Technical Education Discourse in India: State and the Artisans,1880s–1914

Introduction

This article analyses the various strands in the nationalist vis-à-vis colonial and post-colonial historical discourses about artisanal skill formation in India. Two essential concerns were central to these broad discourses regarding the Indian artisan and policy decisions at both the provincial and national levels. First, there were attempts by the state at various time periods to ‘improve’ the skills of the traditional artisan by introducing ideas of mechanization, part of the official revival policies to increase the rate of artisanal production and make their products more marketable in face of market competition propelled by fluctuating market needs. Throughout the colonial and the post-colonial periods, these ideas prevailed through the knowledge production system of technical education.

Second, there were periodic attempts to include traditional artisans in the technical education system and, simultaneously, to induct non-traditional artisans in the system of artisanal production, again through the technical education project. Both concerns were met with a mixed response.

These two concerns are useful entry points in interpreting the discourses regarding commoditization and commercialization in the Indian economic context, especially for the period of this article, that is, from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century. However, none of these discourses has tried to comprehend the various interventions and compulsions that comprised the traditional artisan’s world.

A few crucial questions need to be raised at this juncture. What were the official reasons for the introduction of technical education? What concerns within and outside the metropolis (in this case, England) were responsible for this policy? Was there variation in the kinds of people to be imparted with technical education and did this programme differ between the metropolis and the colony (India)? And lastly, how was it implemented across India?

Technical Education: An Introduction

On 16 September 1885, the Home Department circulated a ‘memorandum’ on the subject of ‘Technical Education in India’, the first in a series of published official documents on the subject. ² Under the clause ‘Origin of technical education’, the ‘Memorandum’ strongly reiterated the Court of Director’s demand in the Dispatch on Education in 1854 for the introduction of ‘technical education’ in India and strongly appealed for government endorsement of this ‘much neglected’ aspect of public education in India. To support its proposal, the ‘Memorandum’ quoted James S. Mill from the Dispatch:

Our attention should now be directed to a consideration, if possible, still more important, and one which has been hitherto, we are bound to admit, too much neglected, namely, how useful and practical knowledge suited to every station in life may be best conveyed to the great mass of the people who are utterly incapable of obtaining any education worthy of the name by their own unaided efforts; and we desire to see the active measures of Government more especially directed for the future to this object, for the attainment of which we are ready to sanction a considerable increase of expenditure. ³

This short citation was, in effect, a reflection of the long-term objectives of the colonial state. The Dispatch proved to be the turning point from earlier policies, as it successfully introduced a centralized system of university education, a common examination, and identified meritorious students eligible to be inducted into public service through this system. Some of these educated young men would be recruited as teachers and translators for the ‘native’ masses to read to them ‘native’ literature and communicate to the ‘native’ community ‘that improved spirit’ derived from European ideas and sentiments. But these ‘educated men’ were to teach the natives only those ‘skills’ that would ‘enable each man to look after his own rights’. ⁴ After the mid-nineteenth century, the colonial state was gradually usurping the right to decide and choose ‘useful’ skills that would form part of ‘practical education’, also defined as technical education for different classes of Indians. This was being justified as a ‘need’ since Indians were considered ‘utterly incapable’ as a race to take decisions in as crucial a subject as education, especially the kind of education that would be ‘useful and practical knowledge suited to every station in life’. Sectors such as mining, railways, manufacturing and other industrial enterprises including foreign trade to some extent, argued the colonial state representatives, would employ increasing numbers of unemployed youth as ‘technically trained men’ and remove the glut in the employment sector. This entire system of ‘useful skills’, ‘commercial and non-literary pursuits’, ‘the industrial enterprises’, ‘education of a more practical character’ and ‘technical education’ was to help the metropolitan state construct a ‘modern’ colonial society. ⁵ But what was the need for ‘modernity’?

The structures of metropolitan domination in India were, in many essential ways, determined by market forces with its own specificities, which would connect the colony (India), the metropolis and the countries that comprised the entire British colonial trade network. The decade after the 1857 Rebellion was a period of strengthening the mechanisms of direct control of the metropolis on the Indian state and, within India, of the central Indian state on the provincial governments. This was done primarily by improving communication with the beginning of the Indian telegraph system in 1854, the overland cable connection to Europe in 1868, the opening of the time-saving Suez Canal in 1869 and the newly laid submarine cable in 1870.

