Wearing Trauma on Her Sleeve: A Jumlo as a Witness and Recorder of Colonial Boundaries

Abstract

The RISD Museum recently displayed a jumlo (dress) made by a Nuristani woman, an ethnic group native to land that borders modern-day Afghanistan and Pakistan. The jumlo shows a deep connection to the geographic and cultural past of the region, with traditional embroidered solar and geometric motifs that mirror local pre-Islamic rock art. The textile also reveals how the maker is embedded in the cultural transitions of the mid-twentieth century, displaying coins that date from both before and after the British partition of India. As the British, Indian, Afghan, and Pakistani political interests were all involved in the delineation of political borders in the wake of British colonialism’s collapse, the shifting and dividing boundaries left a traumatic legacy visible in the material culture. Now part of a museum collection, the jumlo continues to find these political borders unstable; as it—and other textiles from the same people—are variously labeled as Nuristani, Kohistani, Pakistani, Afghan, Indian, or Dardic. This continued confusion of attributions replicates and risks reinscribing the trauma of the imposition of political boundaries without regard to the cultural, geographical, and historical realities of the women who made the garment. Over 70 years later, this jumlo acts as a witness and documentor of violent processes in Central and South Asia, and can perhaps spark dialogue on personal choices, lives, and trauma within the area today.