Spectacles on the bridge of the nose, eyes crinkling whenever that malleable fine wire twists recalcitrant, 50-something Bhanu Das deftly crochets a loop, her fingers flying as she weaves a metallic string.
Her husband, Jatindra Nath Das, the 65+ owner of a narrow, long and rectangular Barpetia jewellery-making workshop, mixes tiny pieces of silver with pounded wood-coal and fires it in a mud stove. Once the embers go cold, the ash will be blown away leaving behind wee balls.
Four men on the floor hammer, twist or painstakingly paste minuscule pieces of those balls along the sides of a gaam-khaaru or bracelet — you are at Ghoramara Hati village in Barpeta, the Temple Town or Xattra Nagari, a two-hour drive from Guwahati.
Xattras or Sattras are the Ekasarana monasteries — institutional centres that propagate Vaishnavism — established by Mahapurush Sankardev in the 16th century, and have been surprisingly instrumental in introducing here among various other arts the now traditional craft of jewellery-making. An art and a craft that may have gained some popularity over the last few years but in danger of losing its distinct identity, in danger also because the karigars are being lured away to big cities like Kolkata, Mumbai and even beyond Indian shores to China, and in danger again as the local artisans, with not enough work, are driven to abandon their skills and switch to alternative means to earn a living — working as a labourer, driving an autorickshaw or even a cycle rickshaw!
Says Jatindra, who knows not since how many generations his family has been in the business of handcrafting traditional jewellery. “I know my great grandfather was in this business. But we cannot survive on art alone.”
Das is among those who is able to eke out a fairly decent living. “We get a good number of orders during the festive and wedding season, and a lot of it comes from the diaspora too.”
From 500 karigars in Barpeta till about three-four years back, to less than 100 today — the fading lustre can be attributed not just to the rise in the price of the precious metals but also the skill drain. “People lure the trained artisans to make the traditional designs with their own twist and still sell it as Assamese jewellery,” laments Alakesh, Jatindra’s son who helps his father in the business.
He is not wrong. Google and you should be able to spot variations of the looka-para motif on portals that retail junk jewellery in oxidised metal.
Skill Drain
Questions 26-year-old Mriganga Banik, another fourth generation practitioner of the art. “How do you expect us to survive and continue making the traditional Barpetia jewellery when people from outside poach on our talent and get them to make the same designs in copper and plastic, with machinery and sell at one-fourth the price or even less!? We anyways have little work during the lean season. This Durga Puja business has been slower than last year! Definitely not enough to keep the hearth burning”.
Manoranjan Das echoes: “Work was more or less okay four-five years back with orders coming in from Guwahati and the local people here in Barpeta. But now with business a wee trickle, the younger lot chooses to work as daily labour or even drive an autorickshaw.” Manoranjan is the third generation practising this craft. He retails from his workshop and also supplies to 2-3 shops in Guwahati.
All the artisans I spoke to shared that they hire people to help when the orders are more during the Bihu festival, Durga Puja and wedding season, paying them INR300-700 depending on the motif and the size of the piece. But these days, rues Mriganga, earning a paltry INR300 is not easy.
The youths beseech: “Our government should ban the use of copper and any other material for the making of our Barpetia jewellery so that we can get back to our traditional work.”
Not by hand
The use of machinery, which can be bought from Kolkata, to do some of the fine work like knotting a chain with the help of a tool like the crochet needle, is also robbing this traditional art of its unique craftsmanship. The crochet knit of soft metallic wire, informs 50-year-old Bhanu Das, can be done only by women as “our fingers are slender and it is easy to wield the thick iron hook”. This hook, almost 8 times the thickness of the shepherds’ hook, is made of iron. Similarly, there are various other instruments being made at the local smithy that are getting replaced by machines. “Work on the machinery means that what we do in two painstaking months, gets done in an hour for something intricate or maybe a couple of hours. If timely steps are not taken now, we will gradually lose all our talent, workmanship”, warns Bhanu, looking up from her glasses, that have once again slipped lower down her nose.
“I have seen how crafts fade away. I hope I can see Barpetia jewellery get its sheen back,” chips in her husband as he brushes away a fly with his home-spun araayee haata, or gamosa like light cotton handspun fabric with untasselled ends, used to wipe the body. “This phenomenon is only four-five years old, and we can still arrest it,” he mutters.
Although some people have rallied together to get GI status for Assamese jewellery, which stands out because of its distinct motifs, style and colour combinations, inspired largely from local flora and fauna, more needs to be done to save this heritage craft, affirms Alakananda Das, a social entrepreneur who is partnering with Alakesh to promote Barpetia jewellery.