The increased speed of communication was fundamental for England to gain greater financial control over Indian affairs, clearly reflected in the ways the formal, organized and powerful interest groups, especially the communications lobby—strongly pushing for strengthening the network of the railways and roadways across the country—were becoming powerful. ⁶

In the United Provinces, all through the 1860s and the 1870s, the state invested heavily in provincial railways and other infrastructure projects as communication methods became indispensable. Thus, in 1862, the Oudh and Rohilkhand Railway connected Lucknow to Benaras, Kanpur and Shahjahanpur, a distance of 52 miles, in an attempt by the colonial state to re-construct the city in the aftermath of the 1857 Rebellion and to strengthen the British military establishment. The railways had increased the demand for mechanics, foremen and men of the forge and the workshop or ‘artisans’ in the various provinces of India. One of the objectives of the programme of technical education was to aid the fulfilment of this demand for railway artisans. ⁷

The implementation of the programme of technical education was also important for commerce and trade through the network of National and International Exhibitions. ⁸ Improved communications helped in conducting surveys to collect ‘a full and correct knowledge of what India can produce and what her people want…’ and of the raw materials, designs of fabrics, textiles and dresses used by the Indians. ⁹

Once this information base about tools, raw materials and the artisans themselves had been created, the next step was to ‘identify’ and ‘introduce designs which would please the tastes of a people whose appreciation of art is of a higher order’. Cheaper mass production of these Indian designs would, thereafter, be attempted with the help of machinery. This would relieve a lot of labour and energy, which could be diverted towards more ‘profitable channels’. ¹⁰ The mass production of commodities would be perpetrated through the programme of technical education, and more specifically through the subject of ‘designing’ within the curriculum of technical education to be imparted to the artisans in various art and industrial schools across the country. ¹¹

Thus, there were two types of processes at work, to make the ‘modern artisan’ and to unmake the ‘traditional artisan’, very clearly laid down in the many deliberations since the late nineteenth century. ¹² The former policy was also underlined by the idea of ‘reform by work’ that had originated in England, where schools for children of the labouring poor had been connected to factories as a means to ‘practically educate’ the lower classes, one of the features of the Factory Act.

In India, by 1866, attempts were being made to replicate these ideas through the Reformatory Act that included the Certified Industrial Act. These acts were supported by reformers like Mary Carpenter who, in 1868, wrote about the need for industrial schools in India modelled on similar schools in England, so that each factory could be turned into a ‘centre of civilization and self-improvement and a blessing to India’. ¹³

Carpenter, however, linked up the need to establish industrial schools in India with prison reforms. In her memoir Six Months in India (1868), she wrote about the need for reformatory schools and certified industrial schools to which young vagrants or those who were near proclivity could be sent. The more ‘advanced young artisans’ from these schools, with their practical knowledge, could then be employed by public work establishments like the railway workshops all over the country as turners, carpenters, smiths and brass moulders. ¹⁴

The acts and dispatches were being drafted amidst protests and revolts of the subordinate classes all over the British Empire. ¹⁵ In India, there were numerous peasant uprisings, tribal movements, caste-consciousness movements and, by the 1890s, the emergence of early labour consciousness. ¹⁶

The 1860s also marked the gradual formulation of Indian economic nationalism, the rise of many local associations such as the Bombay Association, Poona Sarvajanik Sabha and Madras Native Association, and subsequently the formation of the Indian National Congress (INC) in 1885. One of the chief agendas of the INC was to highlight the declining industrial conditions of the country. To encourage indigenous manufactures, the third session of the INC in 1887 tried to force the government to create an indigenous market, which would then increase employment opportunities for the impoverished class of skilled labour. ¹⁷ Such resolutions became common in future sessions of the INC, with the Congress continuously urging the state to form committees to enquire into the condition of artisans across the country, who were living in extreme poverty after losing their livelihood. ¹⁸

Throughout the 1890s, the Congress continued to push for reforms to implement a programme of technical education, establishing technical schools and colleges, introducing modern arts and industries to utilize the rich and underdeveloped resources of the country with the help of modern science and scholarships to send students to Europe, America and Japan. ¹⁹

The Congress was backed by the nationalist press, which highlighted the decline of indigenous industries due to competition from foreign manufactures and the growing poverty of the artisan classes, and advocated the implementation of technical education as a means to improve the productivity of indigenous industries. ²⁰

[T]he natives should be ashamed that this country is now dependent on England for the supply of even the most trifling commodities such as needles, Lucifer matches, etc. the educated natives should learn industrial arts…the Congressionists who spend large sums of money in holding a Congress every year and in maintaining the political agitation, might turn the money to better account by denoting it to the encouragement of technical education… ²² (Mufid-I-Aam, Agra, 16 June 1890)

…there was change in the position and character of Lucknow from a purely oriental city it had become principally European. Whole trades and professions have disappeared within a few years. People have been left occupation less. Many blameless and honorable crafts and beautiful manufactures are without any patronage. The copyists and illuminators of manuscripts, embroiderers, workers in cloth of gold and silver fine little or no patronage. The Jalsa suggests painting the finer parts of cabinet making and cutlery watch making and paper making as callings which could be taught to the poor of the more cultivated classes without degrading them, people who can read and write Urdu and Persian. We fear that the value of the remedy suggested is much less clear than the need of one. That Industrial school will ultimately confer infinite benefits for India. We do not doubt, but, that such institutions can be counted on sensibly to elevate present and widespread pauperism. Nevertheless there is the patent and painful fact that English civilization has introduced a previously unknown mount of distress in to one of the fairest cities of the Empire. And it should be a point of honour as well as charity with government to find some means mitigated.

