The India We Wear vs. The India We Debate
Never mind if you wear saris frequently, occasionally, or never. You know the special magic that happens when you run your fingers across a Banarasi silk saree. The Zari shimmers under light, intricate motifs dance across the fabric, and if you look closely enough, you might spot the subtle Islamic geometric patterns interwoven with Hindu floral designs. This isn’t a contradiction or by deliberate design. This is the very essence of Indian textile heritage, a story of collaboration between artisans across faiths written in threads that bind. A story of craftsmanship and syncretic traditions where the question “Is this Hindu or Muslim?” sounds both pointless and senseless.
India’s crafts and textiles are perhaps the most persuasive argument against the notions of cultural purity and bigotry that dominate the news cycle. They’re living proof that our greatest traditions emerged not from isolation, but from centuries of people working together, techniques travelling across communities, designs that transcended boundaries and narrow mindsets, and hands engaged simply in perfecting their craft.
The Loom Knows No Religion
Take Varanasi, the ancient city that Hindus consider among their holiest sites. The Banarasi saree, worn by brides across India regardless of faith, has a fascinating history intertwined with multiple communities. Persian-origin weavers migrated to Banaras between the 15th and 17th centuries during the Mughal period, and today, the majority of weavers in Varanasi are Momin Ansari Muslims. These master craftspeople have been creating sacred Hindu wedding garments for generations, weaving motifs that draw on both Persian and local traditions. For centuries, the kalga and bel (paisley forms with Persian roots) motifs have sat alongside lotus flowers and mangoes! Depending on the intricacy of designs and patterns, a Banarasi sari can take anywhere from 15 days to a month, and sometimes up to six months, to complete.
It might seem ironic in the current environment, but Hindu brides wearing their most auspicious garment on the most important day of their lives, which is created by Muslim artisans, has been the most natural thing for centuries. Try to separate the “Hindu” from the “Muslim” in a Banarasi saree, and the whole six yards unravels.
This pattern repeats across India’s textile landscape. The famous Himroo weaving of Aurangabad, a craft that blends silk and cotton, emerged during Mohammad bin Tughlaq’s reign in the 14th century when he shifted his capital from Delhi to Daulatabad. The name itself comes from the Persian ‘hum-ruh,’ meaning ‘similar,’ as it was developed as an imitation of kinkhwab, the more lavish brocade of silk and gold thread woven for royalty. When Tughlaq tried to relocate the capital back to Delhi, many weavers chose to stay back in Aurangabad, and the craft was patronised by Mughal rulers and later the Nizams of Hyderabad. The designs draw inspiration from the Ajanta-Ellora cave paintings and Persian motifs, making them a perfect blend of local and imported artistic traditions.
Similarly, the lustrous Mashru silk of Gujarat tells a fascinating story of innovation born from religious observance. Dating back to at least the 16th century, Mashru, meaning “permitted” in Arabic, was created to allow Muslim men to wear silk garments despite religious strictures that prohibited wearing pure silk. The ingenious weaving technique uses silk threads for the warp (vertical yarns) and cotton for the weft (horizontal yarns), with each silk warp crossing over six cotton wefts. This means silk appears on the garment’s exterior while cotton touches the skin, making it “lawful” to wear. Once popular across India from the Deccan to Bengal, Mashru is now woven only in Patan and Mandvi in Gujarat.
But here’s the twist in the tale! Wealthy Hindu merchants in Patan were also drawn to this fabric and added a local touch, making it theirs. Even today, Mashru remains an important part of the bridal trousseau in many Hindu communities. The fabric created to navigate Islamic law came to be loved by Hindu communities for its practical luxury, as the silk exterior provides sheen and the cotton backing absorbs sweat in Gujarat’s desert heat. You literally cannot separate the Islamic innovation from the Hindu adoption, because they’re woven into the same cloth!
When Hands Tell Stories That Words Cannot
Throughout Punjab, Hindu, Muslim, and Sikh communities alike practice Phulkari embroidery (literally “flower work”), creating beautiful dupattas and odhnis with vibrant silk threads on cotton fabric. The craft is mentioned in the folklore of Heer Ranjha, the famous Punjabi romance attributed to Waris Shah, an 18th-century Muslim Sufi poet. Different patterns have specific cultural significance shared across religious communities: the Suber Phulkari, worn by Hindu and Sikh brides during wedding ceremonies, features five eight-petaled lotus motifs, while the Thirma, with its white base fabric for embroidery symbolising purity, is shared by Hindu and Sikh traditions and often worn by elderly women and widows.
