Bhasha Chakrabarti
b. 1991; from Honolulu, Hawaii; works in New Haven, Connecticut
Ashdeen, design studio
2012–present; New Delhi, India. Founded by Ashdeen Lilaowala, b. 1980
The Intoxication of the Flower, the Exhaustion of the Labor, the Circulation of the Seas, and the Seduction of the Stitch, 2023–2025
Silk thread, handloomed raw silk, and reactive dye
Museum purchase: gift of Frances Middendorf and Elizabeth T. and Dorothy N. Casey Fund 2025.38
1.
Made as a garment, map, historical archive, and embroidery sampler, this saree tells the story of Parsi gara, a type of attire that emerged in the 1700s. While the gara and its distinct Indo-Chinese style of embroidery remains popular today, its cosmopolitan origins and entanglement in the opium trade are rarely discussed.
This new work, commissioned by the RISD Museum, references trade routes, colonial paintings, family photographs, and a wide range of patterns from gara embroidery—including those found on historical examples. This text explores these social, geographical, economic, and political narrative threads.
The Parsis
2.
The Parsis descend from followers of the Zoroastrian religion who were forced to migrate to India from Iran and Central Asia in the 600s after the Muslim conquest of Persia. The first Parsis to arrive on the subcontinent settled in Gujarat. While the contemporary community is small, the vast majority of the world’s Zoroastrians call India home.
3.
The word gara originates from the Gujarati word garo, meaning a width of cloth. Gara refers specifically to the sarees first worn by the wives of Parsi merchants starting in the 1700s. Prized within Parsi families, gara sarees soon symbolized the community’s reputation as well-educated, outward looking, cosmopolitan, and commercially successful, the last being a largely a direct result of their success in the opium trade with China.
4.
The development of Bombay (now Mumbai) as a major port for the British East India Company (EIC) in the late 1600s is closely tied to the Parsi community. Parsis were involved early on in shipbuilding and textile industries, and, like many merchant communities in India, they collaborated closely with the British, eventually extending to the management of opium production and commerce. Unlike their Hindu counterparts, who initially did not travel overseas due to beliefs around maintaining caste purity, Parsi merchants sailed from Bombay to participate in opium trade from the very start, with Hirji Jivanji Readymoney traveling to the Chinese port of Guangzhou (then referred to by the British as Canton) in 1756.
The Production of Opium
5.
The scenes of opium production shown in the saree’s central field and border vignettes are taken from 19 works made around 1857 by the Indian artist Shiva Lal. These instructive images were studies for large wall paintings to be completed at the EIC’s Gulzarbagh opium factory in Patna. The final murals were never completed because the administrator who commissioned Lal’s paintings was killed in the 1857 Indian Sepoy Mutiny against the company.
6.
For centuries across India, the opium poppy (papaver somniferum) was grown in small amounts for medicinal use. Following the British East Indian Company’s conquest of Bengal, they established a regional monopoly over opium production. In 1797, one year after China first banned the import of opium, the EIC began forcing Indian farmers to cultivate poppies on a large scale. Year after year, production was ramped up almost exclusively for export to China, despite its illegal status there. The EIC’s practices led to famine, death, and addiction in many low-income Indian communities.
7.
At the EIC’s production center in Patna, each skilled laborer was required to produce at least 100 balls of dried opium resin every day. Due to constant exposure to the drug, most farmers and workmen became addicted. Unlike laborers in other extractive colonial systems like cotton and indigo production, opium workers did not organize revolts, possibly due to their own addictions.
The Transport of Opium
8.
Resin from opium seed pods was processed into balls and packed into wooden chests made of timber from Nepal. In eastern India, boats carried these chests from Patna down the Ganges River to auction houses in Calcutta (now Kolkata). Meanwhile, chests of opium produced in Malwa, in central India, were taken over land to auction houses in Bombay (Mumbai). The chests, each holding about 140 pounds of opium, were auctioned to private dealers and merchants from around the world, including Europe and New England, and to Indian Parsis, who assumed the risks of smuggling the drug into China.
9.
