Stitching Stories - Kheta In The Classroom

The research on the lesser known reversible embroidered quilts of the Shershabadi community from Eastern India was initiated independently by Course Leader, Prof. Saumya Pande, Fashion Design department, Indian Institute of Art and Design (IIAD, New Delhi) in 2017. Over a period of 6 years, 12 field trips were made to Kishanganj and Purnea districts of the state of Bihar, the last being to the interiors of Bangladesh to ascertain the relevance and authenticity of the embroidery as a community practice. The researcher stayed with the women artisans in the interiors of the villages to document the practice, process and people as a living tradition. Close to 30 villages were documented, touching upon 7-10 households in each village in India and Bangladesh. In the course of 5 years, several academic papers were written and presentations were made at national and international level to share it with a larger audience. Several textile experts were consulted to authenticate if the craft had truly remained undocumented. The research and documentation was unprecedented as it was done for the first time with the specifics of the community. The office of Member of Parliament (MP, Kishanganj), Dr. Mohammad Jawed and the local NGO, Azad India Foundation (AIF) supported the initial phase of the research. In 2019, Zameen Aster Foundation (ZAF), a section 8 company was founded to mobilize funding and wider support. Through the office of MP, Kishanganj, the question of the survival and sustenance of embroidered textile was brought up in Indian parliament in March 2021. This brought the attention of the office of Minister of Textiles, Ms. Smriti Irani, to direct the office of Development Commissioner (Handicrafts) to focus on Kheta. While the research was carried forward under ZAF, the GOI’s scheme of PAHCHAN and SAMARTH were taken to the villages for training of women artisans for skill and product development at grassroot level. Bank accounts were opened and artisan cards were issued to the women as an acknowledgment of their growing economic independence and involvement in the practicing craft. It was also marked as endangered embroidery for promotion and preservation by the Ministry of textiles.
As the research reached a mature level of dialogue across NGOs and Government of India, it paved the way to bring the conversation in an academic environment as a classroom project. The brief for Craft Project, level 5 at Indian Institute of Art and Design (IIAD) was conceptualised and centered around the research of Kheta, with deliberation on the levelness of the project and how it should be positioned in the programme with relevant aims and learning outcomes.
Acknowledging the width and depth of the research, IIAD involved other departments with an interdisciplinary approach. An exposure trip was organized in November 2022 for fashion students to learn and appreciate the fineness of the embroidery as a practicing craft in its larger context. The research also informed the classroom project. It was also decided to bring the project under the larger institutional umbrella of IIAD. The decision to make it interdisciplinary with Communication Design (CD) students to work on a film helped students to look at the exposure trip in minute details and contextualize it as small but sustainable ecosystems. One of the CD students worked on her Major Design Project (MDP) and a 6 month fellowship was awarded to yet another graduate.
The success of the craft project and exposure trip gave the IIAD team to look for dates with the National Crafts Museum for a national exhibition in March 2022 with the aim of taking the lesser known textile to a larger audience, including the common people. It gave an opportunity for various agencies and stakeholders to collaborate with mutually inclusive and overlapping mandates. For the exhibition, the students of Interior Architecture Design (IAD), IIAD participated to plan the layouts. The curation of the exhibition was jointly done by the faculty members of IIAD.
The museum invited the women artisans to sell Kheta blankets/throws/runners/notebooks. Accompanied by the menfolk, these women stepped into an urban space for the first time. They also did live demonstrations of the documented patterns of Kheta while the exhibition stayed for the whole month of March 2022. It received the highest number of footfalls in the museum as curatorial spaces opened across the country after the pandemic.
The exhibition has led to discussions with renowned publishers who specialize in textile books. The consistent efforts have helped in Kheta being enlisted as part of UNESCO’s representative list of the intangible Cultural heritage of Humanity by nominating 50 textile crafts: https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000382921/PDF/382921eng.pdf.multi
This paves the way for Kheta to be duly recognised for Geographical Indication (GI) status.
Youtube link for Kheta Documentary:

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