— ‘Letter from the Secretary of the Lucknow Jalsa Tahzib to the Commissioner of Lucknow on the subject of the Distress existing in the great city’, The Pioneer, Allahabad, 27 January 1870.

At times, the newspapers also warned their readers of vague promises and selfish intentions of the government.

Such representative ‘voices’ of the people added to the persistent anxieties of the state about a potentially violent public reaction to commercialization. ²⁴ These protests, believed amongst the state echelons to be coming from the inherently lazy, undisciplined and unemployed labouring class of the colony, had to be controlled at all costs. The implementation of technical education was seen as an apt solution, solving the problem of unemployment while simultaneously fulfilling the state’s ‘need’ for communication interest groups and the market’s ‘need’ for ‘technically trained men’.

Even in the process of incorporating the indigenous industries in the purview of technical education and attempting to ‘redefine’ the process of production of the artisan industries, the objective was to impart ‘training in practical design and workmanship’ only in those selective artisan industries in which there appeared to be the ‘best scope for local artistic development’. The idea was that this would be enough to ‘silence’ the majority of the ‘artisan’ population who would not react to the loss of their traditional livelihood. ²⁵

In Assam and Bengal, technical education was considered a political necessity in the early decades of the twentieth century to relieve the political situation by diverting the energies of the new rising generations of the educated classes. It was also important, as argued by the state authorities, to prevent the national schools from capturing the field of industrial education, ‘as they threatened to be’. ²⁶ This was being debated in the context of the Swadeshi movement that was raging across the country. The government, wary of the underlying implications of these ideas amongst the artisans, was contemplating all kinds of measures to check its spread. ²⁷

Ironically, the programme of technical education for artisans demanded by the INC tallied with the state’s blueprint for educating artisans. The INC wanted technical education for artisans to ‘modernize’ their production process using ‘scientific procedures’, ultimately leading to industrial development. The discussions of the Indian industrial conference, organized by the INC and the Dawn Society Magazine, clearly showcase this point. The nationalists and the colonial government subjected the skills and designs of ‘native’ artisans to critical scrutiny in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While their rhetoric and objectives regarding artisans were avowedly different, their common concerns often produced interesting consequences. ²⁸

Nationalist Discourse: Reading the Dawn and Dawn Society Magazine ²⁹

Several issues of the Dawn endorsed the view that the innate dogmatism of the Indian artisan made them persist with primitive methods of conducting business. ³⁰ They worked according to the orders they received and seldom had any prized creation in stock to showcase their skills to prospective clients. Further, the Indian artisan did not keep tracings of their designs and worked from ‘memory’. This did not mean that the artisan could not prepare the designs on paper, but according to the Dawn, they considered tracing designs on pen and paper a waste of time. Some artisans made sketches on walls, either in charcoal or white chalk, before embarking on designing elaborate patterns. Some could simply visualize original designs. But there were some who did not trace designs because they were not literate enough.

There were yet others who could copy designs but were incapable of creating original designs. The best craftsmen, though, were able to produce original designs and adapt them. ‘The knowledge and the practice that an Indian artisan acquired was truly and literally instinctive’, but the paradigm had changed. They had to be trained to meet the rigours of Western competition.

The nationalists, like the colonial state, wanted to modernize the production process but unlike the latter, they did not want the artisans to be transformed into foremen and mechanics on industrial floors. The colonial interest in advocating industrial schools and art schools for artisans was to increase the market value of the artisan’s products, whereas the writings in Dawn advocated changes within the indigenous system to make it more marketable while retaining certain features, such as transferring hereditary skills and preserving old designs and ideals.

But the problem, the writings argued, was the method of teaching, which was irrational, unorganized and unmethodical, based on crude imitation and which did not develop the mental faculties of the apprentices adequately. This was, according to them, because the tutor’s objective was commercial, not instructional, and his efforts were directed towards solely making the apprentice work.

Although the indigenous system ensured perfection, dexterity and the transfer of hereditary skills at minimum cost, it also prevented improvement and competition, and killed originality. The various artisan industries were consequently stereotyped and decaying for want of external stimulus. The trainee artisan would simply reproduce, not improve upon, inherited skills, adhering to a few patterns.

Dawn’s writings simultaneously argued that the indigenous system was better than the industrial school system because the latter did not train students to prefer particular trades, that is, it admitted everybody with or without the hereditary aptitude of the Indian artisan. It further argued that if particular trades remained confined to the same families for generations, then dexterity and quickness of perception were acquired. Artisans imbibed these qualities at an early stage and learnt the nuances of the trade in the workroom that was also their playground.

The Indian artisans required pecuniary help, expert guidance and sympathetic treatment to enable them to adapt themselves to modern requirements, Dawn argued. ³¹ Poverty was an important hindrance to the Indian craftsmen turning out superior articles, unless they were directly ordered and partly paid for in advance. It was imperative for the artisan to earn wages even while he was an apprentice.

