World of the Banaras Weaver : A Culture in Crisis

This book is a fascinating investigation into how communalism plays out in everyday India. Using the metaphor of tana-bana – the warp and the weft of the Banarasi sari – the author reproduces the interwoven life of Hindu-Muslim relations in the Banarasi sari industry.

As the city of Banaras in Uttar Pradesh takes the centre stage as the site of this ethnographic study, the author documents the dissonance in representations of Banaras as a sacred Hindu city and its essential plural character. The volume
• examines in-depth the lives of Banaras Muslims in the social and economic matrix of the sari industry;
• highlights how women negotiate between home, family and their place in the artisanal industry; and
• sheds light on their fast-changing world of the Banaras weavers and their responses to it.

With a new introduction and fresh data, the second edition looks at the subsequent developments in the weaving industry over the last decade. This volume will be of immense interest to scholars and researchers of social anthropology, gender studies, development studies, sociology and South Asian studies.

Vasanthi Raman was formerly a Professorial Fellow at the Centre for Women’s Development Studies (CWDS), New Delhi, and was a Member of the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR), New Delhi, India. She has also been Visiting Professor at the University of Joensuu, Finland, and Fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, India. She has published extensively in books and journals on issues of social transformation – problems of marginalised groups, tea-garden workers and semi-tribal groups in northeast India; childhood studies and women’s studies. Her recent research work has been on communalism and the construction of gender and Hindu-Muslim relations. Currently she is Vice-Chairperson of the Centre for Women’s Development Studies, New Delhi.