Telangana · Deccan Inland Plateau

Dress and textiles

The plateau's textile signature is resist-dyeing the yarn before it is ever woven, and joining two different fibres inside one cloth. Both are answers to the same constraint — a weaving economy far from any port, using local cotton and bought-in silk, that had to make a small quantity of expensive material go a long way. Over that sits the Hyderabadi wardrobe, which is a separate tradition with its own bridal garment, and the Banjara tandas, whose dress belongs to western India and has stayed unassimilated for four hundred years.

What is worn

Pancha and kanduvaMen, rural

A cotton dhoti worn short for fieldwork and full-length for a jatara, with a shoulder cloth that doubles as a head-pad for carrying, a filter for drinking water and a towel.

Worn for: Everyday and festival

Langa voniGirls and young women

The half-saree — a long skirt with a fitted blouse and a draped voni over one shoulder. Bathukamma is the occasion on which it is still worn in numbers.

Worn for: Festivals, Bathukamma

Khada dupattaWomen, Hyderabadi Muslim households

A six-yard dupatta worn over a kurta and churidar pyjama and arranged so that it stands away from the body in a fixed architecture rather than falling. It takes another woman to drape and is now almost exclusively a bridal garment.

Worn for: Weddings

Sherwani and the Hyderabadi capMen

The Deccani sherwani, cut longer and plainer than the north Indian version, worn with a karakul or an embroidered cap. The city's formal dress under the Asaf Jahis and still its wedding dress.

Worn for: Weddings, formal

Banjara phetiya and kanchaliLambada women

A heavy embroidered and mirror-worked skirt with a backless bodice, worn with ivory or plastic arm-stacks, coin necklaces and cowrie-hung braids. The vocabulary is Rajasthani and Gujarati, carried south by a salt-and-grain caravan trade and kept intact inside a Telugu-speaking plateau.

Worn for: Everyday, increasingly ceremonial

Weaves and textiles

Pochampally IkatGI tagYadadri Bhuvanagiri and Nalgonda

Warp, weft or double ikat in silk and cotton, in which the yarn is tie-resisted and dyed to a plan before weaving, so the pattern emerges as the cloth is made and the motif edges feather slightly. Registered as a geographical indication in 2004–05, with a separate logo registration in 2017–18. Puttapaka, a few kilometres away, is the double-ikat village.

Telia RumalGI tagNalgonda (Puttapaka), historically Chirala

A square double-ikat cloth in a fixed palette of madder red, black and white, whose yarn is worked with oil and an ash alkali over days before dyeing. It began as an export cloth for the Arabian Sea trade, worn as a turban or waistcloth, and its geographical indication was registered in 2020–21.

Gadwal sareeGI tagJogulamba Gadwal

A cotton or silk-cotton body joined to a silk border and pallu by an interlocking weft technique, so the two fibres meet in a seam that is woven rather than stitched. The joining is the skill; the zari is the decoration. Registered as a geographical indication in 2010–11.

Narayanpet sareeGI tagNarayanpet

Small-check cotton and silk with a contrast temple border, woven on a warp set up for several sarees at once so almost no thread is wasted at the changeover. Registered as a geographical indication in 2012–13.

Siddipet GollabhamaSiddipet

A cotton saree carrying an extra-weft figure of a milkmaid with a pot on her hip, repeated along the border and in the pallu. The motif is woven in by hand with a separate small shuttle for each figure, which is why the count per saree is a price.

Warangal durriesGI tagWarangal

Thick cotton floor-spreads woven on pit looms in interlocked weft blocks, historically for temples and wedding halls. Registered as a geographical indication in 2017–18.

Jewellery

Traditional dress of Telangana — garments, handloom weaves, GI-tagged textiles and jewellery. (11)