Room 008, Amrut Mody School of Management
Central Campus
The trade of Rajkot Patola, a silk weft ikat textile made in Gujarat, has expanded dramatically over the past decade but the form itself has existed since the early 1950s. Based on fieldwork and archival research, this talk deals with members of one influential family who hailed from Surendranagar district, and acquired Patola weaving skills at Rashtriya Shala, Rajkot, a Gandhian institution. They subsequently built a Vankar Vas or weaver’s neighborhood in Rajkot, started their own businesses, and trained apprentices who became wholesale dealers, retailers, and small master weavers. This family’s agency in spreading binding and weaving knowledge via kinship and village ties is a significant factor in why Surendranagar district is now the main area of Rajkot Patola production. Rajkot Patola can be considered a modern textile craft that has generated its own heritage and legacy through state intervention and weavers’ own efforts.
Dr Urmila Mohan is an anthropologist of material culture (PhD, University College London) who studies how sociocultural values are circulated through cloth, bodily practices, and belief. As a 2024-25 Fulbright-Nehru fellow, she has spent the last six months researching silk ikat textiles called Patola in Gujarat, India as well as the people who make, trade, and use them. She approaches ikat or resist patterned and dyed cloths as embodiments of socio-technical enchantment, wherein crafted objects’ power engages people in certain practices and relationships. Her work on ikat spans India and Indonesia, and enhances how craft heritage and its communities are understood.