But the hereditary skills of the Indian artisan did not automatically render him amenable to mechanized training. Dawn wanted to preserve the hereditary skill of the Indian artisan as did the colonial state. But while the latter hoped that these skills would make the artisans receptive to mechanized training, thereby providing the state with a reliable body of foremen and mechanics, Dawn campaigned to improve the artisan industry from within.

Indian artisans needed to be allowed to create their ‘high class art wares’ (embroidery, brocades, gold and silver threads, etc.) and not make European designs. Moreover, the traditional Indian arts taught in industrial schools were deteriorating in quality due to the introduction of foreign designs. Dawn was of the opinion that the existing methods of the industrial schools were too Europeanized to be of any use in improving indigenous art or in educating ‘hereditary’ craftsmen on their own lines. Thus, although drawing was useful everywhere, Poynter’s plates or foreign examples vitiated the taste of Indian craftsmen. In the midst of his conventional, totemistic, symbolic or Puranic designs, the Indian artisan tried to put in scraps from Gothic arches, French scrolls or Corinthian foliage to produce an incongruous hybrid too repulsive to command any sale, according to Dawn.

For the production of the high-class Indian art ware, Dawn reported, the native system was immensely superior to the average industrial school. A qualified director of art from an art school, it was believed, would be careful in preserving the time-honoured indigenous designs and ideals and would be able to suggest modifications with reference to overall design of a European or American drawing room. For instance, Dawn reported that instead of creating the traditional bridegroom’s stool, the artisan could adapt it to a lady’s footstool or the little teapot so much in demand in the West. A chadder could become a square tablecloth and a betel-box a lady’s glove box, etc. An increase in the export of these products could be achieved, Dawn believed, by adapting to changing tastes in fabrics and designs.

The domestic market could also not be ignored. The cotton print industry of Masulipatnam in South India was declining around the turn of the nineteenth century. There were only two or three families who could make the traditional hand-painted designs of Persian origin for which Masulipatnam was famous. In every cotton-printer’s house, there were stores of old blocks, no longer used, much more beautiful in design and execution than those that were being used. A qualified art director would have no difficulty in utilizing these materials and teaching the workmen to design hand printer’s and block printer’s curtains, hangings and furniture coverings, which would compete both in price and quality with first-class European artwork.

Thus, to sum up, Dawn advocated that, first, there was need for educating Indian artisans in their hereditary crafts under expert technical as well as commercial guidance for the production of special Indian high-class art ware to suit modern requirements. In this way alone could the disadvantages of the indigenous system be combated and all its advantages conserved, namely thoroughness of training, limitation in the number of apprentices to each artisan, specialization, hereditary aptitude, instruction in the business of the trade as well as the technique, inexpensive and practical training, early familiarity with the tools of the trade, preservation of old designs and ideals and training obtainable by the poorest.

Secondly, Dawn argued that a class of men who could be called ‘modern’ artisans had to be trained in what could be called the ‘modern industries’. The hereditary industries were to be confined to the hereditary artisan, but the modern industries were to be thrown open to the ‘sons of advanced races’. These modern trained artisans would become soap makers, candle makers, matchmakers, glass blowers, braziers, pencil makers, brush makers, oil pressers, sugar refiners, handloom weavers, hand-mill spinners, calico hand-working roller printers, etc. Further, the hereditary craftsmen required no regular schools but the modern artisans would require institutions like the Victoria Jubilee Industrial School of Bombay for their training. ‘These modern artisans could alone counteract the over flooding of Indian homes with imported foreign stuffs.’

By the early twentieth century, these ideas that Dawn propagated were finding constructive support from distinguished artists and art critics such as A. C. Chatterton, Principal of the Madras School of Arts, and E. B. Havell and Dr A. K. Coomaraswamy who were influenced by the ideas of the arts and crafts movement in England pioneered by William Morris and John Ruskin in the latter years of the nineteenth century. The arts and crafts movement had voiced dissatisfaction with the industrial world, arguing for the preservation of the hereditary skill of the Indian artisan with the need to protect the artisan from the ravages of the machine. They favoured an alternative to machine production represented by the factory system that had tried to abnormally replace the man by the machine and to replace the individual by the factory.

Inherent in the arts and crafts movement was the idea of the erstwhile independent workman, who was creative and self-sufficient and took pride in his craft. Metcalf locates these ideas in the broader arena of the romanticism and Anglo-Catholic revivalism of the nineteenth century, suggesting that even though Morris was a socialist, his romantic and conservative challenge to nineteenth-century liberalism brought him closer to those who somewhat opposed the ideas of Victorian social change and tried to preserve the distinctions of status and custom and the powers of the Crown, landed elite and the state. In India, to save the traditional crafts from decline, traditional values, the princely states and landed elites would have to be preserved. Morris and his friends of the art and crafts movement invited the British public to perform the task of making the conservative Indian artisan ‘modern’. ³²

