Book Extract: The Hindi Heartland

Excerpted with permission from the publishers The Hindi Heartland: A Study Ghazala Wahab, published by Aleph Book Company

ECONOMY

The beauty of family stories lies not in their accuracy, but in their memories and retelling. In one of the small windowless rooms reserved for special visitors to Kasim Silk Emporium, a Banaras-based nearly 250-year-old family run business, each wall has a story to tell.

One wall has photographs of the present Dalai Lama through the years with some of the Kasim Ansari family members. Interspersed with these are photographs of famous people, mostly foreigners, including Hollywood actors. The adjacent wall has photographs of the Bhutanese royal couple, Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck and Jetsun Pema at their wedding, and at their coronation. An elderly Indian man is conspicuous in those pictures.

‘That’s my uncle,’ says Shahid Ansari. Then he points to a photograph of Jetsun Pema sitting on the floor on a cushy mattress covered with white sheets, surrounded by exquisite Banarasi fabric. ‘She was sitting right here,’ grins Ansari, pointing to the spot where I was sitting. ‘She had come to buy the fabric for her trousseau.’ Ansari, the fifth-generation family member in the business, adds, ‘Our family has been the main suppliers to the Bhutanese Royal family and the Tibetan government, both in Lhasa and in exile, for generations.’

How did this happen? How did a family engaged in handloom weaving of silk, still operating out of one of the narrow lanes of the cavernous Pilikothi, a Muslim-dominated area of Banaras, even get to know of Tibet or Bhutan?

‘Mongolia and China also,’ he grins. ‘And Europe too.’ He was clearly enjoying creating some suspense. The suspense lingered on as he had to go and take care of some high-profile customers.

The grand sounding emporium, by the way, is an old north-Indian style haveli with a central courtyard and U-shaped inner courtyard leading to small rooms. While this design may have been imposed by necessity, it works well for the business, where customers are usually high-profile people. A handloom Banarasi is increasingly becoming a rarity, with industrial power looms taking over the weaving industry. Hence, while the power loom Banarasi fabric and saris have become cheaper and mass produced, handloom ones have become costlier and even more exclusive. The individual rooms ensure both privacy and personalized service to the customers.

Shahid came back to the room, cradling different styles of Banarasi fabric, each more ethereal than the other. As he proudly and lovingly unfolded the fabric, the story of the pictures began to unspool just like the exquisite fabric lying all over the white sheet.

Over 200 years ago, the founder of Kasim Silk, Kasim Ansari, was passing through Sarnath, the site of the Buddha’s first sermon, about 6 km from Pilikothi. Under his arms, he was carrying a few bolts of Banarasi fabric. A group of Tibetan Buddhist monks who had come to Sarnath on a pilgrimage saw Kasim hurrying along. The fabric caught the attention of the leader of the pilgrim group, who stopped him.

The monk was carrying a swatch of silk fabric which he had picked up in Mongolia, where it had come from Tashkent in Uzbekistan through the Silk Route caravan. It was ochre-coloured silk with intricate and delicate f loral patterns woven in shades of deep red, blue, green, white, and brown. It was an unusual style of weaving, which gave the impression of embroidery, with the patterns slightly raised over the fabric giving it a velvety touch. The monk could only manage a small swatch; he couldn’t find the full length. Since then, he had been carrying the material in his bag, hoping to find someone during his travels who could weave a full robe length in this style.

Kasim told him that he could do it. It would take time. And he would need to keep the swatch. It was a tough call. But it was a meeting of an artist and a connoisseur. An inexplicable trust developed between the two. It was agreed that Kasim would meet the monk the following year during his pilgrimage with the woven fabric. Kasim successfully reproduced the fabric and waited for the monk during the next pilgrimage season, walking to Sarnath every day in the hope of meeting him.

