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In the cold of a typical Delhi winter morning, I found myself winding my way through the narrow bylanes of Zakir Nagar. With every turn the streets got narrower, the houses were closer together and, with the sun finally making an appearance, these narrow streets now began to throng with life. Emerging from one of the byzantine gullies that make up the area, I finally found the place I had been looking for.

The building needed a fresh coat of paint. In fact, it has probably needed a fresh coat of paint for some years now. It was no exception to its surroundings – covered in a not-so-thin layer of dust. I wouldn’t have believed I had found the right place were it not for a signboard in Urdu that informed me that I was at ‘Gareeb Manzil’. The name was more honest than modest. Still, I wasn’t interested in real estate; what I was interested in were the artisans and the dying art they practiced within these dusty walls.

I walked up a narrow flight of stairs and found myself in a corridor lined on both sides with small rooms. Hesitantly, I glanced into the first room and was elated by what I saw – there, in a tiny room lit entirely by tube lights, sat a group of seven weavers, so focused on the Jamawar shawls they were darning that they were oblivious to my presence or the busy buzz of the world outside. An old Rafi number played on a cassette player that had seen better days. “Tum mujhe yun bhula na paoge”, the words of the song echoed the plight that these weavers faced – their once-famed ancestral skills now on the verge of extinction.

These weavers belong to the ‘Rafugar’ (needle worker) community from Najibabad – a small town in Uttar Pradesh about 50 kilometres southeast of Haridwar. Founded in the mid-18^th century as a base on the developing trade route between Kashmir and Lucknow-Benaras, the town became synonymous with the famed Jamawar shawl after a few Sunni Muslims families apparently settled there and found commercial scope for their darning skills. Their descendants have today grown into a community of some 400 families.

The Jamawar, a special type of Kashmiri shawl worn by men and women alike, is among the most exquisite textiles ever woven. In the past it has been coveted by Mughal kings, Sikh maharajas, Iranian nobles, French emperors and Russian and British aristocrats among others.

A widely accepted theory among textile scholars associates the origin of the art of Jamawar weaving in India with the Mughal emperor Akbar. Akbar was so enamoured by the craft that he invited skilled weavers from Arab countries and settled them in Kashmir. Under the patronage of Mughal royalty the craft blossomed and the Jamawar became a hugely popular luxury good in most of South Asia. The industry flourished and imperial kharkanas – workshops of shawl weaving – were established. However, the golden age of the Jamawar has long since passed and today’s situation is very different.

With the shawl business being a seasonal one, every winter the Rafugar weavers migrate from Najibabad to Delhi. A single shawl can often take an entire year to produce, so finding willing buyers is important. The Rafugars generally sell their shawls either through Kashmiri traders or, for the lucky ones, directly to customers. The arrangement with Kashmiri traders is also fraught with risk for the weavers. The traders do not buy the goods from the weavers and only make payment if they are successful in selling the shawls; returning them in the event that they do not find a buyer.

In some families, like that of Atique Ahmed, a fourth generation needle worker operating out of Garib Manzil, darning has been an uninterrupted tradition, a legacy passed down by fathers to their sons. Atique, now 70 years-old with a flowing white beard, remembers learning the craft from his grandfather. He said, “My expertise runs in my blood and this is all I know, all of us made our livelihood by darning.” He shared that in times gone by, the Rafugars main source of income came from serving nobles by remodeling their shawls. Sometimes when nobles grew tired or displeased with the design of shawl the Rafugars were called upon to get the undesired portion cut out and replaced. They also washed shawls and did other Jamawar repair work.

At the end of another narrow bylane we arrive at the home of Ishrat Ahmed, one of the most respected and well-off shawl merchants in the Rafugar community. Ishrat is vocally and visibly proud of his Rafugar heritage – his father and grandfather too were in the same profession, and Ishrat learnt and excelled at the craft of darning at a young age. “I am sure nobody in the world can compete with us in darning, not even the Kashmiri weavers. Weavers from Najibabad are like the doctors of Jamawars. I do not know where Jamawar embroidery came from but our ancestors from Najibabad pioneered darning skills, since then we have improvised and improved it over the years.”