What’s particularly fascinating is how the embroidery itself can reveal the artisan’s community. Abstract forms and geometric patterns often indicate work by a Muslim artisan, while motifs featuring kushti fighters, dancers, or vivid natural scenes suggest Hindu or Sikh weavers. Yet all of these exist within the same craft tradition, all are called Phulkari, and all are treasured equally in Punjabi culture, regardless of who created them or who wears them.
The famous Ajrakh print of Gujarat and Rajasthan tells a similar story. While the craft’s origin can be traced back to the Indus Valley civilisation, Ajrakh artisans trace their ancestry to the primarily Muslim Khatri community from Sindh who settled in the Rann area about 400 years ago and have been closely associated with this craft for centuries. The name comes from the Arabic word “azrak,” meaning blue, yet the printing technique draws on ancient Indian traditions of natural dyeing. These deep indigo and red prints, now the toast of global fashion, are a perfect fusion of Islamic and Hindu traditions.
The Forgotten Histories in Our Wardrobes
No conversation on the syncretic traditions in Indian craftsmanship is complete without talking of the exquisite white-on-white Chikankari embroidery on kurtas from Lucknow! The most popular origin story credits Nur Jahan, Mughal Empress and wife of Jahangir, for introducing Chikankari to India. The art form evolved with Persian and Turkish influences and gained popularity in the 18th and 19th centuries under the patronage of the Nawabs of Awadh. Today, over 6,000 families in and around Lucknow are dedicated to Chikankari embroidery, with approximately 90% of the artisans being women. Kurtas, saris, and other clothing, embellished with embroidery that is the legacy of the Mughal aesthetic and made from fabrics like cotton, muslin, and mulmul, which are ideal for the scorching Indian summer, are worn by women and men across all communities.
The famous Chanderi fabric of Madhya Pradesh, famously called ‘woven air’ for its gossamer fineness, is another example of our richly enmeshed traditions. The majority of Chanderi weavers initially came from the Hindu Koli and Muslim Ansari communities, and were patronised by the royal families of Baroda, Nagpur and Gwalior, Maratha rulers as well as the Mughals. The sarees are named after the town itself, which derives its name from the Hindu goddess Chandika. While the Zari work techniques came from Muslim weavers, the sheer cotton fabric itself predates their arrival. Today’s Chanderi is truly a collaborative creation, impossible to attribute to any single tradition.
Even the humble Khadi, the symbol of Mahatma Gandhi’s Swadeshi movement and India’s independence from British rule, was woven equally by Hindu and Muslim hands during the freedom struggle. The Charkha became a unifying symbol as the act of spinning thread together transcended religious boundaries.
The Architecture of Thread
It is not just the weaver communities or their patrons who transcended faiths. This harmonic cultural integration is woven into the craft itself. Many of our most iconic weaves are essentially architecture and art translated into fabric. The Mughal gardens, with their Islamic geometry and Hindu symbolic elements, inspired countless textile designs. The flowering vines, the characteristic Mughal arch (mehrab), and the Tree of Life motif are only some of the motifs rendered by artisans of all faiths that recur in Indian textiles
The Patan Patola of Gujarat, that impossibly intricate double-ikat silk, features elephant and parrot motifs, from Hindu iconography, alongside geometric patterns from Islamic art. Creating a single Patola saree can take up to six months of rigorous work. The Salvi family, who’ve practised this craft for generations and are one of the few families still engaged in this, are Hindu, but the colour palettes and several design elements they use show clear Persian influence evolved over centuries of cultural exchange.
What Our Craft Traditions Teach Us
What makes Indian textiles extraordinary isn’t just their beauty or craftsmanship. It is that they emerged from centuries of cultural conversation, not monologue. These crafts prove that some of our most cherished traditions are fundamentally collaborative, that the hands that created them saw patterns and possibilities where others might see only difference.
