Almost 40 years ago when Padmini Tolat Balaram began a six-month research project on indigo, little did she know she would end up dedicating her life to it. Indigo is a natural dye obtained from the plant Indigofera which is native to India and other tropical regions. “The field was so vast, and so poorly documented at the time. It went back 4,000 years to the Indus civilisation. I made up my mind I would do more,” she says. Four decades later, Balaram’s work, her life can be written in the many shades of blue she has studied and documented.
Her exhibition, ‘Indigo and its Impact on India & East Asia’, which concluded last week at Delhi’s Japan Foundation, put together 50 textiles that she had collected over her career, that narrated the history, the many characters of Indigo and its impact on civilisations across East Asia. At the exhibit, textiles dating as far back as 1978, adorned the walls. “Before the British entered India, Indigo had already become a priceless commodity. A kilo of it was sold in exchange for a kilo of pearls. It was one of the chief exports of India. Along with spices and textiles, it can be considered the third commodity that attracted the interest of the imperialists,” Balaram says.
Indigo as a crop has its own place in Indian history. Mahatma Gandhi led the indigo revolution in Champaran, which was the beginning of the biggest civil uprising—Satyagraha. “Farmers were forced to grow indigo instead of food crops because the demand was high in Europe.
But they were hardly paid a fair share for their work. The farmers revolted as had been robbed of their livelihoods,” Balaram says. That a dye could be worth so much, and so significant in history is a thing to ponder on. “Indigo that was, and is still organically produced in India is just a superior product. Not only is it medicinal compared to how environmentally dangerous chemical dyes are, but it is also so much better in quality. The saris I have on display in the exhibition were dyed 40 years ago. But each detail has lasted all these years, without a hint of shade,” she adds.
But with the introduction of chemical dyes and production shifting to Europe, Indian indigo suffered a heavy decline. Over the years through her research and her prints, Balaram has tried to rejuvenate this long-lost form. She believes that there has been a revival of interest in indigo over the last four years. “Quality is still a problem. There is a lot of interest in indigo dyes, but it remains to be a slow process. A lot of people who claim to be using it are throwing chemical dyes into the mix. That is just a compromise in purity. It helps neither the cause, nor the product,” she rues.