Akanksha Kumar

Sarbajaya Bhattacharya

Editor

Priti David

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Toofani and his team of weavers have
been working since 6:30 a.m. At the pace of 12 inches a day, the four of them
will take 40 days to finish the 23x6 feet galicha
(carpet) they are working on.



At half past noon, Toofani Bind
finally sits down to rest on a wooden bench. Behind him, in the tin shed where
he works, white cotton threads hang from a wooden frame at his workshop in Purjagir
Mujehara village of Uttar Pradesh. This is the heart of the state’s carpet
weaving industry, introduced in Mirzapur by the Mughals, and industrialised by
the British. UP dominates the national production of rugs, mats and carpets, accounting for half the national output (47 per cent), says the 2020 All India Handloom <a href="https://ruralindiaonline.org/en/library/resource/fourth-all-india-handloom-census-2019-2020/#section02">Census</a>. 



The road leading up to the Purjagir
Mujehara village gets narrower as one gets off the highway from Mirzapur city.
On either side are pucca, mostly
one-storeyed houses, as well as kuccha homes
with thatched roofs; the smoke from cow dung cakes rising in the air. In the
day, men are hardly visible outdoors, but women can be seen doing household
chores like washing clothes under the hand pump or talking to a local vendor of
vegetables or fashion accessories. 



There are no signs that this is a
weaver’s locality – no carpets or galicha
as the locals refer to it, hang or are stacked outside. Although households
have an additional space or room allocated for carpet weaving, once ready,
middlemen pick it up for washing and cleaning. 



Speaking to PARI as he rests, Toofani says, “I
learnt it [knotted weaving] from my father and have been doing this since I was
12-13 years old.” His family belong to the Bind community (listed as Other
Backward Class in the state). Most weavers are listed under OBC in UP, says the
Census.

Their home workshops are cramped
spaces with mud flooring; the singular window and door left open for
ventilation, the loom taking up much of the space. Some workshops, like
Toofani’s, are long and narrow to accommodate the iron loom where multiple
weavers can work at one time. Others are within the house and use a
smaller-sized loom mounted on an iron or wooden rod; the entire family lends a
hand to the weaving. 



Toofani has been placing stitches
with woollen threads on a cotton frame – a technique known as knotted (or tapka) weaving, tapka being a reference to the number of stitches per square inches
of the carpet. The work is more physically demanding than other forms of
weaving for the artisan must manually add the stitches. To do this, Toofani has
to get up every few minutes to adjust the frame of sut (cotton) using a dambh
(bamboo lever). The continuous squatting and rising takes a toll. 



Unlike knotted weaving, tufted
weaving of carpets is a relatively newer form that uses a handheld machine for
embroidery. Knotted weaving is harder and the wages are lower, so many weavers
have switched from knotted to tufted in the past couple of decades. Many have
quit altogether, the earnings of Rs. 200-350 a day simply not enough. In May
2024, the state’s labour department <a href="https://www.comply4hr.com/mw/UP2024UP2024APR.pdf">announced</a> daily wages for semi-skilled labour at Rs. 451, but the
weavers here say they are not being paid that amount.    



There is competition too, for the
Purjagir weavers, says Ashok Kumar, Deputy Commissioner of Mirzapur’s
Industries Department. In Uttar Pradesh, carpets are also woven in the
districts of Sitapur, Bhadohi and Panipat. “There is a slump in demand that has
affected supply,” he adds.   



There were other problems as well.
In the early-2000s, allegations of child labour in the carpet industry soured
its image. The arrival of the Euro made Turkey’s machine-made carpets better
priced, and slowly the European market was lost, says Siddh Nath Singh, a
Mirzapur-based exporter. He adds that the earlier state subsidy of 10-20 per
cent has dropped to 3-5 per cent. 



“Instead of earning 350 [rupees] a day for a
10-12 hour shift, why not work in a city for 550 as daily wages,” points out
Singh, who is the former chairman of Carpet Export Promotion Council (CEPC).

Toofani once mastered the art of weaving
with as many as 5-10 coloured threads at one go. But the low wages have
dampened his enthusiasm. “They [middlemen] are the ones who commission work.
While we keep on weaving day and night, they earn more than us,” he says dejectedly.