Eventually, they met. The monk was delighted with what Kasim had produced. He asked to be taken to his loom and saw the modest place in Pilikothi where Kasim lived and worked. The monk told Kasim that he was on the personal staff of the Dalai Lama. He not only bought the fabric that Kasim had woven, which Kasim called Tibetan brocade, he also ordered several metres of different kinds of brocades (kimkhwab in Hindustani) for the robes of the Tibetan royalty. Thereafter, Kasim’s humble abode became a regular haunt of Tibetan monks. Reams and reams of fabric were bought both for ceremonial robes as well as thangkas. Over the years, Kasim’s family was introduced to the Bhutanese royal family, the Mongolian elite, and so on. Through the monks, the Kasim family’s handwoven fabric became part of the Silk Route, which was largely run by itinerant Buddhists.

Finishing his story, Ansari draws my attention to the wall behind me. Three large, glass-fronted frames held brocade swatches, including the replica of the earliest piece which Kasim wove.

‘My forefathers continued to weave that one, so that the learning was not lost,’ he says. But eventually it was, as the present generation became fully engaged in managing the business, instead of weaving. But that’s not the only reason. Each metre of brocade takes several days, if not weeks to weave—the time depends upon the intricacy of the pattern and the number of coloured threads used. This, and the finest silk, usually imported from China, increases the cost of the fabric, with the most basic two-colour brocades selling for over `2,500 per metre. Hence, there are no takers for the complex multi-coloured brocade, when the price would be as high as `25,000 per metre.

‘When did your family come to Banaras?’ I ask him.

‘We have been living here since the beginning.’

‘The beginning of what?’

Shahid looks perplexed. ‘We have always been here.’

I realized that there was no point pushing this. The Ansaris, or the Muslim weaver community of UP and Bihar, have been an integral part of Banaras for as long as they remember. Like the Banarasi fabric, which is the culmination of tana-bana or the warp and weft of yarns, Hindus and Muslims of the city have similarly been living separately and together for as long as both remember. Their history is a combination of memory, tradition, folklore, and myths. Facts such as—the earliest Muslims came to Banaras in 1000 ce as part of Salar Masaud Ghazi’s troops, are burdensome and unnecessary. Apparently, Ghazi was killed in the battle against the Hindu king of Banaras and his defeated army settled down in the city as their dead were buried here. Some of them were regarded as pirs and shrines were built for them, which made Banaras sacred for Muslims as well.

Over the next few centuries, more Muslims came from places as diverse as Jaunpur and Mau in UP, and later, following the great famine of Deccan (1630–32), weavers from Gujarat also migrated to Banaras which had a flourishing weaving industry, raising the Muslim population to 28.8 per cent. The new wave of weavers brought new skills.

Says Smriti Morarka, a conservationist and revivalist of traditional Banarasi fabric using pure zari (gold and silver threads), ‘The ancient weaving in Varanasi used to be with cotton yarns. However, the weavers from Gujarat were exposed to Persian and Central Asian styles of brocade using silk yarns because of the sea trade to West Asia. Hence, when they migrated to Varanasi, a new style was introduced, adding to the already flourishing weaving industry.’ Morarka established Tantuvi twenty-five years ago to ensure that the traditional craft of handloom weaving with pure zari was not lost, because ‘handloom is a work of art,’ she insists, adding, ‘a man on the handloom is an artist, the one on the power loom is a labourer.

According to her, it is difficult to pin down the history of weaving in Banaras. ‘Varanasi has always been a centre for weaving. The Rig Veda mentions a fabric called Hiranya, which loosely translated means “made of gold”. There is also a story about Gautama Buddha being wrapped in white cotton fabric in Sarnath, where he gave his first sermon. So, weaving has been integral to the city; only its style and range changed over time.’

Not just Banaras, weaving has been the backbone of the non-agricultural economy of the Hindi heartland since ancient times. Vijay K. Seth writes, ‘The most important industry, which experienced high growth rates, was the textile industry. Indian textiles were first reported in the Periplus of Erytherien Sea, written by an unknown Greek writer. It is believed that wild cotton (Arabic quoton) was harnessed by the Indians living in the Indus River valley around 2000 bc.’