Local Applications: Lucknow and Its Artisans

In Lucknow, a city with a considerable traditional artisanal population, attempts to incorporate the artisans within the purviews of the state’s technical education programme met with mixed response. The process was initiated through the industrial school set up in November 1892 on the recommendation of the Technical Education Committee of the North Western Provinces and Oudh under the direction of the education department. ³³ It attempted to create a labour force trained to use modern machinery and become the ‘modern artisans’ to be employed as ‘railway mechanics’, a profession considered more lucrative than the traditional indigenous industries of the city. ³⁴

The process of training the local or ‘bonafide’ artisans of Lucknow with skills that would facilitate mass production succeeded a survey of Lucknow’s important artisan industries in 1901 by the Headmaster of the industrial school, Mr Swinchatt—a ‘technical instructor’ from England—the Assistant Headmaster of the School, M. Radha Kishen and an Inspector of Schools, Mr G. N. Chakravarti. ³⁵ The interventions were being made through the merchants or the proprietors of large firms as well as those master artisans who were employers of artisans. Thus, Kedar Nath Ram Nath, embroidery merchant from Rajabazar; Mohammad Ali, alias Lala, a calico printer from Durbijaiganj in Lucknow; Sita Ram and Girdhari Lal, silverware merchants, Jat Patti, Yahiaganj; Hussain Ali Kadir Ali, bidarsaz; and Makhan Lal Narain Das, copperware merchants, Yahiaganj were considered representatives of the large number of artisans employed in their karkhaanaas or workshops.

Lala, it was reported, owned a shop in the Chowk area of Lucknow but preferred working at his home in the midst of and with the help of his family. After doing a certain amount of work, he would go to the market himself to find the most advantageous terms for his products. With regard to most industries, the survey reported, it was ‘well known’ that the function of the artisan varied according to the time of the year: artisans practised their handicraft in the summer months and went around selling their products themselves in the winter to make the most profit.

The primary objective of this survey was to introduce in the industrial school a ‘workshop system’, modelled on the Casanova Boy–Artisan School at Naples, Italy, founded by Alfonso Della Valle di Casanova in 1870 for boys from ‘extremely poor families’, aimed at training ‘poor boys mentally, morally and manually to become good citizens, honest men and skilful artisans at a reasonable cost’. ³⁶ The idea was a success in Naples, claimed the management committee of the Lucknow industrial school, with 700 students within thirty years of its establishment. The boys were admitted at the age seven for an eight-year course, and parents paid for the education and upkeep of their sons. The school claimed to develop the ‘perceptive and executive faculties’ during the first three school years of their training through physical drill and easy lessons in ‘elementary drawing’. For the first two years, three or four hours were devoted to ‘drawing’ and ‘modelling’ rather than deskwork. At the age of eleven, the boys would enter the workshop. ³⁷

Students in the Naples school had to be ‘decently’ and ‘cleanly’ dressed. They were put under a rigorous training programme of long school hours with no holidays. This was important, it was believed, to inculcate at an early stage the habits of continued application of skill. Also, the workshop education in the process of its implementation was to be completely disconnected from any kind of literary education in the industrial schools. ³⁸

The boys at the Naples school had to be thoroughly ‘obedient’ to the principal. ³⁹ Each boy had to record the amount of work he performed in a book. The ‘value’ or the ‘worth’ of the student’s work was decided by the authorities: as soon as the boy’s work began to gain recognition, he was ‘allowed’ to receive ‘wages’ at rates fixed by the school on terms favourable to the master artisan and increased according to the boy’s age and improvement in skills.

This system of attached workshops, it was argued, relieved the school of all the financial anxieties to running such an establishment, leaving the principal free to focus on the education and work capabilities of the students. ⁴⁰

In turn, the principal had the power to dismiss any ‘workman’ employed by the master artisan. The official position of the principal was extremely influential and it was expected that the principal would exhibit exceptional tact in dealing with the master artisans. The principal at the Lucknow industrial school was to be an Englishman and a ‘technical expert’ capable of suggesting ‘improvements’ in design patterns, tools and methods to the master artisans ‘employed’ by the school. This was necessary because the Indian artisans preferred their hereditary, stereotyped methods of production and would be reluctant to take up new production process because they were ‘illiterate’ and ‘unacquainted’ with the latest technical development. The ‘technical instructor’ or the principal would ‘observe’ the artisans and ‘with his experience, or from enquiry, or may be from reading books’, introduce alterations in their methods (of production) to ‘improve the outturn’. ⁴¹

In the industrial school in Lucknow, master artisans were to be employed along the lines of the workshop system of instruction in the Naples school: they would open workshops in the school and work there with artisans employed by them as apprentices. Initial inducements to master artisans included rent-free shops, free raw materials and arrangements for selling their products with the help of a salesman appointed by the school in a shop on the school premises at fixed prices. The school was responsible for advertising these products and putting up notices in hotels and caravanserais. ⁴²