Today he earns Rs. 350 for a 10–12
hour shift, based on how much he has been able to weave and his wages are paid
at the end of the month. But he says this system needs to go, for it does not
take into account the hours he has put in. A lump sum payment of Rs. 700 a day
should be paid as labour charges for this skilled work, he feels.  



The middleman who gets them the
contracts are paid by the gaj (one gaj is about 36 inches). For four to
five gaj, which is the length of an
average carpet, the contractor will earn around Rs. 2,200 while the weaver will
only earn around Rs. 1,200. The contractors, however, pay for the raw material
– the kati (woollen thread) and sut (cotton yarn). 



Toofani has four sons and a daughter who are
still in school and does not want his children to follow in his footsteps. “Why
should they also do the same thing that their father and grandfather have spent
their lives doing? Shouldn’t they study and do something better?”

In a year, the Toofani and his team
weave 10-12 carpets, working 12 hours a day. Rajendra Maurya and Lalji Bind who
work with him, are both in their 50s. They work together in a small room with a
window and a door as the only source of ventilation. Summers are particularly
difficult. When temperatures soar, the rooms heat up as the asbestos roof of
this semi-pucca structure offers
little protection.



“The first step in making a galicha [carpet] is the taana
or tananna,” Toofani says. It
involves mounting the frame of cotton thread onto the loom.

In a rectangular room measuring
25x11 feet, there are trenches on either side where the loom is placed. The
loom is made of iron with ropes attached on one side to hold up the frame of
the carpet. Toofani bought it on loan five or six years ago, paying back Rs.
70,000 in monthly instalments. “In my father’s time, they used wooden looms
placed on stone pillars,” he says. 



Every knot in the carpet comprises charri (line stitch) for which the
weavers use woollen thread. To keep it intact, Toofani uses cotton thread to
form a line of lachhi (U-shaped loops
around the cotton yarn). He brings it to the front of the loose end of the
woollen thread and cuts it with a chura
– a small knife. Then, using a panja
(iron comb), he taps the entire line of stitches. “Kaatna aur thokna [cutting and tapping], that is knotted weaving,”
he sums up.



Weaving takes a toll on the
artisan’s health. “It has affected my eyesight over the years,” says Lalji
Bind, who has been in this profession for 35 years. He has to wear glasses while he works. Other
weavers complain of back ache and even sciatica. They feel like they had no
other choice but to take up this profession. “Our options were limited,”
Toofani says. In rural UP, almost 75 per cent of weavers are Muslim, says the
Census. 



“There were around 800 families 15 years ago
that were into knotted weaving,” recalls Arvind Kumar Bind, a weaver from
Purjagir, “today that number has come down to 100.” That&#39;s more than a third of
Purjagir Mujehara’s population of 1,107 (Census 2011).

In another workshop nearby, Baalji
Bind and his wife Tara Devi are working silently with full concentration on a soumak, a knotted carpet. The only sound
is the occasional snip of threads with a knife. A soumak is a single-coloured galicha
with a uniform design, and weavers who have smaller looms prefer making it. “I
will get 8,000 rupees for this piece if I finish within a month,” says Baalji. 



In both Purjagir and Bagh Kunjalgeer
– weaving clusters – although women like Baalji’s wife Tara work alongside and
account for almost a third of all weavers, their labour is not acknowledged by
others around them. Even children help out in between school and during their
summer break, their labour helping things speed up. 



Hajaari Bind and his wife Shyam Dulari are
working to finish a carpet in time. He misses his two sons who used to help but
have now migrated to Surat for wage work. “Bachon ne humse bola
ki hum log isme nahi phasenge, papa [My children told me, we don’t want to
be trapped in this, papa].”

The falling incomes and hard labour
are pushing not just the young away, but even 39-year-old Shah-e-Alam, who left
weaving three years ago and now drives an e-rickshaw. A resident of Natwa,
eight kilometres from Purjagir, he had started weaving carpets when he was 15
years old and over the next 12 years he moved from knotted weaving to becoming
a middleman in tufted weaving. Three years ago, he sold off his loom.  



