Chhipa Erotic

The Chhipa are named for their trade. The name comes from chhapna, to print, and for centuries that is what Chhipa families did: they took plain cotton and carved wooden blocks and pressed pattern into cloth, one length at a time. They are a caste rather than a tribe or a nation. The group is spread across north and west India and, since 1947, Pakistan. What holds it together is a shared craft, marriage within the community and a strong sense of family line. Closely related groups in Punjab and Haryana go by Chhimba or Chhimpa.

Religion divides the community, but the trade runs through all of it. Most Chhipas are Hindu, and many call themselves Namdev Chhipa. That name honors Namdev, the medieval Marathi poet-saint born into a family of tailors. His hymns are in the Guru Granth Sahib, which is part of why Sikh Chhimbas in Punjab revere him too. A large Muslim branch, mostly Sunni, lives in Rajasthan, Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh, and many of its families moved to Karachi at Partition. In Pakistan the name means something different to the public. The Chhipa Welfare Association, founded by Ramzan Chhipa, runs ambulances and free meal points across Karachi, so there the surname is linked to street-level charity as much as to cloth.

The craft is still where the Chhipa leave their clearest mark. In Bagru and Sanganer, outside Jaipur, whole neighborhoods run on printing. Bagru is known for dabu, a paste of clay, lime, gum and wheat husk that is pressed onto cloth to keep dye out. It is also known for earthy red and black prints on cream grounds tinted with myrobalan. Sanganer printers favor finer floral work on white. The work is slow and exact. An outline block goes down first, then a separate block for each color, each placed by eye so the repeat meets without a visible join. Washing and sun drying are as much part of the process as the carving.

The twentieth century nearly finished the trade. Synthetic dyes, screen printing and mill cloth undercut hand printers, and many families moved into tailoring, cloth dealing, shopkeeping and salaried work. From the 1970s on, export orders and design houses put the blocks back to work, and Sanganer and Bagru printing now have geographical indication protection. Today a Chhipa is as likely to work in a Jaipur office as in a print shed, but the surname still announces the old family business. In several Indian states the community is listed among the Other Backward Classes.