Chanda Shorff

Born in 1933, Chanda Shroff was 36 years old when she started Shrujan. Her love for crafts and the handmade, for the beautiful that could be made useful, dates back to the time when she was four to five years old. She made clay vessels that her mother baked for her so she could make rice in them. ‘So they were not mere toys,’ wrote Chanda Shroff, ‘I could use them. The play continued: I used thread and needle to sew a button; I made a theli. All this was done with my mother as my playmate. But by the time I was 9 years old, my playmate passed away and left me. It was a time of sadness. We were living in Mandal village at that time.’

Her father became father and mother. He was a freedom fighter who had worked closely with Gandhiji. A man with a large heart, ‘he was always helping people, when he had money and even when he did not.’ He believed in education for girls and that they should make themselves pagbhar, meaning dependent only on themselves for their financial wellbeing.

Many years later, during a severe drought in Kutch, when food and hope were hard to find, Chanda Shroff would figure out a way to make craftswomen pagbhar. Shrujan would enable them to use their embroidery skills to earn a home-based, dignified livelihood.

Chanda Shroff’s ways were quiet and solution-oriented. She actively chose the difficult and sometimes the dangerous path. In 1971 during the India-Pakistan war, she was stubborn and naïve enough to set out for Banni in the remote, inaccessible corner of Kutch close to the India-Pakistan border. Banni, the land of vast grasslands had been devastated by the drought; the men who were maaldharis had lost their livelihood and so the women were overjoyed to be able to earn from their embroidery. In 1974, she sought out the refugees of the India-Pakistan war who were placed in Jura camp near Loriya. Many of them were skilled craftswomen of the Meghwaad Maaru community; they still remember the petite, soft-spoken woman who appeared out of nowhere, offered them a way to help themselves and made it her lifelong mission to popularize the precision and perfection of their Soof embroidery.

Chanda Shroff loved perfection; and not only in embroidery. She sought out weavers from all over India who did exceptional work. For decades, she worked with a single vendor, and pushed him to expand the range of coloured threads. She valued perfection in her personal life as well. Her saris with their subtle ornamentation showcased handloom weaving and hand-printing at their best.

Care and concern drove her to reach out to more and more craftswomen and customers. They became her family; she was there for them in good times and difficult ones. The only thing she asked of the craftswomen was that they constantly update their skills and create work of the highest quality. She cherished her customers for valuing the work of the hand, safeguarding a living heritage and affirming the right of craftspeople to live with dignity and self-respect.

From 1969 when she started Shrujan to early 2000, many knew of Chanda Shroff but did not understand the scale and scope of her work or its invaluable contribution to safeguard a precious heritage and bring prosperity of rural Kutch.

In 2006, Rolex honoured her with the Rolex Award for Enterprise. She became the first Indian Laureate to receive this prestigious award. This historic event put Kutch and its crafts on the global map. And that made the fuss around her international celebrity status worthwhile. It also charged her to do for all the other crafts of Kutch what she had done for embroidery.

Chanda Shroff passed away in 2016 at the age of 83. Her gift to all of us is her radical legacy: work in quiet, effective ways; make everyone your own; be mindful of each person’s dignity and self-respect; create equal opportunities for all; stay relevant and forward thinking and, find excellence and joy in life and in work.