Hanging by a thread: Banaras shop owners wrapped in insecurity

Rising crime has left the largest cloth-producing markets empty.

KARACHI: One man was shot dead in Hijrat Colony on Monday night. As the news infiltrated, shop owners of the Banaras Silk Market in Orangi shuttered their shops even if they had customers. They forced everyone out, completely shut down and fled.

And why shouldn’t they.

They have no other option but immediate shutdown. “We can’t wait for the police and Rangers to arrive. It’ll be too late then,” says Muhammad Akhtar Ansari. He is a shop owner in Orangi for the past 25 years.

The Banaras silk market is the centre of Banaras-cloth production, which supplies the intricately-designed fabric to all parts of the country — providing livelihood to thousands. But with the rising crime, murders and arson, a lot is at stake for one of the biggest handloom markets of the country that strives to carry on the age-old tradition of producing Banarsi silk.

After bearing the shocks of rising inflation and rampant load-shedding, now the shopkeepers seek security.

The rioting and killings bring back the memories that haunt Banaras shop owners. In the early 1980s, the shopkeepers moved bag and baggage to Orangi as hundreds of families were killed in one of the worst ethnic violence in Banaras Colony between Pakhtuns and Mohajirs.

“We took whatever we had and ran away. Because in just a matter of hours, men, women and children were killed inside their homes,” recalls Ansari. He terms that day “the darkest one”.

Majority of the weavers and shopkeepers had roots in India and after Partition, they considered Banaras Colony their home.

But Ansari moved on and so did many others after him. Since then, Banaras Colony is a no-go zone for an Urdu-speaking individual and they made Orangi their abode, he says.

Banarsi weavers in Orangi are mostly from the Ansari family. If not from the Ansaris, most of the weavers are migrants from Banaras, India, who have settled in various parts of Karachi.

This is the only work we know as we have grown up watching the fabric being woven in our very houses, he says. Women of the family are a major help as they are the ones who are mostly consulted for the selection of colour and cloth.

Though the silk market seems endless, you cannot see an endless crowd of people. “There used to be,” says Ansari, grimly. “We had customers from other areas of Karachi as well. But not now. People don’t come here, fearing for their lives,” he quietly adds.

Then why are you still in the business? “Tradition.” The shop owners don’t want to lose out on what their fathers and grandfathers taught them. “I cannot imagine myself as a banker or a teacher. I would suffocate,” says 28-year-old Nadir Ahmed.

Dark and neglected

The road opposite the market has no street lights. The market looks isolated. Whatever lights you see are some from the shops or from the vehicles passing by.

And it’s a bumpy ride home. “The bumpy ride to and from Orangi is enough to give anyone sleepless nights for weeks,” says Ansari. Considering this is one of the biggest cloth markets in Pakistan, it is kept in the worst of conditions.

Destitute shop owners

Despite producing and supplying the embellished fabric to so many parts of the country, the shop owners are empty-handed at the end of the day. The reason is the rising cost of silk cocoons that are imported from China.

“Just a year ago, the cocoon was being sold for Rs1,700 per kilogramme in the market. Now the price is around Rs5,400. So after cutting material and labour costs, we hardly save anything.”

Technology taking over

In the nearby neighbourhood, a constant whirl of machines can be heard. It’s the power loom.

Unlike the traditional handloom, the machine does most of the work, completing a day’s work in minutes.

As the demand for the fabric increases, the traditional handloom, which can be found in many homes even today, is gradually being replaced by the power loom.

“Weaving a saree on a handloom takes a week to be completed, whereas it takes just a day to be finished on a power loom,” informs Mukhtar, who works in a small workshop in a house. However, the stumbling block is load-shedding. “Most of the times, the electricity is gone for around two hours.”

But that doesn’t stop some people. Many of the traditional weavers, like Ansar Ahmed, a migrant from Uttar Pradesh, India, have stopped working on the handloom already, as he explains it is too expensive to do so.

“I have started working for shop owners for weekly wages, which earns me around Rs1,000 a week [because of the less time consumed on a power loom].”

Published in The Express Tribune, January 13^th, 2011.