The claim may seem exaggerated or even boastful until one sees their needle work first hand. Their expertise lies in weaving together different shawl pieces so perfectly that the shawl appears near-seamless to the naked eye

In pre-independence India, shawl merchants, also known as pheriwalas, travelled on foot to cities like Delhi, Patna, Allahabad, Kanpur, Calcutta, Lahore and Karachi, carrying the cloth wrapped shawl bundles on their heads to sell to those who could afford it. A Young Jamawar trader, Imran, tells an interesting tale of how his ancestors used to procure old Jamawar shawls. The weavers used to visit the princely states of India, going door to door asking for old clothes. They would then barter kitchen utensils for old shawls. Often, ladies, unaware of the value of the antique shawls, exchanged them for utensils. Later, with their unique darning skills, the Rafugars would restore these shawls to their old splendour.

Few things in this profession have changed – handmade Jamawar shawls still take a lot of time to manufacture. Weaving a single shawl can take up to a couple of decades. Janet Rizvi, in her book ‘The Kashmir Shawl and Beyond’, gives us an idea of how painstakingly the shawls were crafted:

“It is said that one piece (Shawl) started in 1819 as a gift for Maharaja Ranjit Singh: the work took the embroiderer, Ghulam Mohammad Kulu, an amazing 37 years to complete, by which time Ranjit was long dead.”

Shahid Ahmed, who is in the business of buying, selling and repairing antique shawls said, “The shawl fabric is very delicate, embroidery needs to be very carefully done and the design patterns need to look prominent by using different shades of threads. All this is handmade. Of course it consumes a lot of time.” The current practices are exactly the same as those documented by William Moorcroft, an English explorer in 1823. Moorcroft, when he visited India, acknowledged the tedious and painstaking embroidery done by the Rafugars. He remarked that the “expertness and finish achieved by the Rafugars will probably not be readily attained in Britain”

In the absence of new handmade shawls, the existing old shawls have earned antique status but these are hard to find and extremely expensive. The scarcity of these antique shawls has severely affected the darning business of the Rafugars and some members of the community have opted for different professions. Qasim, the youngest son of Atique Ahmed, is one such person. He is working with an IT company in Noida. He believes that the community, which consists of just over 400 families and thousands of needle workers, can no longer depend solely on the weaving business. “It’s not easy to leave your family heritage but the shawl business is dying and to earn a living we all need some other profession”, he said.

The weavers, who once created amazing textiles, have never enjoyed great wealth and were often exploited but with the business being at an all-time low, the Rafugars don’t have enough work to afford even the most basic lifestyle.

Wasim Ahmed, Qasim’s elder brother, is glad that Qasim managed to complete his studies and has, for now at least, secured his future. Wasim says, “Fake shawls made in China at low prices are available, they are not even decent imitations. Jamawar shawls were always enjoyed by the nobles given their expensive lifestyles. But very few rich people today demand such exquisite shawls plus the modern generation have completely different tastes and preferences. They are not likely to go out wearing shawls or appreciate the worth of a Jamawar.”

There was a time in India when wearing a Jamawar shawl was a matter of status and honour – part of the formal attire for men and a luxury accessory for women. Gifting newly-wed couples a Jamawar shawl as a blessing was a norm. Perhaps times have indeed changed and the craft of Jamawar weaving has been left behind, but unless we take steps to document and preserve these practices, there is a chance that we could lose this ancestral knowledge for good. Even as the art of the Jamawar is dying, I cast my eyes again on Atique Ahmed, the old Jamawar master. Seated in a corner, quietly puffing on his hookah, a Jamawar shawl in hand, his eyes have a far-away expression. I imagine that he’s remembering better times when nawabs would call on the Rafugars for their services, but, as the hookah smoke clears, the reality of Gareeb Manzil and the dwindling art and business of the Jamawar shawl is one that he must learn to live with.