Can Our Future be Handmade?

This article explores dichotomies of India’s craft experience, reflecting the centrality of hand production, the Freedom Struggle under Mahatma Gandhi’s leadership, experiments in craft development in national planning once India was free and contrasting notions today about what represents modernity and progress. Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay pioneered numerous institutions and approaches to empower artisans and ensure a lasting position for craft in India’s culture and economy. In recent times, there has been a retreat in understanding and support artisans and their culture, and skills are being interpreted as representing a primitive past, out of step with global power and influence. New attitudes are revealed in terms like ‘sunset industry’ being applied to the craft sector. A sense of crisis threatens the legacy of India’s craft pioneers and the achievements of another generation of activists. Meanwhile, industrially advanced societies are striving to recover their own craft heritage as a source of creativity indispensable to contemporary need. New approaches in the understanding of development also suggest the incredible value of India’s craft advantage. Several questions are raised, such as what is now at stake, and where can we go from here? Some are left unanswered for the reader to ponder over.