Despite these inducements, master artisans were reluctant to work within the ‘confines’ of the school premises, leading to the endeavour’s complete failure by 1903. Government officials such as Captain E. Atkinson, the Principal of Roorkee’s Thomason College, and Swinchatt agreed that the artisans avoided the industrial school since they could learn their trade in the ‘bazaar’ (market) or even in their home workshops. ⁴³ They were concerned that the artisans believed that there were no major intervention required in the production process of popular articles. ⁴⁴ The Secretary of the Province, S. H. Butler, also agreed that the workshop system was a failure, the main reason being the ‘local cause’, ⁴⁵ best explained by Atkinson: The spirit of the Casanova system was applicable and indigenous to India…and is a great success when carried out in the bazaar, but it was not necessary and possible for the Government to carry out the system… ⁴⁶

This statement could be in the context of significant developments in the local market for chikan products in Lucknow by the late nineteenth century. As Abdul Halim Sharar wrote in his Urdu literary journal, Dil Gudaz:

…A little later, a very attractive embroidered cap of the same type was created for the winter…A delicate chikan cap took up to a year to make and even the most ordinary ones cost no matter which from ten to twelve rupees…at the end of the monarchy a very small and narrow cap was developed from it which was pointed in front and behind…called the nukka dar cap. When embroidered in heavy gold and silver thread it was worn by princes, nobles, wealthy men, court favorites and sons of Nawabs. ⁴⁷

Sharar was talking about the pre-1857 period during the rule of the Awadh Court, when chikan was an extremely skilled, highly priced craft and was exclusively marketed to the privileged class of the royalty and nobility. By the late nineteenth century, chikan (and zardozi) seems to have become affordable for the common man. This is substantiated by two pricelists of chikan (and zardozi) products advertised in Akhtar-i-Shahenshahi by Akhtar-ud-daulah (1888) and Shijrat-un-nabi by Maulvi Nazir Ali Fatehpuri and published by Mohammad Abdullah Siddiqui (1896). ⁴⁸ The table 1 provides a comparison of the price lists:

OPEN IN VIEWER

Table 1.

A Comparison of the Prices in 1888 & 1896

Name/Description of item	Length	Width	Price in 1888	Price in 1896
1. Than kamdani or the bolt of fine material with embroidery called kamdani, golden with a border and a flower motif, made with real silver thread of the best quality.	13–14 yards	14 girah	₹15–25	₹3.50–15, ₹5–20
2. Than chikan or bolt of fine material with a particular mode of embroidering flowers called chikan with kamdani worked on the flowers and leaves.	10 yards	14 girah	₹4–5	₹3–15, ₹3.5–15
3. Than chikan with floral motif, very fine.	10 yards	14 girah	₹3–5	₹4–10
4. Dupatta (length of fine material worn over the shoulders), with golden kamdani, best quality, for ladies.	3 yards	10 girah	₹5–10	₹4–10
5. Dupatta with chikan embroidery and kamdani on the flowers and leaves.	3 yards	10 girah	₹2.25–?	₹1.5–5
6. Chikan dupatta with border and flower for men and women.	3 yards	10 girah	₹1.25–?	₹1.5–5
7. Chikan kurta or shirt stitched, ready for wear.	13/14 yards	1 yard	12 annas –?	12 annas–₹5
8. Cap, round, quilted, with kalabattu, gold or silver thread embroidery.	Regular	Regular	₹1–4	4 annas–₹5.
9. Cap, velvet, black or green with zardozi or gold embroidery.	Regular	Regular	₹7–10	₹3–20
10. Cap, chikan, four-cornered and boat-shaped, embroidered in murri and tepchi (a special style of chikan embroidery)	Regular	Regular

Source: Naiyyar Masud (1991).

Further, the pricelist of the second advertisement had a tag attached to it:

Ours is a famous shop, which has for the last so many years been helping traders to make good profits by offering high quality goods at reasonable prices. Now, for the first time this brief list is being circulated so that the ‘common buyers may get the opportunity of buying goods of their choice at bargain prices’; and can enjoy the excellence of quality and reasonableness of prices. All orders will be dispatched by V.P.P. and a copy of this list can be had by sending stamps worth 2 paise and for a reply please send a self-addressed postcard or stamps worth 2 paise otherwise please forgive us for not replying. ⁴⁹

The second, third, fifth, sixth, seventh and tenth rows of the two price-lists show that the prices of a few products had increased. For instance, in the second row, than chikan (the entire roll of fabric had chikan embroidery) was priced between ₹3–3.5 and ₹15 in 1896. This was a huge difference, indicating that chikan traders were strongly pushing the product in wholesale and retail markets to make them affordable for different classes of buyers. The rider attached to the second advertisement stated: ‘…common buyers may get the opportunity of buying goods of their choice at bargain prices; and can enjoy the excellence of quality and reasonableness of prices…’ This reference to the objective of attracting ‘common buyers’ indicates that the trade in embroidery products was improving and becoming more organized by the late nineteenth century. ⁵⁰

