'This Is Ours': Rabari Tradition and Identity in a Changing World

Abstract

The doorway hanging (toran) has a history. Embroidered by Rabari in Kutch more than fifty years ago with the fine chain-stitched geometric patterns popular at the time, it was so valued by its owner that its life was renewed by replacing large tin-framed mirrors with smaller mirrors set in the acid colours of current taste. The toran helps to tell a history as well. We have deepened our knowledge of the Rabari from such embroidery. Originally camel-herding pastoral nomads, Rabari today live scattered in western India throughout the Kutch, Saurashtra and northern regions of Gujarat state, and in western and southern Rajasthan. In each of these major regions, Rabari are further subdivided into culturally distinct, geographically based subgroups. Nomadic societies survive by their ability to adapt to their physical and cultural environments. Historically, when an environmental niche could no longer support the population of herders and herds, subgroups splintered off and migrated to new niches. Over centuries, adapting their patterns of subsistence to the carrying capacity of the physical environment and the needs of neighbours, Rabari subgroups sustained varying degrees of contact and mutual influence with neighbouring peoples, from whom they borrowed features for physical and cultural comfort. Simultaneously, they strived to maintain their distinct cultural identity. Rabari embroidery and dress reflect this tension between the need to adapt to the environment and the need to maintain identity that is fundamental to Rabari culture. My research on the Rabari to date has utilised the traditional embroideries of these nomadic people to reconstruct a history that is largely unwritten. Rabari subgroups of Kutch, Saurashtra and north Gujarat all embroider. Each group uses a unique style, a combination of stitch, colour, pattern and motif. By examining historical and contemporary examples of the styles of twelve Rabari subgroups in the context of other embroidery styles of the respective regions, other Rabari embroidery and dress styles and oral histories related by Rabari elders and traditional genealogists (barots), I was able to discern patterns that enabled me to construct a theory of Rabari migrations and cultural adaptations over ten centuries. Elsewhere (Frater 1995), I have demonstrated how the styles of embroidery and dress of Rabari subgroups eloquently articulate their culture and history. Embroidery as a History of Adaptation Prior to the eleventh century, the Rabari inhabited Rajasthan, but sources indicate that there they did not embroider. The custom of embroidering was adopted elsewhere, later. I found that in each of the regions where Rabari do embroider, a different pattern of adaptation to regional styles prevailed. In north Gujarat, to where they migrated directly from Rajasthan in the fourteenth century, they adopted the custom of embroidering, and later adapted to other contemporary regional influences. At the time of my study (1983-84) the Patanvadi Rabari of north Gujarat were the most settled of all subgroups. They used two distinct embroidery styles, both regional to north Gujarat. For household decorations, they used the style practised by other communities of the area, a unique combination of Kathi-influenced geometric motifs (for further information on Kathi embroidery see Frater 1989, 1995; Nanavati 1961), stitches common in Saurashtra and other stitches associated with Kutch. For garments, Patanvadi used a floral pattern unlike that of any other Rabari subgroup. This style showed the influence of an urban, rather than a folk tradition, probably derived from professional, chain-stitched embroideries produced in north Gujarat for trade from at least the seventeenth century. This pattern of adaptation illustrates long-term, close contact with and integration into surrounding societies, including urban societies. The Rabari of eastern Saurashtra migrated from eastern Kutch in the fifteenth century. …