Muslin: The Legendary Cotton Fabric of Bengal

The handloom industry of West Bengal generates the largest employment opportunities in the districts of Nadia and Murshidabad, both centres for handspun and handwoven cotton fabrics. The region, with a highly skilled population of weavers (mostly Muslim), is today the centre for muslin production. With a surge in demand for muslin cottons, many production houses in Isanpur and the surrounding villages have been motivated to revive the jamdani technique, using eco-friendly dyes. Most of the production is done on pit looms, which are more conducive to the weaving of the delicate handspun fabrics.

The legendary Dacca muslin was made from the local phooti cotton, grown on the western bank of the Meghna River, now in Bangladesh. It breaks all myths that long-staple cotton is superior, for this delicate, plain-weave mulmul was so fine that it could pass through a ring, and was often referred to as ‘woven air’. It is wonderful that we continue to have artisans who have the skills to spin and weave this legendary fabric.

During Akbar’s reign in the late 16th century, mulmul khas and shahi mulmul (special diaphanously fine muslin) began to be made exclusively for the emperor and the imperial household. The sheer muslins were preferred in their natural white colour as plain fabric, or with intricately woven jamdani buttis, and were often embellished with white-on-white chikankari embroidery. It is believed that the Mughal rulers discarded the garment made from this delicate and fragile cotton after a day’s wear. There is a mythical story about Emperor Aurangzeb chiding his daughter, Princess Zeb-un-Nisa, for appearing in a translucent dress in court, when she had actually worn seven layers of this fabric.

When the Europeans first came to India, they were astonished not only at the quality, diversity and volume of its cotton textiles, but also by its extensive trade. Soon Indian cotton textile exports to Europe grew exponentially, with Bengal being the largest contributor. At one point, textiles were 70% of East India company’s exports and they started squeezing the farmers and the weavers by regularly lowering their purchase price. By the 19th century, Britain became the largest producer and exporter of textiles to India, and the value of Bengal muslin diminished. The cotton farmers, and those involved in the spinning, dyeing, weaving and production of muslin gradually lost their means of livelihood.

West Bengal was once a rich cotton producing state, but after 1969, cotton went out of favour with the farmers and they opted to grow more remunerative crops like rice. Today, practically no cotton is grown in Bengal. However, the state government has plans to develop the indigenous varieties of cotton, and revive the whole chain from farm to cloth, and has earmarked about 80,000 hectares of land along the Bay of Bengal coast for this project, involving around 2,00,000 farmers.