By 1790 around 4,000 chests of opium were trafficked from India to China each year, and this number continued to grow exponentially. Between 1795 and 1840, opium accounted for 64% of the goods traded from India to China, while cotton, previously India’s most desirable commodity, was a mere 28%. By 1884, the peak of the trade, 81,000 chests of opium were exported annually. Although production numbers declined after this, forced cultivation, brutal manufacturing practices, and illegal trade continued until India’s independence from British colonial rule in 1947.
10.
In 1829, clipper ships designed with narrower decks and larger sails were introduced. The Red Rover, the first of the opium clippers, doubled the profits for her owners by completing two Calcutta-to-China smuggling voyages in one year. In 1859, 25 years after revolutionizing the drug trade, opium clippers were fitted with coal-fueled steam-driven paddle wheels, further speeding the trade.
11.
The only Chinese port where foreign merchants were allowed to conduct business was Guangzhou (Canton), and merchants caught carrying opium there were immediately arrested and their cargo seized. To avoid this fate, ships offloaded opium around the tiny Lintin (Nei Lingding) Island, located at the mouth of the Pearl River. From there, “fast crabs,” “scrambling dragons,” and other types of small smuggling boats sneaked past the authorities, distributing the drugs along the coast and into the interior. In 1831, between 100 and 200 smuggling boats were operating around the island.
The Consumption of Opium
12.
During this period, opium addiction soared in China, first among wealthy elites and eventually reaching every class of Chinese society. The scenes of opium smokers shown here are based on a pair of Chinese paintings made in the 1800s by an unknown artist. Titled Two Wealthy Chinese Opium Smokers and Two Poor Opium Smokers, the works show subjects wearing different clothing, but their poses—and addictions—are the same.
13.
In China, as in most of Asia, opium was used for centuries as medicine that was ingested almost exclusively through eating. In the late 1600s Europeans introduced the practice of smoking opium using tobacco pipes. While eating large quantities of opium was difficult because of the body’s natural reflexes, smoking opium allowed the user to take in seemingly endless amounts of the drug. By 1729, the deadly and extremely addictive nature of this form of consumption led the Chinese emperor Yung Chen to issue an edict prohibiting the smoking of opium and its domestic sale.
14.
At this same time—the early 1700s—European and American consumers eagerly sought Chinese teas, silks, and other commodities, but merchants struggled to find products the Chinese wanted to trade for them. In the crippling addiction of opium, the West saw an opportunity to capture the Chinese market. Despite the ban on recreational opium use in Britain, the British East India Company embarked on a carefully planned and officially sanctioned drug production and smuggling project that lasted more than a century. By 1949 there were more than 20 million opium addicts in China, representing more than 4% of the total population.
15.
While the practice of smoking opium is rare today, the chemical compound in papaver somniferum, or the opium poppy, continues to be used in the manufacturing of recreational drugs including heroin and widely distributed pharmaceuticals like morphine, methadone, oxycodone, and fentanyl, known as opioids. Opioid abuse has become a major global health problem, with recent estimates of 60 million addicts worldwide. Every year more than 100,000 people die from overdosing on drugs in the opioid family.
The Birth of the Parsi Gara
16.
In exchange for chests of opium, European, American, British, and Indian merchants acquired tea, porcelain, furniture, and silks. While a majority of these Chinese goods were slated for Western markets, merchants and crew members also acquired them for personal use and as gifts for friends and family members. In response to this demand, a robust system of embroidery workshops and souvenir shops catering specifically to the export market developed in the port city of Guangzhou (Canton).
17.
In the mid-1700s—the early years of the trade—there were only a few independent Parsi merchants. It was more common for Parsis to travel to Guangzhou under the employment of the EIC or a European private merchant. The textile pieces they brought home to India were adapted by their wives and daughters into various local garments, including sarees that came to be known as garas. As the number and wealth of Parsi merchants coming into Guangzhou increased, they commissioned workshops in China to produce sarees, saree borders, tunics, and other items of Indian clothing.
18.
Little is known about the workshops where garas were first made or the systems in which they were commissioned and procured. While a few early sarees have stamps (written in English and Gujarati) that indicate they were made in China, most don’t have identifying markers. The border vignettes and scenes of silk production and embroidery shown here are based on a set of watercolor and ink paintings depicting Chinese artisans and textile processes. Dated to 1790, these paintings were likely produced in Guangzhou as souvenirs.