The arrival of the spinning wheel in the fourteenth century, and thereafter of the ‘treadles in the loom’ led to a major boom in the production of yarns, increasing the output by ‘six-fold’. Consequently, in North India alone, several centres of weaving different kinds of fabric developed. While in Madhya Pradesh, the well-known centres were Chanderi and Maheshwar, which combined the cotton and silk yarn to weave near diaphanous fabric, several parts of Bihar were also engaged in cotton weaving. The regions which did not weave their own fabric, Rajasthan for instance, were engaged in treatment of fabric, such as dyeing and embellishments. The art of block printing also emerged in a big way in the fourteenth century, adding to the variety of textiles produced in North India. By the sixteenth century, according to historian Irfan Habib, the art form had refined enough to produce complex and detailed chintz prints. Even today, Rajasthan remains one of the major centres of hand-block printing.

Weaving skills spawned other industries too, such as carpet making in the eastern part of UP, specifically in the modern districts of Bhadohi and Mirzapur. Like Indian textiles, carpets also found their way to the international trade routes. Though not as fine or intricate as the Persian and the Kashmiri variety, UP carpets had a committed market in parts of Europe, especially Germany, as being woven in wool they provided warmth in winter.

According to Anis Ansari, who retired as the agricultural production commissioner in UP and belongs to the weaving community, ‘Until 1757, India contributed 40 per cent to the world GDP. This figure came entirely from textiles and spices. China’s share was 30 per cent. However, by 1857, India’s share had reduced to 25 per cent.’
CONTINUITY AND CHANGE

There is evidence that Indians engaged in economic activity, such as personal consumption and trade of goods during the Harappan period (3300–1300 bce). ‘Grave goods—or things that are buried along with the dead—give an even clearer picture of craft production in Mehrgarh. These included ornaments made of seashells, lapis lazuli, turquoise, black steatite, and other such stones. Note that since Mehrgarh is nowhere near the sea, the seashells indicate long range trading or exchange networks that probably reached up to the Makran coast of today’s Pakistan,’ writes Tony Joseph.

While there is evidence that the Harappan pastoral people engaged in agriculture and domestication of animals, there is not much to suggest that it was used for commercial purposes. Surplus agricultural produce was most likely bartered for goods of personal consumption, but in the absence of monetization, no large-scale trade took place based on agriculture.

However, with the emergence of empires at the beginning of the Christian era, trade became crucial to sustain royalty, and hence it was encouraged by them—both for personal consumption as well as for wealth creation. Seth writes, ‘To meet the needs of Rome’s rich nobility’s ultimate desire for silk, a trading route emerged, starting from Rome to Chang’an, the capital of the Han dynasty of China. For the first time in human history, a trade route was named after the commodity of ultimate conspicuous consumption—the Silk Route. Subsequently, Genghis Khan’s Mongol Empire restored peace and tranquillity along the Silk Route, which facilitated European trade by defending and protecting it.’

And while ancient India had the skills to harness wild silks, such as eri, muga, and tussar, sericulture had started in Bengal by the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. Whether this skill was imported from China or Iran or not, by the sixteenth century, silk produced in Bengal started being exported. It also came to Banaras to be woven into fabric, thereby establishing a symbiotic relationship between Banarasi weavers and the Bengali feudal households.

According to UNESCO, Indian traders connected with the Silk Route through four probable routes: the first was Kashmir, which joined up with Gilgit and the Karakoram range. The Indian military position at Daulat Beg Oldi mountain pass on the Karakoram was one of the popular passages taken by the trading caravans that connected Xinjiang with Ladakh.

The second was through Purushapur near Peshawar in present-day Pakistan. This route probably traversed a narrow strip through Afghanistan before reaching Central Asia and thereafter Mongolia and Russia. The third link-up was at Bamiyan which probably travelled to Europe through Iran. The fourth route went east, traversing what eventually became the Grand Trunk Road, also known as Uttarapatha. It passed through the plains of the Hindi belt into the Indian Northeast, Myanmar, and thereafter the Yunnan province of China. This facilitated trade between India and the Far East. As mentioned in the first chapter, apart from the major trade routes, there were several feeder routes, especially in UP and Bihar, which linked up with them.

