Srinagar, June 27: Home to around 450 families, Kanihama village on the Srinagar-Jammu highway is about 20 km from Lalchowk. Popularly called the handloom village or Kani Shawl village of Kashmir, around 80 percent of the people are associated with weaving Kani Shawls.
Abdul Hamid, a resident of Kanihama in Central Kashmir’s Budgam district, regrets choosing his ancestral profession. The reason: he is struggling to feed his family, like other artisans who are getting peanuts for their hard work.
Like Hamid, hundreds of artisans in Kanihama are struggling to feed their families as they are not adequately rewarded for their efforts and hard work.
“We are given just peanuts. Top businessmen and politicians wear these costly Pashmina shawls, but the highly skilled artisans are not even earning the wages of unskilled labor,” said Ahmad, who also hails from Kanihama.
The village is known for the production of Kashmir’s famous designed Pashmina shawls. Kani shawl weaving is believed to be an art indigenous to Kanihama and can be traced back to 3000 BC. The word ‘Kani’ in Kashmiri also means a small wooden oblong spool.
Depending on the intricacy and complexity of the design being woven, an artisan can weave a maximum of a few centimeters per day, and it may take between 6 and 18 months to complete a shawl.
The ingredients used in this are high-grade Pashmina found in Ladakh. Each shawl can cost from Rs 10,000 and can go up to Rs 3 lakh.
