157 Industry), 154–155
underemployment of, 152 silk, 52, 56, 60–61, 64, 78, 79, 168
leadership stone carving/inlaying, 52, 55
elite, as proving legitimacy to swadeshi, 2–3, 9–10, 70, 169, 190
colonial state, 8, 9–10, 18, 20,
70, 97–101 Technical Art Series, 118–119, 120 fig.
impossibility of artisanal, 7, 20, 3.2, 123–124, 146
69, 74–75, 87–89, 98, 146, 148, Terry, George, 37, 39, 42, 132
184–186 Tiffany (Louis) and Tiffany
necessity of outsider, 7, 20, Studios, 133, 137–138
65–66, 69, 72, 75, 86, 105, 108,
146–148, 164, 175, 188–189, Victoria and Albert Museum,
196–197, 201–203 Bombay, 19, 37, 39–41, 43, 59,
shared by Indians and British, 6–8, 54–55, 60, 126, 128
69–70, 76, 96, 108, 152–153, Victoria Jubilee Technical Institute
202–203 (VJTI), 104, 144, 166, 170,
leather, 12, 14, 52, 143 173–174, 176
INDEX 265
Wardle, Thomas, 78, 79, 85–86, 107 insistence on crafts difference,

Watson, John Forbes, 27, 41 179–181
Textile Manufactures and the need to preserve/improve, 71,
Costumes of the People of India, 140–142, 168–170, 175,
The, 41, 45, 49 184–186
weaving, handloom, 14, 17–18, 52, 91, wood, 11, 14, 16, 38, 52, 88, 90,
131, 139, 169–170 120–121, 155–157, 163
handloom instruction, 175–177, furniture, 91, 121, 131–138
178–179, 180, 181–182, 193 Wyatt, Matthew Digby, 28, 31
improvements to, 20–21, 60, 85, 92,
94, 140, 169–170, 171–179, 172 zari, 12, 52, 91
fig. 4.1, 193

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1 Demanding Knowledge, Documenting the Body 23

1.1 The Indian Court at the Great Exhibition, 1851,

3.7 Lockwood de Forest home, East 10th Street,

reviewers of the manuscript who offered invaluable suggestions on revi-

and degraded working populations of Western industrialization offered

national progress with personal austerity. By spinning and weaving their

Crafting a New Narrative of Development

In pursuing the cultural politics structuring crafts development, one of

power,25 that salience also rested on the contemporary possibilities crafts

If one goal of this book is to insert culture into economics, another is to

politics rested heavily on precolonial understandings, specifically the

The Scope of the Study: Definitional Practices

processes.33 In the end, the question of crafts emerges in the interplay

More industrial-minded reformers often disagreed with this almost-

large population base experiencing large absolute increments which build

These examples offer three different definitions of crafts and artisanal

Having established the complexity of the definitional problem in the

that Ahmedabadi woodworkers were shifting from carving to building

full-time carpenters or smiths, thereby diverting students from compet-

Taken together, Joshi’s definition and the further criteria of specializa-

the limitations of the idea of crafts difference; while it structured public

Before anyone could intervene to change production or use crafts to

into new working relationships, adopted novel technologies, and subdi-

place of conservative, idiosyncratic traditional apprenticeships; by offer-

By 1851, Britain’s political suzerainty in the subcontinent was clear.

encourage the best possible production for royal consumption.8 At the

Much has already been accomplished in respect of opening the country by

As Watson’s statement suggests, pleas for greater information about

of occasional overviews of particular provinces, government gazetteers,

At international exhibitions, the glories of Indian patterning, ornamenta-

Documenting Material Production: 1850s to 1870s

The Great Exhibition of 1851: Defining “Indian design”

sensation amongst all connected with art and manufacture”—an effect

visitors faced in 1851: how to accommodate “the monstrous volume and

as well in the carved or engraved, as in the painted, printed, woven, or

Whatever the media represented, or from whatever part of the subconti-

present inhabitants continue to venerate sciences which they know only by

Even in their acknowledged areas of superiority—ornamentation and

designs because they were unsullied by reason, science, or technology.

We possess a wealth of knowledge, a never-surpassed technical virtuosity,

The exhibitionary complex in India

or outright purchases. Whether at the regional or the local level, those

through the list of specimens desired by the Bombay committee, the

Whatever their goals to offer comprehensive displays, neither the

oils used in pharmaceutical products, food products, and vegetable and

reported that a Captain L. Pelly had donated a collection of Asian and

give a tone of unity, a fixed principle, to the whole exhibition, which it

In India, by contrast, exhibitions and museums assembled local goods to

this occasion the representatives of these districts and communities were

Linking Products to Producers: 1880s to 1900s

communities to prevent future uprisings. At the same time, Queen

Museum of Art Thomas Holbein Hendley put it in a catalog to the 1886

With value dependent on individual handwork, it became increasingly