Despite this continuous history of trade, economic historians prefer using the cut-off of 1500 ce to chart the trajectory of the Indian economy, particularly in the north. This is done for three reasons. Vasco da Gama successfully opened the sea route to India in 1498 CE. The Mughals established their empire in 1526 CE and as Seth writes, ‘The Mughals were perhaps the first to rule over an area that almost covered the geographical space later known as British India and afterwards became independent India.’15 Hence, in economic terms, there has been an uninterrupted evolutionary process since then, despite the fact that most of the economic structures which subsequently benefitted the Mughals were put in place during the three century rule of the Delhi Sultanate that began in 1206 CE.

ECONOMY AND SOCIETY

After the end of the Harshavardhana empire in 648 ce and until the establishment of the Delhi Sultanate, except for Rajasthan, the rest of the Hindi heartland had no kingdoms of any consequence.

The absence of strong central rule had led to the emergence of large farmlands with powerful landlords, who gradually turned into ‘localized aristocracies’. The fertile Indo-Gangetic plains with possibilities of large landholdings enabled this growth, says Himanshu, Professor of Economics at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, JNU. According to him, ‘Geography played a big role in the development of the economy. And through that the society, because the economy is intertwined with the society. Just as a regressive social system has restrictive economic models, the opposite is equally true.’

Himanshu says that despite topographical and historical differences, the linguistic and geographical congruence led to almost similar kinds of economic and social structures in the Hindi heartland. ‘These were quite distinctive from what prevailed east of the Gangetic plains or south of the Vindhyas,’ he says.

With the rise of ‘localized aristocracies’ anchored to the farmlands, towns, which used to be central to the kings, started to decline. Villages emerged as centres of economic, political, and social power. The fertility of the land led to abundant agricultural growth, which in turn reinforced both caste and class hierarchy. ‘In the times of agricultural abundance, caste and class became one,’ says Himanshu.

As mentioned in the earlier chapter, the powerful, in this case those who controlled the land first, formed ‘elite groups’, co-opting the priestly class to their side, to dominate the land and the landless. Hence, the landholder enforced the hierarchy by assigning specific jobs to specific castes, with the lowest being the bonded labourer.

With economic power residing in the villages, a class of service providers, artisans and craftspeople grew to cater to the requirements of the feudal lords. These craftspeople were assigned castes depending on their expertise. This expertise also determined where they could live in the village, which was organized according to the social hierarchy, with the central location reserved for those deemed superior.

Explaining the relationship between caste and trade, Sankarshan Thakur gives the example of the barbers. According to him, the traditional outcastes, often Untouchables, were given the honorary caste appellation of ‘thakur’ (an upper caste of the Kshatriya order) because of the nature of their job which required close physical contact with the upper-caste-and-class person. ‘A nai (barber) had to climb on the bed of the upper caste landlord or the temple priest to give him a body massage,’ he says. ‘Since massage could not be given until both the masseuse and the customer were at the same level, the barbers were pulled up to the caste system out of sheer necessity.’

But this did not change their social and economic status. When not performing their job, they were still outcastes. Moreover, tradesmen like them bartered their goods and services for agricultural produce. Writes Vijay Seth, ‘The Jajmani system evolved as a social organisation from symbiotic relations among patron households and different occupational groups, like barbers, laundrymen, carpenters, blacksmiths, masons, watchmen, folk artists, domestic servants and priests.’

As the economy was not monetized, and was controlled by the landholders, these tradespeople were paid for their services only on special occasions, such as harvest, birth, death, marriage, or festivals. The payment in kind depended on the generosity of the landholder and the caste status of the receiver, with the Brahmin getting the largest and the bonded labourer the smallest share. A bonded labourer could be anyone from a landless person to a debtor. Quoting German philosopher Hegel, Seth describes the Jajmani system as ‘the most degrading spiritual serfdom because it organized village society in such a way that it suffered from numerous rigidities based on religious beliefs.’

The Delhi sultans did not disturb this social structure. Writes Habib, ‘The village community and the caste system were not subverted, notably, perhaps, because, by helping to keep social order stable they facilitated agrarian exploitation.’ However, one change that they did bring about was the institution of land tax payment in cash, as well as increasing the rate of the land tax. This had two consequences. One, it monetized the rural economy, and two, it induced greater exploitation of land so that the surplus agricultural produce could be sold in towns for cash, thereby creating a trade network between the villages and the towns. The tradesmen, craftsmen, and unskilled labour who lived off their physical services in the feudal order started migrating to the towns, which were not only the centre of power now, but also provided employment opportunities irrespective of the caste boxes.

