Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay-the Art of Freedom by Nico Slate 2026

I have a rather fond memory of Kamala, the beautiful craft store that once stood on Ho Chi Minh Sarani in Kolkata. I remember being fascinated by its sarees, textiles and crafts from different parts of India. Perhaps many older Kolkatans will remember the store; for those who don't, Kamala was one of those places that quietly introduced the richness of India's handmade traditions to an urban audience. As a teenager, I naturally assumed that the woman behind the name, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay, was Bengali. Much later, I discovered that she was born in Mangalore into a Chitrapur Saraswat family and acquired the surname Chattopadhyay through her marriage to Harindranath Chattopadhyay, the younger brother of Sarojini Naidu. What I discovered about the woman herself was far more fascinating. At Independence, India's handloom and craft traditions were facing a serious crisis. Colonial economic disruption, shrinking patronage, industrialisation and changing markets had left countless craftspeople struggling to sustain their livelihoods. Kamaladevi understood that political freedom had to be accompanied by cultural and economic self-reliance. As the first chairperson of the All India Handicrafts Board, she worked to bring India's crafts back into the economic and cultural life of the new nation—building institutions, creating markets, encouraging design and, above all, restoring dignity to the artisan. But she never believed that revival meant simply reproducing the past. In 1964, she said: “Craftsmanship need not, however, be bound up wholly with tradition.” It could draw strength from the past, while responding to the present and creating new traditions. How relevant that sounds today. We have just observed National Handloom Day, followed by Independence Day. We are once again talking about handloom, khadi, handmade, sustainability and self-reliance. Kamaladevi reminds us that these are not new fashionable ideas. For her, the handmade was deeply connected to economic independence, dignity of labour, cultural self-respect and human creativity. She even spoke of the “right kind of spoon”—how an ordinary object, when made with sensitivity and understanding, could give us a pleasure beyond mere utility. And that, perhaps, is the essence of a truly beautiful handwoven saree. It is not simply cloth made without a machine. It carries the intelligence of the weaver, the character of the material, the rhythm of the loom and generations of accumulated knowledge. Kamaladevi did not ask India to choose between tradition and modernity. She asked us to make tradition live. And perhaps that is her most relevant message today. If we genuinely want handloom to survive, we cannot merely romanticise it. We have to make it relevant, desirable, creatively alive and economically viable for the people who create it. So when I think of the Kamala I knew as a teenager, I realise that I was not merely remembering a beautiful store. I was remembering a small, tangible expression of the extraordinary vision of a woman who believed that India's future could be modern without turning its back on its hands. #ataleoftextilebyavijit #textiles #art #heritage #handloom #sarees #explore