In The Days of Yore
Recounting the history of how Assamese jewellery from Barpeta, with influences from as far as Odisha, Uttar Pradesh, East Bengal and Kolkata came about, heritage activist Swapnanil Barua, a retired IAS officer of the 1987 batch, says: “When Sankardev started preaching his religion of one God, he used the audio-visual medium — song, dance, poetry, jewellery and handicraft. Thus, there are illustrated manuscripts that narrate the dance dramas on Krishna and Radha, or the tales of Ram and Dashavatars as incarnations of Vishnu; and the performance of these meant that costumes and jewellery were needed for the actors”.
The Mahapurush himself designed most of the jewellery motifs along with his disciple Madhab Deb, who he also called his prana bandhava or friend of the soul. The influence of Sankardev’s voyages to Puri, Badrinath and Kashi is reflected in the workmanship, be it gold-plating or filigree. The meenakari in the Barpetia jewellery came in much later, in all likelihood when the traders interacted with those in East Bengal and Kolkata, Swapnanil added.
Barpetians in the days of yore, said he, were merchants who used to trade in salt, eri (fabric), lac (collected from the Garo hills). But the outsiders visiting their village could only give gold and silver mohars (coins). Within the community, these mohars served little purpose and so they were stashed away in some box or chest only to be discovered much later and used to handcraft all the jewellery.
The Upper Assam Story
A little known fascinating fact about the Assamese jewellery is the vault of perhaps 16th century jewels at Majuli, the riverine island Sattra in Upper Assam that, according to popular belief, is guarded by two snakes. When the last Ahom King Purandar Singha fled to Bangladesh following the Burmese invasion in 1817, he deposited the crown jewels worth crores at the Sattra, all of which were recently digitised and a museum is also coming up to display that treasure chest.
Swapnanil was instrumental in carrying out this task with a team of four others who completed the inventory work in two weeks under candlelight, after entering the haloed precincts under oath of secrecy. So far not more than 3-4 people have had access to those jewels. There is a man called the Kakati or accountant, who stays inside and sleeps on a bed of ivory! Tradition has it that the Sattra adhikari hands over the keys of the Sattra to his successor, and when the Kakati dies, his successor, the seniormost there is anointed and allowed to go in after performing certain rituals, and the chosen one has to memorise all that is stored within!
The jewellery making hubs in Upper Assam include Jorhat and Nagaon, where historical records mention how the Subansiri river, a major tributary of the mighty Brahmaputra was known to yield gold! Derived from the Sanskrit term subarna, meaning gold, the Sonowal Kachari community of Assam was into ‘gold-washing’, panning and collecting the dust way back some hundreds of years ago — finding mention even in the Mahabharat — not for any personal gain but to add to the exchequer of the famed Ahom rulers.
While the craft of making traditional ornaments in Upper Assam has seen a revival in the last 7-8 years, the threat from imitation jewellery in Lower Assam with inferior materials like bronze and copper and being passed off as Assamese Barpetia jewellery, continues.
From making ornaments from 10 tolas (1 tola = 10 gm) of gold and one kilogram of silver in the mid-Seventies, to the half-a-tola of gold and half-kilogram silver now, the decline has been steep. Will the jewellery-makers from Barpeta continue to nurture their craft against all odds? Only time can tell.
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The Motifs
The motifs from both Upper and Lower Assam draw on the rich floral and faunal diversity (Pic named PatternsFromNature*) of the state, and also some musical instruments used to play the folk songs. The jewellery from Lower Assam does not use too much of precious stones. Instead, it is the artistry of the artisan who works on the silver or gold foil to make kesaxun (goldplated) or xun paanisoruwa (gold polished) jewellery, teasing, hammering, winding it into shape, or wielding malleable wires to work out design motifs drawn from nature, or even modifying the rudraksh or the shape of a cardamom. (pic
So there is the dhul(Pic named dhul) inspired from the drums. Here the meenakari and filigree has been added to contemporise it. The keru motif is used both for earrings and as a pendent set. The kese loora haar *(necklace beaten into shape) (Pic named kese loora haar) in the motif of a betel leaf was and is still worn by women on a day to day basis. The thokahun(Pic named thoka hun) or hammered gold danglers are shaped thus entirely by hand. The kapeli(Pic named kapeli) in a floral motif is for brides. Many of these ornamental pieces were worn by royal men too.
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*The chain has been crocheted with an iron hook and is called the kese loora haar which is made in both gold and silver. The butterfly motifs are welded into the chain.