19.
Because foreign women were forbidden from entering the port of Guangzhou, commissions for garments and other products were placed through their husbands or male family members. The range of garas and other Parsi garments made in China during this time indicates that the artisans of Guangzhou quickly familiarized themselves with the saree’s structure and form and the taste of Parsi women. The pallu, or the end portion of the saree most prominently visible when draped, was often more densely embroidered than the parts to be pleated, and the corners (which were to be tucked or tied) left unembroidered. These design decisions made the sarees easier to tie and gave saree buyers a range of more economical options.
The Life of the Parsi Gara
20.
In the 1800s, Western consumers fell in love with “oriental” styles, and Chinoiserie became all the rage in European fashion and decorative arts. The simultaneous popularity of the gara amongst Parsi women can be partially attributed to Parsi tendencies to present themselves as proximate to the British by mirroring their tastes. However, unlike European trends, Parsi affinity for Chinese patterns ran deeper than a fleeting fascination with the exotic or a desire to be fashionable.
21.
Parsi and Chinese aesthetics and symbologies overlap, in part due to Parsis’ Central Asian origins and the history of rich cultural and economic exchange between India and China dating back over a millennia before European arrival. The common Chinese motif of a phoenix, for example, was embraced by Parsis as Simurgh, the auspicious Persian mythical creature. In Parsi garas, many Chinese embroidery designs became emblematic of the Parsi community and culture, and they continue to be cherished and replicated.
22.
This affinity for Chinese craftsmanship and designs led to their incorporation into existing Indian textile traditions. While early garas were embroidered in China, Parsi women soon began commissioning local Indian embroiderers to copy the Chinese silks brought back by their husbands. The wives of wealthy Parsi opium merchants were respected as tastemakers not just within the Parsi community, but in Indian society at large. Soon artisans across the subcontinent were replicating their lustrous silk garas with varying degrees of finesse, for all types of Indian women. Oral tradition even suggests that some Chinese embroiderers may have traveled to India and settled in Surat specifically to cater to Indian demand for garas. By the mid 1900s garas were exclusively made in India, but almost always using the same Chinese motifs.
23.
Until the 1940s, the most desirable garas were embroidered on jewel-toned Chinese silk foundations—specifically leno, satin, or damask weaves. To save on cost, sometimes plain Chinese silks were imported to India, where they were dyed in the classic purples, reds, or black and embroidered with largely white threadwork. Later, Chinese silk yarn was woven and dyed in India, and by the late 1890s, silks were also imported from Japan. With Indian Independence in 1947, the opium trade came to a halt, abruptly ending the import of Chinese goods. Later in the century, garas continued to be made in India using an array of domestically manufactured fabrics, such as gajji silk and tanchoi. It wasn’t until after India’s economic liberalization in the 1990s that trade with China, including textiles, began again. A decade later, Chinese commodities had flooded Indian markets, including the silk yarns most commonly used by Indian weavers today.
24.
The gara has had a significant impact on Indian fashion, especially the saree. Prior to the 1900s every community in India draped their sarees in different ways. The contemporary style of wearing the saree is said to have been created in 1860s by Bengali social reformer Jnanadanandini Tagore, a member of a successful Hindu family closely involved in the opium trade. After her marriage she moved to Bombay. Inspired by the way Parsi women in her elite social circles there wore their signature Chinese embroidered silks, she created the iconic nivi drape. Today, the sari is almost always worn in this style.
24. The gara continues to be popular in India today. More affordable gara-inspired sarees made with machine embroidery or synthetic materials exist, but traditional hand-embroidered silk garas are still the most coveted, and reserved for parties, festivals, weddings, and other special occasions. In Parsi families, garas are considered the most precious of heirlooms, passed down across multiple generations of women. Contemporary Indian designers like Ashdeen Lilaowala—who with workers in his atelier and the artist Bhasha Chakrabarti co-created this piece—continue to practice, adapt, and expand the iconic borders of the Parsi gara.