Punjab Doabs · Upper Indus–Gangetic Plain
Two garments carry the region's identity and both are functional before they are symbolic. The turban is a long unstitched length of cotton retied every morning, which on a plain with extreme heat, dust and glare is a sensible piece of equipment as well as, for Sikh men, an article of faith. Phulkari is the other — not a garment but a surface, floss silk darned into coarse hand-spun cotton from the reverse, worked by women for their own households rather than for sale, and therefore made in patterns that carry family and district rather than market taste. Everyday dress is loose and light: salwar-kameez for women across communities, and kurta with pyjama, tehmat or trousers for men.
What is worn
A single length of cloth five to eight metres long, washed, starched, stretched and retied each time it is worn. Tying styles are regional and personal — the broad flat Patiala shahi, the pointed Morni style, the tall conical dumalla of the Nihangs, and the simple parna knotted for work in the fields. For a Sikh man it is an article of faith and covers uncut hair; it is also worn by Punjabi Hindus and Muslims in older styles.
Worn for: Daily
The tunic-and-trouser combination that Punjab gave to the rest of India. The Patiala version is cut with a very large number of pleats gathered at the waist so the trouser falls in deep folds — associated with the Patiala court, and requiring several extra metres of cloth, which was the point.
Worn for: Daily and formal
A loose shirt over a wrapped lower cloth, tucked up short for work and let down long otherwise. It is the dress bhangra is danced in, which is why the wrap and the tuck are part of the choreography.
Worn for: Everyday and dance
A head-and-shoulder wrap embroidered in floss silk. A phulkari has ground cloth showing between the motifs; a bagh is embroidered so densely that no ground shows at all, and is a wedding and heirloom piece rather than everyday wear.
Worn for: Weddings, births and festivals
A flat leather shoe with no left or right — both are cut the same and take the shape of the foot over time. Men's are plain or lightly stitched; women's are embroidered in silk or gold tilla, and the wedding pair is a serious commission.
Worn for: Daily and ceremonial
Deep blue robes with a tall conical turban carrying steel quoits and other weapons. It preserves a seventeenth- and eighteenth-century martial dress as living uniform rather than as costume.
Worn for: Daily within the order, and at Hola Mohalla
Weaves and textiles
Darn stitch in untwisted floss silk worked from the back of a coarse hand-spun khaddar ground, so the embroiderer counts threads blind and the pattern appears on the face. Named types include the bagh, fully covered; the thirma, worked on white ground and associated with older women and widows; the chope, worked in a double-running stitch that reads the same on both sides and given by the maternal grandmother at a wedding; the darshan dwar, with gateway motifs, offered at a shrine; and the sainchi of the Malwa districts, which is figurative and shows village scenes, animals, wrestlers and trains. Registered as a geographical indication.
A thick reversible cotton cloth in double weave, chequered or striped, used as a wrap, a bedcover and a dowry item. It was woven on village pit looms in every large village until mill cloth displaced it, and its weight is its whole argument in a plain that gets genuinely cold in January.
Flat-woven cotton floor rug in bold stripes and geometric blocks, woven by women on a horizontal frame, accumulated as part of a dowry and used for seating at every gathering including the langar hall.
The woven drawstring for a salwar, made on a small hand frame or finger-braided in silk and cotton with tasselled ends. A minor object made with disproportionate care, given as a gift and worked in named patterns.
Amritsar became a shawl-weaving centre in the nineteenth century when Kashmiri weavers moved down to the plains during famine years in the Valley, and it later became one of north India's largest woollen textile and blanket manufacturing centres. The craft origin and the mill industry occupy the same city.
Jewellery
Traditional dress of Punjab Doabs — garments, handloom weaves, GI-tagged textiles and jewellery. (11)