‘With this, a new phase of urban growth became possible,’ writes Habib. ‘Delhi and Daulatabad (Devagiri) rose in the fourteenth century to be two of the great cities of the world, and there were other large towns as well, like Multan, Kara, Awadh (Ayodhya), Gaur, Cambay and Gulbarga.’

With a nearly centralized imperial power in the Delhi–Agra region, new kinds of demands emerged, which required a new kind of production chain. For instance, leather footwear. Until the establishment of the Delhi Sultanate, animal skins were not used for crafting footwear, though they were used to transport water. However, the Turk and Central Asian soldiery were used to leather footwear, which could be protective, fitted, flexible, and sturdy, all at the same time.

‘The earliest leather footwear was made for the military, especially the cavalry,’ says my father, Wahabuddin Ahmed, who has been one of the biggest exporters of footwear to the former Soviet Union. According to him, the footwear industry in Agra was established during Sikander Lodi’s time in the late fifteenth century. Being the capital city, both the nobility as well as the soldiery were stationed there. Both needed leather footwear.

‘Processing of animal skins for footwear was introduced to Agra by Central Asian craftsmen,’ he says. But footwear was not the only use of animal skins then. It was also used for armour, saddle, and other weaponry. Each of these items required different kinds of leather, which necessitated the establishment of skin processing industries as well. For nearly two centuries, skin processing and leather tanning used to happen in Agra along with footwear manufacturing.

However, by the early eighteenth century, it was found that the water of the Ganga was more suitable for the processing of leather. ‘Hence, leather tanneries started shifting to Kanpur, which is on the banks of the Ganga, and was also home to a large British cantonment,’ says Ahmed. ‘Kanpur’s proximity to Calcutta also helped. Calcutta already had an established tanning business set up by the Chinese. Since the primary customers of leather footwear were the military and the nobility, the industry stayed close to the clientele.’

Like the leather/footwear industry, all towns of the Hindi heartland developed expertise in certain crafts and became specialized centres for them. In UP alone, towns like Agra, Moradabad, Firozabad, Lucknow, and Bhadohi, developed expertise in marble inlay work and silk embroidery called zardozi, brassware, glassware, chikankari (cotton embroidery), and carpet-weaving. Similarly, in Rajasthan, while Jaipur became famous for blue pottery and gemstone jewellery, Jodhpur became the centre for block printing using natural dyes.

As Morarka says, ‘Craftsmen work better together. It’s almost like community meditation. So, when a certain industry came up in a particular town, a whole ecosystem developed around it, right from the raw materials to waste management. In some instances, the climatic conditions incubated a particular craft.’

As goods began being manufactured for trade, access to the market and availability of transportation were also conditions that were essential. In the medieval period, road connectivity was limited. Rivers were a major means of transportation of goods. Hence, most industrial centres grew along either the Uttarapatha, which eventually developed into the Grand Trunk Road or the rivers, especially the Ganga whose width and depth facilitated transportation of large ships up to the Bay of Bengal.

The emergence of private enterprises had a social impact too. Since the varna-based Jajmani system had assigned roles to the village communities, only the lowest on the social ladder moved to the towns to work in the factories, creating an urban model of caste-based employment. Muslims had no such restrictions. Hence, most of the small enterprises were dominated by them, from footwear to weaving, metal casting to glassmaking. Over time, to protect their skillsets, the crafts communities closed ranks, especially in matters of marriage, both to resist outsiders as well as to prevent transfer of their skills.

Urbanization and trade enabled greater absorption of new techniques and technologies, which led to the growth of the economy and society. For instance, the introduction of the Persian wheel (a giant vertical wheel fitted with pots in a circular fashion), removed the need for drawing and carrying water. Once oxen started to be employed for drawing water, the process became rapid and more efficient, enabling irrigation of large tracts of agricultural land. This improved both the quality and quantity of agricultural produce, creating a larger surplus to be sold in the towns.