However, the condition of the majority of chikan artisans remained average and even impoverished. According to the catalogue for the Glasgow International Exhibition, in 1888, there were around 1,200 women and children involved in the chikan embroidery production in Lucknow and their impoverished condition helped procure labour at very low rates. ⁵¹

In such a scenario, the proposed amenities of rent-free accommodation, advertisements and a supposed guidance in the improvement of industries should have been very attractive to artisans. When the artisans refused to acknowledge the usefulness of the salerooms, the state considered it an attitude peculiar to the ‘untutored mind’ of the artisan. But even merchant proprietors such as Lala and most of his contemporaries disagreed about the feasibility of the ‘improved work methods’, saying that implementing such methods would require more skilled labour and increased expenditure for master artisans. ⁵²

For the colonial state, ‘improved methods’ entailed imparting training to the artisans to produce low-priced, mass products. Technical instructors in Lucknow were to observe the production process of various crafts practiced by the artisans and then apply their ‘own experience’ and ‘sense of enquiry’ and read the ‘best authorities on the subjects’ to ‘quietly and judiciously introduce to the workers such alteration in their methods’ which would improve the magnitude of their production. ⁵³

Two points are significant in this plan: changing the ‘artisan’ to a ‘worker’ and employing a ‘technical instructor’ in charge of introducing improvements in the production process of the artisan industries. The ‘technical instructor’ would be a trained mechanic from England but well versed in the local language, ways and customs to be able to effectively influence as well as inspect the local artisans and their production methods. He would then decide which areas needed new methods and which would continue with traditional practices. ⁵⁴

Only four calico or linen printers were initially interested, which later increased to seven, despite the authorities paying them ₹20 to join the programme. This inducement actually proved to be detrimental to the basic objective of the programme. According to the authorities, the artisans were content with the wages but refused to ‘learn’ the recommended changes. However, even the authorities agreed that the ‘improvements’ increased the cost of production. The artisans were thus vindicated, proving they were not ‘untutored’ but conscious individuals aware of the nuances of practicing their craft.

For example, in Lucknow’s linen or calico printing industries, apprentice artisans in printing worked in groups of five to ten and observed their master artisans from a very young age, gradually learning the skills. As they grew up and became more skilful, their wages also increased accordingly. Most of these artisans were indebted to the shopkeeper, who provided them with raw materials and sometimes housing, food and cash. Artisans were bound to the shopkeeper almost like a ‘daily labourer’ working on the basis of piecework. In a calico-printing workshop, one artisan made the dye, another drew the designs, another carved them, a fourth dipped the cloth in a preparation, a fifth printed the designs and others boiled, finished and made the quilts. But they all worked together in the same karkhaanaa or workshop.

There was a ready market for articles manufactured in workshops and which met the demands of design, quality and price of the local buyers. But the state wanted to introduce mechanization or a factory-like system in Lucknow modelled on the successful factory in Farrukhabad that used machines to mass-produce patterns or prints for English wallpapers. ⁵⁵

With the artisan industries in Lucknow not taking to mechanization, authorities decided to concentrate on the apprenticeships of carpenters, turners, cabinetmakers and fitters. The industrial officer would suggest possible improvements and make inspections to see whether the apprentices were really being taught. As the apprentices generally learned skills and became useful, they would start receiving wages, which would gradually increase until they became fully skilled workmen. ⁵⁶

The carpentry curriculum to be introduced would include the study of

different sorts of timber in common use; selection, seasoning, and care of timber; special purposes for which different kinds of timber are most suitable in carpentry and cabinet work; names and uses of hand and simple machine tools; marking out and preparation of all the joints generally used in carpentry, joinery and cabinet making; dowelling, gluing up, blocking and special jointing to allow contraction and expansion; general knowledge of the construction of doors and frames of different patterns, moldings, and simple cabinet work; setting cut work in joinery and cabinet making. ⁵⁷

The most important aspect of this scheme was that the subsidy was in the form of direct financing and the India Office in London would decide business contracts for various government supplies. It was hoped that the scheme would prove to be economical for the state as the latter would buy raw materials locally instead of importing them from England. Second, the scheme of giving direct financial aid and marketing subsidies to small workshops or karkhaanaas was meant to quell nationalist pressure for an industrial policy. ⁵⁸

Under this scheme, geometrical drawing and designing and introductory general education in the vernacular would be introduced. No such education was to be introduced that could enable the artisan to join any kind of clerical job. Also, the caste occupation of the artisans would be strictly maintained so that artisans practiced industries ‘chosen’ to be developed by the colonial state. All this, it was believed, would ‘produce intelligent artisans’. ⁵⁹

Artisans hailing from the class of ‘tracer of designs for embroidery’ were to be trained in practical and free-hand drawing so that they could be trained as carpenter draughtsmen ‘…of the sort that is procurable at less than half the wages of an engine driver in England…’. The curriculum stressed copying the designs in free-hand drawing and elementary geometry. In the Mayo School of Arts, Lahore, drawing and designing were taught in the morning and carving woodwork in the afternoon.

