Baloch are the rich, cultural history and significance, that adorns Balochi embroidery. But more than just a treat for the eyes, this tapestry of living legacy lies at the crossroads of tourism, and cultural diplomacy. Here, we find not just standalone products, but the very enabler of Baloch artists’ creativity. It’s the lens through which different communities can engage with one another, and articulate their own culture. Balochi embroidery tells stories of Baloch history, tradition, and values. It wishes to save an art form that is dying, but more significantly, to contribute to a broader conversation around saving Baloch identity in an era of globalization. At the moment when Balochistan Rural Support Program (BRSP) came to them, the Baloch artists were losing faith in their art. One charity, after the once moral-boost of involving local artists in its social marketing, then took the additional step of launching skill development workshops, and disbursing loans to artisans.
The 2,000-years-old Balochi embroidery tradition, with its strong ties to the land and culture, continues to attract tourists with a thirst for authentic cultural experiences. Visitors can now see the tradition of Balochi embroidery up close on fashion runways and through artisans’ crafted homeware. They are giving the public something more — a center for exchange between cultures which transcends language and borders: Baloch artisans are working with those from Karachi and beyond. Women from Afghanistan’s Women’s Embroidery Project in Balochistan are being trained in Balochi embroidery. The economic opportunity is mutual; so, too, is the cultural.
Balochi embroidery, however, has emerged as a potent tool for cultural diplomacy; as the vehicle through which nations connect, and build shared experience. Through exhibitions, workshops and artisan collaboration, cultural exchange provides important vehicles for dialogue and sharing between nations with shared cultural heritage. The Balochistan Cultural Exchange Programs for example, supported by international partners including UNESCO, has worked to create links of cultural diplomacy through an interrogation of the cultural diversity of the region and dialogue between participating nations, through a series of interconnected exhibitions, concerts and festivals drawing nations from across the globe. In the grand scope of things, however, Balochi embroidery holds economic potential for local communities, as well. By establishing artisanal crafts as a viable means of income, they are plying the nascent grounds of an economic means that empowers women, in ways in which women and other marginalized Balochi communities are often barred. Embroidery, then, is an economic opportunity, and a means for growth in the region as a gesture of social inclusion.
Balochi embroidery, then, isn’t a uni-faceted phenomenon that simply adds to Balochistan’s tourism or soft power profile. Much more richly, it is a cultural form of Baloch identity and tradition that travels the globe as much in the imagination of visitors and the archives of cultural exchange as in the skills and patterns inscribed in the sussi. In short, it is a type of preservation that is not the result of purism as many critics argue of defensive endeavors to fend off the modern. Rather, it is a preservation of the fusion of tradition and a forthcoming that opens to the world. That culture may you may then examine without cult of worship – as a set of values and dispositions that are sources of the deepest intellectual and artistic knowledge, not an anonymous and amorphous chronicle of the irrelevant. Perhaps, then, in taking up the saddle of Baloch craftspersonship, it is true that we are journeying to a cultural crossroad or a location where the human’s tapestry encounters the threads of a broader collective.
