The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has launched, Handmade for the 21st Century: Safeguarding Traditional Indian Textiles, a list of 50 iconic heritage textile crafts of India.
- One of the major challenges to safeguarding invisible cultural heritage in South Asia is the lack of proper inventory and documentation, which aims to bridge this gap, bringing together years of research on the 50 selected textiles.
- This list the histories and legends behind the textiles. It describes the complicated and secret processes behind their making.
Key textile crafts on the list:
| State | Textile craft |
|---|---|
| Karnataka | Ilkal (Bagalkot) |
| Lambadi or Banjara embroidery(Sandur, Bellary) | |
| Tamil Nadu | Sikalnayakanpet Kalamkari (Thanjavur) |
| Toda embroidery(Nilgiris) | |
| Sungadi or Chungadi (Madurai) | |
| Haryana | Khes weaving (Panipat) |
| Himachal Pradesh | Chamba Rumals (Chamba Valley) |
| Ladakh | Thigma or wool tie and dye |
| Uttar Pradesh | Awadh Jamdani (Varanasi) |
| Goa | Kunbi weaving |
| Gujarat | Mashru & Patola weaving |
| Maharashtra | Himroo weaving (Aurangabad) |
| Telangana & Andhra Pradesh | Himroo weaving (Hyderabad) |
| West Bengal | Garad-Koirial weaving (Murshidabad) |
| Odisha | Bandha tie and dye weaving (Sambalpur) |
Note:
The UNESCO publication includes recommendations for the protection and revitalisation of these textile crafts, which cover the broad spectrum of issues extending from policy to grass-root-based micro-interventions.
Recent Related News:
The Hoysala temples of Belur, Halebid and Somnathapura, the ‘Sacred Ensembles of the Hoysala’, in Karnataka have been finalised as India’s nomination for United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation’s (UNESCO) World Heritage List for the year 2022-2023.
About the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO):
Director-General- Audrey Azoulay
Establishment- 1945 (came into force in 1946)
Headquarters- Paris, France
Members- 193 Members & 11 Associate Members
