When Bhadohi rolled out the red carpet for new Parliament

Subject :History

Section: Art and Culture

Context:

It took 900 skilled artisans in UP’s Bhadohi 10.80 lakh man hours to hand-knot 18 shades from the Indian agave-green family to make 158 carpets bearing motifs inspired by the peacock for the Lok Sabha hall in the new Parliament building.
For the new Rajya Sabha hall, 156 carpets bearing a motif inspired by the lotus were woven in shades of kokum red.

Bhadohi: The carpet city of India:

Carpets like these have been intricately hand-knotted for decades in Bhadohi ‘the carpet city of India’.
In 2009, these handmade carpets were awarded the coveted Geographical Indications tag. Obeetee, which won the tender to make the carpets, started the Parliament project in 2020.
In the late 1980s, it made a hand-knotted carpet commissioned by Rashtrapati Bhavan.
The carpet is still laid out in the Ashoka Hall.
While hand-knotted carpets are usually made for big manufacturers and exporters, the smaller ones focus on handwoven, hand-tufted and flat-woven (or dhurries) carpets.
According to UP, Bhadohi district alone employs 22 lakh rural artisans of the 32 lakh employed in the carpet industry in the Mirzapur-Bhadohi region.

Carpet raw materials:

It takes the entire country for a carpet to come together.
- Sheep wool comes from Rajasthan and is processed in Haryana’s Panipat.
- While weavers belong to UP, Jharkhand and West Bengal, most exporters have offices in Delhi.
For the Parliament carpets, however, the wool was imported from New Zealand.

About the Bhadohi carpet:

Name of GI Registered Product: Hand made Carpet of Bhadohi
Name of State: Uttar Pradesh
A prominent woven carpet is the hand-knotted carpet.
This type of carpet is manufactured on a vertical wooden loom.
Thick cotton and woollen yarns are used in the warp ends while wool is used in the width direction.
Designs depicting flowers, animals, gardens, trees and trellises are used in various hues and ways to liven up these floor coverings.
The wool used in carpets varies according to the quality, design and style and so do the colours. Usually the best grade of Indian wool is used for medium quality carpets.