The evidence is everywhere once you start looking. The block-printing workshops of Rajasthan where Hindu and Muslim artisans have worked side by side for centuries, creating Sanganeri and Bagru prints. The Kalamkari tradition, where artisans who depicted Hindu deities and scenes from the Ramayana, Mahabharata, and Puranas once received Mughal patronage, shows the influence of Persian decorative art. The Pochampally Ikat of Telangana boasts both Hindu and Muslim weavers who create everything from geometric patterns to temple gopuram designs using the same fundamental technique.
When you wear a Banarasi saree, a Chanderi silk, an Ajrakh print, or a Chikankari kurta, you’re not wearing a Hindu or Muslim creation. You are wearing the beautiful, complex and glorious mosaic that is India itself!
The Challenges That Our Shared Heritage Faces
Unfortunately, many of these craft traditions are in danger today. The challenges come from multiple directions: economic pressures from cheaper power-loom alternatives, the loss of royal and elite patronage that once sustained these crafts, changing fashion preferences, and the allure of cheap, fast fashion. The Himroo craft of Aurangabad provides a cautionary tale: from around 2,500 handlooms thriving in the mid-19th century, only four authentic handlooms remain today, and only two are still operational.
When a Banarasi weaver’s family opts for other professions, Phulkari becomes machine-made, and Chikankari is replicated by power looms, we lose more than just handicrafts. We lose centuries of accumulated cultural memory, the greatest artistic achievements and living proof that our proud heritage transcended religious boundaries.
These challenges are compounded by the current climate of majoritarianism in certain parts of India. Some artisans worry about how communal narratives might affect their livelihoods and the perception of their crafts. The irony is that the textiles themselves tell a different story! The story of the origin of our finest weaves and crafts is one of synthesis, where technique and beauty mattered more than the religion of the creator, where commoners and nobility of all faiths embraced them as their own, and where a Muslim weaver creating motifs considered auspicious by Hindus or a Hindu artisan crafting Islamic geometric patterns was simply the natural order of things.
What Our Textiles Know That Politics Has Forgotten
In an age when politicians build careers on division, when WhatsApp forwards insist on separating “us” from “them,” when every festival becomes a battleground and every monument a contested site, our textiles quietly insist on a different story.
They tell us that the Banarasi saree draped at a Hindu wedding was woven by Muslim hands. That Mashru silk exists because Islamic law met Hindu commerce, and they decided to create something magnificent together. That Chikankari came from Persia and became Indian. That Ajrakh‘s Arabic name sits comfortably on a Hindu woman’s shoulders during a festival. That Phulkari doesn’t ask whether you’re Sikh, Hindu, or Muslim before becoming a part of celebrations.
These aren’t exceptions. This is the rule. This is India.
Efforts have indeed been made to alleviate some challenges. These weaves have received recognition through initiatives like Geographical Indication (GI) status. Several organisations, like SEWA, work tirelessly to ensure fair wages for artisans, and contemporary designers are finding ways to make traditional crafts viable in modern markets. But all challenges are not economic. An equally key challenge is remembering what our heritage actually is. Not what political narratives claim it to be. Not what revisionist history textbooks try to teach. But what is inherent to our culture!
The next time you admire an Indian textile, look closer. Try to spot where one tradition ends, and another begins. You won’t be able to, because our cultural heritage is our common heritage. These crafts emerged from bazaars and workshops where artisans shared chai and techniques, where design travelled on the strength of its exquisite craftsmanship alone, and where the final product mattered more than the identity of the hands that created it.
This is the India that exists in our wardrobes, even if we sometimes forget it exists in our hearts. And right now, when voices try to divide us along religious lines, perhaps the most profound thing our textile heritage teaches us is that the finest things we create are created together. The syncretism isn’t just historical, it is in the warp and weft of every Patola saree, every Chikankari kurta, every Mashru silk stole, of the very fabric of India. Every Banarasi saree is a stubborn rebellion against those who insist we are meant to be apart!
Just as you cannot unweave a fabric without destroying it entirely, you cannot tear apart India’s Hindu and Muslim shared heritage and syncretic traditions without dismantling the very foundation of what makes this country unique. The loom has always known what we sometimes forget, that the threads that bind us are unbreakable.