The instruction in drawing would cultivate greater delicacy of hand and eye and improved penmanship. It will give the pupils a better comprehension of a map and improved knowledge of geography. It will fit the pupils with a little practice to make ordinary drawings and surveys and will be a preparation for Roorkee. Some skill in drawing was a necessary prerequisite for many of the manual arts, for example, cabinetmaking, house decorating, machine makers, modellers, etc., and thus forms the first step in hand training for mechanical arts. ⁶⁰

The students in the first branch were mostly young artisans of the carpenter class. A good deal of their practice was in architectural details for local buildings, models and designs. This was considered the most useful branch of the school. On the decorative side, draughtsmanship (without technical practice) and decorative design were the chief studies.

This course structure was being proposed for the Lucknow Arts School that was set up in 1911. Within a span of three years, that is, in 1914, the primary objective of the school was officially set as the training of drawing masters for the Anglo-vernacular schools of the provinces. Although a special class for training drawing masters had been opened up at the Industrial School in 1903, by 1914 it was not functional anymore. Drawing teachers had to be brought from the province of Punjab but the officials at the Public Instruction Department considered them inadequately educated to be able to relate the subject of drawing to that of the student’s occupation, its use as a means of self-expression or even the very basic artistic training. The qualifications of the drawing masters required to be suited to the school curriculum were proficiency in both theory and method and skilled in the methods of model drawing. Observation, imagination, originality and ingenuity were the official requirements to ‘teach drawing properly’. ⁶¹

The qualifications required for drawing teachers in terms of certificate standards were matriculation or school-leaving level with a specialization in drawing, thereafter a two or three-year course in a training college for drawing masters. Interestingly, the declared official idea was to:

train these men in such a way that they will not aim at making their pupils produce perfect drawings, but to teach them observation, to combine the training of hand, eye and brain and so cultivate a side of intelligence which no other subject touches. This makes drawing a distinct and important branch of general education. ⁶²

The point of relevance here is the shifting usage of the subject of ‘drawing’ that was, by 1914, being taught as part of the general education. It also brings us to the initial phase of our discussion where drawing was being taught to create a class of ‘artisans and mechanics’ and also to ‘train’ the existing class of artisans with their traditional skills. Let us first deal with the first objective of the colonial state, that is, to create a class of ‘artisans and mechanics’. An important aspect of this project was the teaching of ‘drawing’ to create this ‘new, superior class of modern artisans’ who would then be incorporated into the state projects. It was officially deliberated that Indian ‘artisans’ with their hereditary skills could also be incorporated into this scheme of things but the project was abandoned in the year 1903 after the artisans from the bazaars of Lucknow refused to come to the school. Their refusal stemmed not from their economically comfortable position but possibly because the confines of the school premises would not suit their work culture.

It was not as if the bazaar conditions were economically very favourable to them. ⁶³ In the bazaar, the majority of the artisans only increased the lot of the cheap labour force. It is quite possible that what forced the artisans to stick with their profession and their own hearths was their cultural attributes, such as their philosophy of work, sense of time and imagination, their concept of designing, their world view, their caste, community and kinship values, and all those attributes and elements which comprised their world, prevented them from choosing the ‘confines’ of the school over that of the karkhaanaa in the bazaar. The colonial state officials often underestimated the artisans’ consciousness, which was reflected in their denials, at times, to attend the school, at times to share their designs, and at times in their violent reactions.

Conclusion

Technical education in India during the period under study was a sort of ‘technical training’ constituting ‘useful skills’ or ‘practical knowledge’ and was promoted over literary education targeting certain classes and castes. The plan was to create two different working classes (based on literary education and technical training). This training also re-created, re-reified and reformed class and caste characteristics and further widened the gap between the metropolis and the colony. The basis was laid for a colonial society consisting of a small section of ‘rulers’ and the majority of the ‘ruled’; both classes were dictated to by the ‘needs’ of the metropolitan market culture.

The incongruence involving the production process prevalent in the bazaar and the intervention of the state institutions into the production process of the artisans practicing in the bazaar was the dominant characteristic of the artisanal production sector at this time, where the state again made no attempts to discern the work culture of the artisans by prioritizing the use of oral narratives or analysing the production process. ⁶⁴

The state, whether colonial or post-colonial, never attempted a closer observation of their lives, a study of the written documents, which are rare entities for such subaltern communities, an analysis of the oral narratives of the members of the artisan community, etc., all of which have revealed interesting ideas and perceptions regarding their craftwork, the process of work, pride of craftsmanship, the apprenticeship system, the conflicts and consistencies of the ustad–shagird relationship, their perceptions about the developments around the world, and how these ideas helped them to form their world view. Although it is to be noted that even here there would be differences of gender, age, class and community interventions. However, participant observation at various levels can help in studying in a systematic manner the ideas of the artisans, which is definitely the most important aspect while creating any kind of archive about artisanal production as well as structuring any kind of state policy decisions that attempts to affect the lives of the artisans.