A Kani shawl can take a craftsman months to finish, sometimes years, worked bobbin by bobbin on a loom that has changed little since the Mughal court first prized it. 

Sozni embroiderers bend over the same length of pashmina for weeks, adding motifs so fine that a single square inch can hold hours of labour invisible to any buyer glancing at a price tag. 

This is the plain economic problem sitting beneath the poetry of the Kashmiri shawl: a market built on speed is asking a craft built on time to compete, and it cannot win on those terms without help it is not currently getting.

The Kashmiri shawl earned its place in the world in a different economy altogether. Persian, Central Asian and Mughal exchange influenced its motifs, floral jaal, and paisleys, over centuries of contact rather than trend cycles. 

Rulers gave shawls as gifts of honour, while nobles wore them as proof of taste. The reputation spread outward until Kashmir itself became known partly through cloth, an unusual thing for a place to be defined by an object made mostly by hand.

That history gives the shawl its authority in showrooms from Srinagar to Paris, but it does nothing to protect the person........

© Kashmir Observer