Hamari Virasat: An Exhibition That Weaves Together Conversations About the Constitution

There is a set of 75 tapestries travelling around India — one for every year that has passed since India formally formed a republic on January 26, 1950. Having landed briefly in India Habitat Centre in Delhi from March 8 to 17, 2024, the Hamari Virasat exhibition is a collage of textiles that run from floor to ceiling, wrapping the viewer into their rich, textured world.

Stepping into the serpentine exhibition tugs at memories of standing in a fabric store surrounded by colours and textures extending beyond the eye. The tapestries range from Ajrakh from Kutch, Gujarat, multi-coloured Ladakhi weaves, vivid hand-dyed Kalamkari from Telangana, heavy wool-woven Warli figures from Maharashtra, to the near extinct stitching practices of the Sodha and Jadeja communities in Kutch, Kantha-embroidered impressionistic peacocks from Bengal, and abstract spiralling Kadhi works that spill off the tapestry. Organised by the Hand for Handmade Foundation, National Foundation of India, and We, the People Abhiyan, the Hamari Virasat exhibition is a set of vibrantly diverse one metre square handmade textiles made by artistes around the country, all united by their shared inspiration from the artwork of the Preamble of the Constitution of India.

The original Preamble — as well the entirety of the Constitution in English — was handwritten by calligrapher Prem Behari Narain Raizada. The illustrations and borders surrounding the Preamble were hand-painted by Beohar Rammanohar Sinha. The rest of the illustrations in the Constitution were hand-painted by the artist Nandalal Bose and his team in Santiniketan in West Bengal. Faced with the daunting task of creating illustrations that could unify a fragmented, newly-born nation, the collection of artists chose a wide range of subjects from excavated Indus Valley seals to depictions of Gandhi at the Dandi March. The Preamble is bordered by images of lotuses, a bull, elephant, horse, tiger, and various peacocks. These motifs are repeated through the tapestries of Hamari Virasat.

The tradition of textile — so central a pillar within Indian art and culture — is deeply personal and tactile. Viewers wandering through the exhibit remark that a certain tapestry reminds them of a sari their mother used to wear or a fabric they saw while travelling. This emotional connection to the everydayness of textiles seems to mirror the centrality and continued relevance of the Constitution in our lives. At times, so consistently present it gets lost in plain sight; at others, so pressing and urgent, it becomes once again a central concern. The Constitution leads us back to foundational questions of who we are as a nation and who gets to be part of that “we” — a question that has very real consequences at times of political churn.

The lotus blooms in every corner of the exhibition. There are a few raised eyebrows. Tariq Ahmed Mir, the founder of Special Hands of Kashmir, a group of artists with disabilities from Kashmir, says about their tapestry, “the lotus flower blooms beautifully in our Dal Lake. This inspired us so we embraced it and interpreted it into our own work.”

The artists behind the tapestries hail from states across the country — Maharashtra, Nagaland, Delhi, Gujarat, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh and beyond. In India, the handloom and handicrafts sector is the second largest generator of employment after agriculture.

Walking around the exhibition, one overhears several people appreciating the craftsmanship of the textiles while simultaneously mourning the rapid loss of the handloom tradition in India. One hears retold stories of entire villages of craftspeople abandoning, and subsequently forgetting, the legacy of their art as it can no longer sustain them. The warp and weft of the art on display in Hamari Virasat seem to hold within them not just the enormous talent of the artists but also the bitter reality of a dying art and a fragile handloom and handicraft sector.

Each illustration in the Constitution carries the name of the artist who made it. Similarly, several names of the artists are woven into the tapestries (some even adding their phone numbers), fundamentally tying together the art and those who create it. In an era where traditional handloom designs are digitised at will to churn out cheap copies, this perhaps is the artists’ way of stamping ownership over their work, a copyright stamp if you will. Where is the prestige in continuing a legacy without the assurance of a secure future? There can be no collective heritage of handloom without the people who carry it forward through generations.

Carrying forward this legacy, several of the artists of the textiles on exhibit are women. According to the International Trade Centre, a joint agency between the United Nations and World Trade Organisation, women constitute over 80% of the handicraft workforce in India. Unsurprisingly, much of their contribution is overlooked, deemed women’s work.

Similarly, the exhibition has a display of the 15 “founding mothers” of the Indian Constitution, the women who helped bring the Constitution to life but who have been swept to the margins of history. Of the illustrators of the Constitution, a few were women, part of Bose’s team in Santiniketan, their names embedded in the margins with their work but credit lost. There is a correlation: when women work, the entirety of the work is devalued; when women do “men’s work”, their contributions are obscured.

One of the artists exhibited in Hamari Virasat, Pooja Singh from Aame Artisan Producer Company, describes her tapestry saying, “the horse in the context of the Constitution shows power and freedom to be democratic”, “the bull shows strength to take justice and fight for equality”, and “the peacock is spreading its feathers and shows the diversity in culture, language, and traditions”, with all the animals moving in opposite yet concentric circles, coming together in harmony.

Several of the tapestries similarly depict this theme of diversity working in harmony. Vinita Gursahani Singh, founder of We, the People Abhiyan and knowledge partner for Hamari Virasat, adds, “The diversity and craftsmanship in the Indian artisan sector mirrors the Constitution’s ideals of liberty, fraternity, justice, and equality. With its myriad forms and practices, this sector represents a microcosm of Indian society, embodying the constitutional vision of a diverse yet unified nation.”

“Hamari Virasat” posits  a question, and puts forward a possible answer too. The title asks what exactly “Hamari Virasat” or “our heritage” means across a large timescale: what it meant in 1949 when the Constitution was written and illustrated, and what it means now, 75 years later. The work of the Constitution when it was being conceived and adopted was to constitute the various cultures, languages, histories of a subcontinent into one people. The first line of the Preamble is “We the people of India” or “Hum Bharat ke log”. Who is this “we”? Who is included? Who is left out? It is an existential question that is tearing apart the nation today. The exhibition “Hamari Virasat”, bringing together artists from every corner of India, of every caste and creed, seems to answer the question it poses. There are two sets of artists — the artists of the Constitution and the artists today — split apart by 75 years and united by one document. Together, they provide several perspectives to what “our heritage” is and what it looks like to undertake the project of co-creating one heritage.

As much as it is a question, “Hamari Virasat” is also an assertion. An assertion that “This is us. And this is our heritage,” echoing the last lines of the Preamble: “We, the People of India […] give to ourselves this Constitution.” At once, this formulation creates a People of India who are able to conceive of, give themselves, and accept a Constitution, uniting them. It is a nation-building exercise but it is also a promise created, reevaluated, and upheld. A promise that has been woven, painted, embroidered, and stitched onto 75 pieces of fabric that are travelling through India.