Jamdani

0:06 Jamdani, it's synonymous with the Bengali feminine identity. Every woman would have it in her trousseau, handed down from mothers and grandmothers. I started researching it and realized how much the story of jamdani is connected to why Bangladeshis are perhaps actually here in this country. 0:31 In the original weaving of muslin and jamdani, you get the synergy between two faiths. The, the Muslim weaver, the Persian weavers that came with the Mughal courts, sitting side by side with the Hindu weaver. You would not get muslin without the Brahmin weaver, and you wouldn't get the motifs without the Muslim weaver. 0:53 So, it's a very interesting marriage of sacred crafts. They were all women, perhaps very young in age, and they would have had very nimble fingers, creating this illustrious fabric, so delicate that it was actually given the term "woven air," yet it's cotton. So, it's changed a lot now, obviously with the geopolitical changes. 1:18 It's mainly men who weave now, but it's not the pairing of the Hindu and the Muslim weaver. You could hear the cackle of laughter of people around, but inside the room, there's no sound of machinery. The men were completely silent. And then they have this mathematical poem, and as they speak to each other in this rhythmic rhyming couplets, they know what design and when to start weaving in the motifs into the fabric. It's fascinating witnessing this. 1:52 So, I designed some motifs under the banner of Symbols of Power, and I worked with two weavers, Rajan and Jahangir, from the weaving community near an ancient UNESCO heritage site. The mantra that I use in order to come up with new designs is that ‘tradition is new ways of doing old things’. 2:14 With that in mind, I tried to take the historic motifs and connect it with what would really catch the attention of the modern Bengali woman, the, the new empowered youth, uh, particularly in light of the, the recent changes in Bangladesh's geopolitics. What would capture their attention to make it a sustainable, trendy, cool thing to have, as well as something that's part of our heritage? 2:41 The tiger stripes, the trio of the Buddhist circles known as Chintamani, the tulip with the yin-yang symbol inside. 2:51 These together, it evokes a sense of harmony. You cannot have power that is unchecked by balance, and that's what those symbols mean. The motifs I've chosen appear in Rickshaw art that come from the folk culture with that historical link to the great Mughals and the Ottomans and the Turkish sultans that brought the craft there. 3:16 We know through the East India Company records that the muslin industry, the textile industry was destroyed on purpose in order to protect British textile businesses here. And I feel that discovering jamdani and its enduring legacy, although it's mutated and become something similar to the, to the past but not quite the same, I think that perhaps connects on a deeper level with the whole history of South Asian migrants who have come to this country, made a home here. 3:50 And particularly perhaps my own personal story of how I grew up here and how my parents, how they struggled and made as much of a success of it as they could. It's also the story of jamdani. I, I see that parallel, that we take different pathways, but we're still here. And, you know, the recent sort of disturbances that we've had, it's really made one think about one's identity and sense of belonging and, you know, growing up between two cultures. 4:22 I think working with jamdani roots me. It gives me a foundation. It's about celebrating that resilience, and I think this sense of belonging. Jamdani is something that I can take ownership of as part of my heritage.