By – Snigdhendu Kumar Show.
The stoneware of West Bengal move about today, and thanks to the tradesmen, they are kept moving from place to place, from the quarry-site to the artisans’ workshops, from the workshops to the markets and shops, and lastly from the shops to the cupboards or kitchens of the households or to the sacrosanct precincts of holy temples, private or public. In fact, many people of the State of West Bengal, excluding some few ardent promoters and lovers of the handicraftof the State, are distinguished for their sedate ignorance of the fact that the artisan practising the craft of stone-carving have been silently eating the bread of banishment without any elan for many years in several craft-centres in the police station Binpur in a remote corner of the district of Midnapore in the State of West Bengal. the stone utensils of West Bengal, even despite an artful deceits, remain the most useful things of utility and graceful beauty, not soiled by daily use. This marriage of beauty and utility has not precluded the utensils from being used for ritualistic purposes. The quintessence of the whole story about the present craft is a long tale of exploitation of the artisans by a group of wholesalers flocking in the market at Silda every Friday to swoop on and mop up whatever products are brought there for sale by the primary producers and to purchase the articles in bulk, so that no artisan ever feels the need to grope his ways to outside markets. But, the irony of the exploitation is immanent in the situation itself, for the smokescreen of anonymity, engulfing the craftsmen, keeps them blissfully ignorant of the consumers outside. The tentacled economic operations of the wholesalers also provide a ready opportunity to the wholesalers to let the craft-centres of West Bengal remain in hideouts of their recluse and never to allow the retail consumers to have a full view of the products or a knowledge of the places of their origin. Silda cannot but provide a sure escape-valve for the stonewares of the region to enjoy better markets in Calcutta and elsewhere in West Bengal, even though the producer artisans, unawares of the track of escapade, rest contented with whatever paltry price they get in exchange, and that the congregating Paikars enjoy the marginal utility of exploitation of the producers’ ignorance of other markets. The huge annual turn- over of sale of stonewares at Silda, involving transactions worth more than hundred thousand rupees (astronomical figures indeed in the comprehension of the little artisans), widens the bounds of the craftsmen’s knowledge of neither the market nor the world, beyond the pale of Silda. It gives them neither any inkling of the exploitation of their innocence by the resourceful Paikars. Avarice has not spurred on the craft, because the indigene craftsmen look upon themselves as a fortunate band, not goaded by accentuated wants of life or by necessity’s sharp pinches, but capable of meeting their modest needs with tittle margin of profit from the sale of their products to the Paikars. This spirit of satiety at modest earnings has been shaped out by historical and economic forces and geographical environs. In an infertile region the income earned by their compatriots in other Iivelihoods, landed and landless cultivators, agricultural labourers or daily wage-earners, is less enviable than that of the artisans. The ecological compulsion of a forced choice and acceptance of any alternative profession with better remunerative returns have sealed the fate of the craftsmen and stunted the entrepreneur’s skill and enterprise to maximise the profit. The products of West Bengal are singled out from the stonewares of other States by the simplicity of form and design of the utilitarian utensils of functional values as well as by the use of decorative motifs as aesthetic expressions of the innate artistic senses of the unsophisticated craftsmen in a rural interior. The stonewares of West Bengal, on comparison with those of other States, stand on equal footing and have the same artistic value, as the products of experienced workers in a handicraft do normally have. On the element of form, the artistic productivity and skill of the Bengali craftsmen do not score less than those of their counterparts elsewhere, on account of the regularity of form and surface pattern of the articles.
During 2017, the handicrafts marketing department of “Biswa Bangla” of Government of West Bengal had been taken an inititive by overcoming these mismanagements, to save this stoneware craft and artisans of West Midnapore region of West Bengal and handed over responsibility upon me to revive this traditional craft by incorporation of contemporary designs in it with the help of required necessary techeniques to engulf its productivity to fulfill the market needs. I have visited this region personally and worked hard with the artisans of Dhangikusum, Belpahari, West Midnapore and evolved several utility oriented stone crockeries by them which ultimately reached ‘Biswa Bangla’ stores for its valued customer.
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