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Ghazala Wahab The Hindi Heartland: A Study Aleph Book Company, 2025. Hb. Pp.528
"The Hindi heartland, comprising Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, and Uttar Pradesh, covers nearly 38 per cent of India’s total area and is home to over 40 per cent of India’s population. It provides the country with over 40 per cent of its parliamentarians and determines the contours of national politics (out of the fifteen prime ministers India has had since 1947, eight have been from the Hindi belt). Yet, despite its political significance, the Hindi belt is among the most impoverished regions in the country. It consumes the bulk of the country’s resources, but lags behind other states on various economic and welfare indices. It is plagued by violence, illiteracy, unemployment, corruption, poor life expectancy, and numerous other ills.

Centuries of war, conquests, invasions, political movements, and religious unrest have made the heartland a place of immense paradox. Despite its extraordinary and timeless religious heritage—some of the country’s most revered spiritual leaders were born here and it is home to innumerable shrines and places of pilgrimage—it has also witnessed some of the worst communal riots in the country and has been troubled by long-running, divisive sectarian politics. Many of India’s founders, who gave the country its secular identity, hailed from the heartland, but so too did those who have spread religious discord. And the land of Ganga–Jamuni tehzeeb routinely witnesses lynching and murder in the name of religion.

The book is divided into five sections. Section I explores the geography of the region, which stretches from Rajasthan in the west to Jharkhand in the east with Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Uttarakhand, and Uttar Pradesh in between. The author then looks at caste, religion, the rural–urban divide, and the tribes who belong to the region. In the chapter on the economy, she attempts to show how the economic backwardness of the Hindi belt has come about through faulty and myopic post- Independence policies conceived by various governments—these have come in the way of sustained and inclusive development. The chapter on language chronicles both the emergence of Hindi as the primary lingua franca of this region at the cost of other languages, as well as the politics that linked language with religion. The last chapter in this section explores the influence of the heartland on what is today popularly understood to be Indian culture.

Section II looks at the medieval and modern history of the region and covers the emergence of the Delhi Sultanate, the Mughals, the Marathas, and the East India Company.

Section III examines British colonialism through the lens of empire building, and shows how the imperialists distorted history to facilitate their divide and rule policy. It also dwells on the deliberate economic impoverishment of the Hindi belt and how this continues to impact the region even after Independence.

Section IV analyses the freedom struggle—and covers among other things the emergence of the idea of India and the increasing Hinduization of that idea. It establishes the Hindi belt’s criticality to Gandhi’s satyagraha, and the success of the British Indian government’s experiments with strategies that divided communities, which eventually led to the partition of the country.

Section V appraises developments in the region after Independence. It outlines the government’s struggle to rehabilitate refugees coming in from the west and the adoption of a liberal Constitution for the citizens of the newly independent nation. It examines the Hindi belt’s political peculiarity—the metamorphosis of the socialist movement into a movement that ended up furthering caste and religious divisions in the region; the book analyses the rise of temple politics (incidentally, all three temples that are mired in disputes and controversy are located in the Hindi belt) that threaten the very idea of a multi-religious, multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, and multi-lingual India that has held sway for almost a century.

Given its disproportionate influence on the nation’s politics, culture, and identity, it is surprising that there has never been an authoritative history and account of the region until now. Based on meticulous research and interviews with key stakeholders, award-winning journalist and writer Ghazala Wahab, a native of the region, gives us a magisterial account of the Hindi heartland. "

The book excerpt that has been published here is taken from the opening pages of the chapter on economy.

Ghazala Wahab is the author of Born a Muslim: Some Truths About Islam in India which won the Tata Literature Live! Book of the Year (Non-fiction, 2021) and the Atta Galatta Bangalore Literature Festival Book of the Year (Non-fiction, 2021), and Dragon on Our Doorstep: Managing China through Military Power (with Pravin Sawhney). She is the editor of FORCE, a magazine on national security and defence. She has edited The Peacemakers, a collection of essays profiling individuals who ensured peace and stability in their communities during times of severe communal tension and violence.