Rarh · Middle & Lower Gangetic Plain
Everyday dress here is the Bengali standard — saree worn in the atpoure or the later nibi drape, dhoti and panjabi for men — but the region's distinctive garments belong to specific institutions rather than to daily life. The Baul's patched ochre alkhalla is a uniform of renunciation. The Chhau dancer's costume is engineered around a mask that hides the face entirely, so the whole performance has to be carried by the body. And the Santal women's white-and-red wrap is a marker of a community that lives in the same villages without dressing like its neighbours.
What is worn
The older Bengali drape, with the pleats tucked at the back and the anchal brought over the left shoulder and then returned over the right, with a key-ring knotted into the end. Still standard in villages and at pujas.
Worn for: Everyday and ritual
A white or cream dhoti with a loose collarless kurta. At Santiniketan the same outfit, in handspun cloth, is institutional dress for convocation and for Basanta Utsav.
Worn for: Ceremonial and festival
A long patched robe, usually ochre or white, worn with a cotton wrap and often with a string of beads. The patchwork is not decorative — it marks a renunciate who is clothed from what is given, and it distinguishes a practising Baul from a stage performer.
Worn for: Always
A heavy skirted costume of coloured cloth, foil, beadwork and metallic trim over the mask, weighted so it flares with each leap. The dancer sees through the mouth or nostril gaps, which is why so much of the choreography is in jumps and turns rather than in fine footwork.
Worn for: Chaitra Parba and performance
A two-piece cotton wrap, characteristically white or cream with a coloured border, worn with flowers in the hair and heavy silver at the neck and ankle at Sohrai and Baha.
Worn for: Everyday and at festivals
Weaves and textiles
A silk saree whose entire argument is in its anchal — a large end panel woven with figurative narrative scenes in supplementary weft, historically Ramayana and Mahabharata episodes but also nawabi court scenes, women smoking hookahs, and men in horse carriages. It originated at Baluchar in Murshidabad, collapsed under colonial competition, and was rebuilt at Bishnupur in the twentieth century by the artist Subho Thakur working with the master weaver Akshay Kumar Das, who brought jacquard technique back with him. It received a geographical indication in 2011.
The gold-and-silver-thread version of the same weave, developed later and now the wedding form. It is a variant of Baluchari rather than a separate tradition.
Mulberry and tussar silk reeled and woven across the Bishnupur belt, much of it as plain-ground yardage that feeds the Baluchari and Swarnachari looms and the block-printing trade.
Old cotton sarees layered and quilted together with running stitch, the thread pulled from their own borders, with figurative motifs worked freehand across the surface. Registered as a geographical indication for West Bengal; Birbhum's villages around Bolpur are among the principal producing clusters.
Wax-resist dyeing and hand-tooled vegetable-tanned leather developed as a teaching craft at Kala Bhavana and commercialised through the cooperatives around Sriniketan. Santiniketan leather goods carry a registered geographical indication.
Jewellery
Traditional dress of Rarh — garments, handloom weaves, GI-tagged textiles and jewellery. (10)