| Summary/Abstract |
Among the many nation-building projects launched soon after India’s Independence, crafts had a prominent role as a key way to support Indian culture, encourage diverse Indian production and build rural employment. These new efforts in crafts reveal the leadership of a group of powerful women, including most prominently Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay and Pupul Jayakar. Together, Chattopadhyay, Jayakar and others helped forge the idea of India as a crafts nation even as they made possible new roles for women within the fields of crafts. Powerful women operating in areas formerly dominated by men, they helped to shape the vision of crafts in the new state but faced important limits, revealing the narrow space for female leadership after Independence.
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