An invitation to return to handmade clothing that is breathable, natural, and made with awareness.
There’s a background score that gives a rhythm to our Gurukula. That’s the kai magga — the handloom, clacking away. When we talk about dharmic living, cloth-making held a rather crucial place traditionally. It was an integral part of every village and undoubtedly the toughest piece of activity for community living. Why? Because it involves and sustains multiple communities. While agriculture pertains to farmers, pottery to pottery community, you need to bring at least 13 different communities together to make a piece of cloth. You need a farmer to grow cotton, a spinner to spin the yarn, a warp maker to set the yarns in the loom, a dye maker to bring the colours alive, a weaver to weave the fibres, a tailor to stitch it all together – and the list goes on. This intricate mutual dependence of cloth-making made it a fundamental thread that held society itself together.
But the thread snapped at the hands of modernity, and we let plastic and chemicals replace our genuine silk, cottons, khadi, mulmuls and linens. But how could we wear plastic and chemicals in the name of clothes while we carry Dharma in our hearts? So we decided to build our own handloom at Vidyakshetra.
We wanted our children to wear clothes that are made naturally, without harming the environment in any way, and made with diligence and patience. Vidyakshetra’s Vastram initiative is cloth-making with Bharatiyatha at its heart.
We have Kumar Anna, a master weaver from a traditional handloom family in Karnataka, leading Vastram at Vidyakshetra. Despite owning profitable powerlooms in Karnataka, he chose the satisfaction of weaving it all with his hands at our Vidyalaya.
Our dyes and yarns come from traditional handloom weavers of South Canara, North Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. And then the hands of our children, parents, and teachers at Vidyakshetra get to work. We make pure natural fabric from scratch. Unmercerised, singed yarns are used. We learned the processes of handloom weaving, natural dyeing, and everything we need to make breathable, non-toxic, conscious clothing. For the touch of beauty, we added multiple designs – butta, ancient temple borders, block printing, jacquard, embroidery and more.
Together, we have woven 3500 metres of cloth till date, and every bit of it is sustainable and closest to nature. Our threads that we weave get dyed at Varnam, our natural dyeing research unit at the Vidyalaya.
Our children and Acharyas wear clothes woven and dyed at the Vidyalaya. And our parents cherish the sarees, dupattas, and materials made here. We have been insistent on keeping it as natural as it can get and that’s why we have kept electricity at bay too.
Today, we source our yarns from outside, but our vision is to eventually bring the entire process in-house. It is exciting to imagine the depth of knowledge, skill and expertise that will emerge from this journey.
We believe this knowledge should not remain confined within our walls. Through workshops, courses, research opportunities and the incubation of new initiatives, we hope to share this traditional wisdom of sustainable living widely through our Vastram and Varnam Centers of Excellence.
If you wish to explore Vastram, learn or be a part of it any way, do write to us. We are sure that you will find something meaningful in what we are creating here at Vidyakshetra.