Click here for more...


Click here for more...


VOL. XXIII NO. 14, NOVEMBER 1-15, 2013
Paleacatta Lungis
(By Dr. P.J. Sanjeeva Raj*)

– A way to go in rural heritage development?

A Madras Check.

The Indian Trust for Rural Heritage and Development (ITRHD) is a new charity trust chaired by S.K. Misra, who was one of the founders and a former chairman of the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH). ITRHD aims at developing specific rural areas through the protection and renovation of their rich cultural heritages. Gandhiji’s vision that “the heart of India lies in her villages, and if our villages perish, India too shall perish” is particularly relevant in this context.

To begin with, ITRHD chose a cluster of villages in the Azamgarh region of Uttar Pradesh for revival of traditional practices. Mubarakpur was selected for hand-woven Banarasi silk sarees, Nizamabad for black pottery and Hariharpur for folk music. The restoration of the 7th Century mosque in Mewat, Haryana, the restoration of the 60 left out of the 108 terracotta temples in Maluti, Jharkhand, and the revival of rural schools, clinics, sanitation and rural tourism in general have been other targets.

The Tamil Nadu chapter of ITRHD would do well to explore the several ancient seaport towns on the Coromandel Coast where the European traders developed unrivalled local resources, crafts and skills to meet global demands and appreciation. Pulicat, for instance, despite its antiquity from the Pallava, Chola and Vijayanagara periods, attained the peak of its international reputation only during the Dutch sojourn there from 1609 to 1690 C.E.

Of the nearly 75 items that the Dutch exported from Pulicat, the most popular and the most profitable items were the textiles, called the Coastal Cloth (kurk kelden) or the Coromandel textiles. The term Coromandel was loosely used to include the whole east coast, from Bengal to the Gulf of Mannar. Pulicat was a nodal port to collect merchandise from all along the coast, store it and ship it to maritime countries overseas. Coromandel textiles were the most preferred means – even over precious metals like gold, silver and copper – to buy rare spices like the nutmeg and mace native to the ‘spice islands’ (like Banda) of what is now Indonesia.

Three broad categories of cloth – the plain dyed, printed (batik) and painted (kalamkari) – were collected from the Coromandel coastal towns and exported. Of them, the painted pintados were in great demand all over the world. However, the speciality items of Pulicat proper were the check-patterned, multi-coloured lungis called the ‘Paleacatta lungis’ which the British later called ‘Madras Checks’, handkerchiefs and head bands which were exported chiefly to Ceylon (Sri Lanka). About one thousand handlooms were working at Pulicat alone, but nearly one-third of the poor weavers were said to have perished during the great famine in 1630 A.D. when they had to sell their children into slavery to the Dutch who exported them to the East Indies to work in their spice plantations.

Not only Pulicat cloth but also its dyes, particularly the blue indigo and the red chay-root dye, were exported from Pulicat. Indigo is extracted from the leaves of Indigofera tinctoris, but the indigo from Pulicat was said to be inferior to that from the Masulipatam and Tierepopeliar (Cuddalore) regions. Hence the Dutch invited experts from Holland to promote indigo cultivation around the Pulicat region. The red chay-root dye was extracted from the roots of Oldenlanden umbellata, which grew on the coast near Pulicat, but was more plentiful in Petapuli (Nizampatnam).

Even upto the 1970s, there were about one hundred handlooms in Pulicat producing the traditional check-patterned lungis for adults as well as for children. They were exported to Nigeria and Sri Lanka. They have all disappeared today, because the local youth preferred formal schooling to weaving. However, nearby villages like Arani, Madharpakkam and Manellore still continue weaving, but by powerlooms.

Revival of this heritage in textiles by handlooms or powerlooms, training the local youth in weaving and cultivation of the allied dyes, indigo and chay-root, native to Pulicat, would provide a wide variety of occupations for the local educated but unemployed youth in this legendary town and its environs. It may trigger textile technology and garment export all over the country, realising Gandhiji’s ‘dream villages’ of India.

Please click here to support the Heritage Act
OUR ADDRESSES

In this issue

Must they become museums
Restoration – but at what speed?
Nizhal offers hope for trees
The Anglo-Indian in perspective
Recalling the Madras System
Paleacatta Lungis
A philanthropist with a difference
A unique character

Our Regulars

Short 'N' Snappy
Quizzin' With Ram'nan
Our Readers Write
Madras Eye

Archives

Download PDF