Threads unpicked: reinvigorating the traditional weaver's community vankars of bhuj as a socio cultural centre

Abstract

Every city beholds a distinctive identity, which is substantially defined by how its inhabitants’ moulds their traditions and culture and to what extent this impacts the whole face of the city. Bhuj, which is also known as the textile hub of Gujarat, is a small district in Kutch, which has a strong historic background in terms of textile trading. The town is centred around the large hamisar lake, with narrow pathways, small shops and low-rise residences leading to it. Bhuj plays an important role in the whole communication between several textile communities, which are the authentic origins, in and around Bhuj, like Bhujodi, Sumrasar, Dhordo, Hodka, etc. and the traders/merchants to maintain the continuity and strength of the whole textile web. Although, this strongly knitted textile web was disrupted on January 26th, 2001, when a massive earthquake with an impact of 6.9 measured on the Richter scale with the southeastern part of Bhuj being the epicentre, was witnessed which was followed by several aftershocks. Over 37.9 million people were affected amongst which 24.8% people of the textile communities had to face a huge dip in their daily economic scales. This also led to the shifting of textile markets to their native villages, which limited the tourist intake. Hence, a need of a platform evokes, where a physical manifestation of technology along with the cultural aspects of the Vankars in order to project a venue that promotes its culture giving an opportunity to the youth to move ahead with time. Several initiatives are already being taken up by Govt. and NGOs to reserve handed-down weaving tradition and also strategically merge it with the newer technologies of the present times.