The heavy odour of castor oil hangs in the air, rows of breathtaking painted designs that could easily be mistaken for intricate embroidery, rest against walls, important visitors add to the hustle and bustle. For 20-year-old Itisha Bhanushali, these were a familiar part of growing up in the remote Nirona village of Kutch, Gujarat, near the home of Abdulgafur Khatri.
Abdulgafur is a custodian of a 400-year-old form of painting called Rogan Art. It is an art so difficult to learn that only a few families are still practising it in Kutch. Two years ago, Itisha walked into Abdulgafur’s workshop, past a nameplate that announces that Abdulgafur won the Padma Shri in 2019, and asked to join his team. The Master did not think twice. He has taught 400 girls Rogan Art since 2010.
“We are a middle-class family, with five sisters, so my father was under a lot of pressure. Learning Rogan Art has allowed me to take care of my expenses. In the beginning, I would earn Rs 3,000 per month. I bought gold earrings. My older sister bought her entire collection of wedding jewellery with her earnings from Rogan Art,” says Itisha. While she is talking, three other girls come in and ask Abdulgafur if they can learn the art form.
Rizwana Hasham, a 24-year-old mehendi artist, has been practising Rogan Art for more than eight years. “I do Rogan Art at home also. Sir (Abdulgafur) taught around 14 girls in our batch and it took us a month to learn,” says Hasham.
Growing the Tree of Life
When Abdulgafur works, he seems lost to the world. He sits before a piece of cloth twisting an iron rod-shaped implement against a patch of colour on the palm of his hand. Once he has a glue-like thread of colour hanging from the kalam, Abdulgafur guides it across a cloth to create a pattern. His wrists turn the kalam smoothly as the cloth comes alive with a design. Abdulgafur’s most famous work is the Tree of Life.
“Rogan Art has come from Persia; the word, “Rogan” means oil-based in Persian,” he says. He speaks slowly, with a dignity born of patience. Why was the tradition of Rogan Art passed down from men to only the boys of a family? “There was so little money in Rogan Art that women did not come into it,” says Abdulgafur, adding that his sisters and cousins know the art form well.
Abdulgafur explains that machine-made industrial fabrics had devastated the market of handmade textiles. His brother Sumar Khatri, now a National Award Winner, and he had watched their family struggle with severe poverty. Abdulgafur sold vegetables and Sumar worked in a tea shop. “Like thousands of people in Kutch in the drought years, we worked as labourers to earn a living,” says Abdulgafur. By the 1980s, three or four other families who had been practising Rogan Art in Kutch had quit.
Around 1985, when Rogan Art was on its last legs, the Gujarat government announced schemes to uplift the state’s handicraft tradition. The Khatri family worked hard to save their legacy. “The Almighty has thrown a lot of challenges my way and given me the strength to overcome them. Among the biggest challenges was to break the social perception that Rogan Art was kept within men of a family only. I decided to change things and bring in girls from all over the village,” says Abdulgafur.
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Opening doors
In the beginning, getting women to learn Rogan Art was “like asking for votes in an election campaign”. “Parents were hesitant to send girls to learn an art form they knew little about. I convinced them that the girls would be safe. I argued that learning this art form would help the girls earn. I told them that their daughters would get a stipend. An NGO that I was working with in a government project called Guru Shishya Parampara in 2012 had agreed to giving the girls a stipend. Tab bhi 10 ladkiyon ko ekhatha karna mujhe bahut bhari pada (I found it difficult to bring 10 girls in). Mujhe bahut mehnat kadni padi (I had to work very hard),” says Abdulgafur.
Within four months, the girls began to earn from making Rogan Art textiles, from apparel to pictures. “Word spread and, after that, the girls have been coming in by themselves,” he says.
Abdulgafur was also determined not to restrict access to his own Muslim community. “Our village has a population of 9,000. The women in our workshop represent a cross-section of religions and castes,” he says. There are 20 women working at present. “I came here three days ago and am liking it. The first day, I watched as the others worked. Now, I am practising with the kalam,” says Meena Bhanusali, 22. The women, generally, fill in the details while Abdulgafur makes the main drawing.
The workshop, which is in their home, comprises 12 members of Abdulgafur’s joint family. What he has not taught the women is how to prepare the castor oil with the colour pigmentation that is essential to Rogan Art. “This is a dangerous process. I used to go with my grandfather to a forest outside the village when he made the oil, so that other people were not bothered by the smell of the oil. Plus it’s extremely combustible. If I find a committed girl who can learn the entire craft, I will teach her,” he says.
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A stroke of equality in the family too
Slowly but surely women in the Khatri family have started to be entrusted with the art too. Shehenjbanu Khatri, wife of Abdulgafur’s younger brother, became the first woman in the Khatri family to pursue Rogan art. “Over the years she has given live demonstrations of her skill to former chief minister Bhupendra Patel and former minister Smriti Irani and even Helen Clark, former prime minister of New Zealand at various events and expos in Gujarat,” says her husband Sumar Khatri proudly. As Abdulgafur’s sisters and daughter-in-law also join in as artists, the Padam Shri awardee is also quietly moving towards breaking the barrier of the keeping the secret behind the craft – mainly treating of castor oil- amongst the male members of the family, heralding the change that could well be the impetus needed to take the art to the next level. “We didn’t need to teach them- they saw and observed and knew it. Tomorrow they make want to make it too – that is the next step ahead ,” he says