“Posa
nahi raha tha [it wasn’t enough to sustain us],” he says, sitting in his
two-room newly constructed house. Between 2014 to 2022, he worked as a labourer
at a tile-making company in Dubai which ensured a monthly pay of Rs. 22,000.
“That at least helped me build this nest,” he says, pointing to the tiled
floor. “While I was getting only Rs. 150 per day as a weaver, at least as a
driver I’m able to make Rs. 250-300 daily.” 



The state government’s One District
One Product scheme provides financial aid to carpet-weavers while the central
government’s Mudra Yojana helps in availing loans at concessional rates. But
weavers like Shah-e-Alam are unaware of their existence despite the awareness
campaigns running at the block-level.



A short drive from Purjagir
Mujehara, in the neighbourhood of Bagh Kunjal Geer, Zahiruddin is engaged in
the craft of gultarash – fine tuning
the designs on a tufted carpet. The 80-year-old had enrolled for the
Mukhyamantri Hastshilp Pension Yojana. The state government scheme, started in
2018, ensures a pension of Rs. 500 to artisans over the age of 60. But after
receiving the money for three months, Zahiruddin says, the pension stopped
abruptly. 



But he is happy with the rations he receives
under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PMGKAY). Even weavers in
Purjagir village told PARI about receiving “Modi
ka galla” [food grains as part of
Prime Minister Modi’s scheme].

For every kilo of cotton thread (sut) that Shamshu-Nisa straightens on
her iron spinning wheel, the 65-year-old earns seven rupees. That adds up to
roughly Rs. 200 a day. Her late husband, Hasruddin Ansari wove knotted carpets
before the family shifted to tufted in the early 2000s. Her son, Siraj Ansari
is not looking at a future in weaving as he says even the market for tufted
weaving has slumped.    



In the same neighbourhood as
Zahiruddin, Khalil Ahmed lives with his family. In 2024, the 75-year-old
received the Padma Shri award for his contribution to durries. Browsing through
his designs he points to an inscription in Urdu: “Is par jo baithhega, woh kismatwala hoga [one who sits on this
carpet will have good fortune],” he reads out. 



But good fortune is eluding those who weave
them.

Mirzapur’s carpet weavers: tied up in knots

پھندوں میں الجھی مرزاپور کے قالین بُنکروں کی زندگی

చిక్కుముళ్ళు పడిన మీర్జాపూర్ తివాచీ నేతకారుల జీవితాలు

பின்னல்களில் சிக்கியுள்ள நெசவாளர் வாழ்க்கை

ਮਿਰਜ਼ਾਪੁਰ- ਧਾਗਿਆਂ ਵਿੱਚ ਉਲ਼ਝੀ ਜੁਲਾਹਿਆਂ ਦੀ ਹਯਾਤੀ

ମିର୍ଜାପୁରର ଗାଲିଚା ବୁଣାକାର: ଅଡୁଆ ସୂତାରେ ଜୀବନ

മിർസാപൂരിലെ പരവതാനി നെയ്ത്തുകാരുടെ കുരുക്കുകൾ

ಕಗ್ಗಂಟಾಗಿರುವ ಮಿರ್ಜಾಪುರದ ಕಾರ್ಪೆಟ್ ನೇಕಾರರ ಬದುಕು

ગૂંચમાં પડેલા મિર્ઝાપુરના ગાલીચાના વણકરો

मिर्जापुर के कालीन बुनकर गाँठ के फांदा मं अरझे

मिरजापुर के कालीन कारीगर: जिनगिए गांठ बनल जात बा

গেরোয় আটকে মির্জাপুরের গালিচা বুনকররা

বয়ন শিল্পৰে জড়িত মিৰ্জাপুৰৰ শিপিনীসকলৰ সমস্যাৰ নাই আদি-অন্ত

गांठों में उलझी मिर्ज़ापुर के कालीन बुनकरों की ज़िंदगी

Mirzapur, Mirzapur District, Uttar Pradesh, 231001, India

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Mirzapur’s carpet weavers: tied up in knots

A knotted carpet from this district in Uttar Pradesh graces the walls of the new Parliament building in Delhi. But weavers who practise this distinct craft are switching to other professions

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