Clad in a Kerala Kasavu sari, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra was a showstopper when she got off her car at the new Parliament building in New Delhi on Thursday for her swearing-in.

For the newly elected Wayanad MP, it was more than an outfit — she was highlighting Kerala culture before a national audience and simultaneously connecting with the people of her constituency.

Priyanka’s choice of the Kasavu — she wore a white sari with a golden zari border — had given a fillip to Kerala’s traditional handloom sector, Padmanabhan Gopinathan, a master weaver of handloom textiles from Neyyattinkara in Thiruvananthapuram,told The Telegraph.

As Priyanka entered the Lok Sabha, several Congress MPs from Kerala such as Hibi Eden and Anto Antony looked hugely impressed by her sari. Their look of admiration brought out a shy smile from her.

The Gandhi scion would have seen her grandmother, Indira Gandhi, and mother Sonia Gandhi wear the Kerala sari many times.

Senior Congress politician Ramesh Chennithala, who had gifted Kasavu saris to Indira and Sonia several times, especially during Onam, said it was not surprising that the lone woman Congress MP from Kerala had decided to wear the Kasavu, underlining her connection with the state.

“Indira Gandhi had a knack for using traditional saris to connect with the people. Now Priyanka has done the same on her maiden venture into the Lok Sabha,” Chennithala told this newspaper.

Gopinathan, 79, who has spent almost his entire life working to revive Kerala’s traditional handloom industry, has been beaming with pride since learning of Priyanka’s sartorial gesture.

Gopinathan was just 10 when he joined the handloom sector to help his father, the late Padmanabhan Master, doing odd jobs at the loom. Half a century later, in 2007, he was awarded the Padma Shri.

It has not been an easy journey, he told this newspaper. He had to fight against many obstacles: the entry of the power loom, inferior-quality paavu (starched cotton thread), bogus cooperative societies that took the weavers on a ride before dumping them.

“Thanks to Priyanka, Kerala’s handloom sector will get a fillip. Once I had more than 1,000 weavers in my society, the Eco Tex Handloom Consortium. It has come down to 200 women weavers and another 30 men engaged in making paavu at my 10-acre land at Poovathur near Neyyattinkara,” Gopinathan said.

“The central government should ensure that the minimum wage for the weavers (₹700 in Kerala) should be made uniform across the country. Currently, many states pay only ₹150 per day as the minimum wage, and they (weavers) are exploited by middlemen.”

The Kerala government has proposed to the Centre to give Gopinathan the third-highest civilian award, the Padma Bhushan.

Recently, with the help of the state government, Gopinathan launched a handloom shop, Thankakasavu Kada (golden zari shop), at Attakulangara in Thiruvananthapuram. But he says in a tone of disappointment that many customers come to him demanding a cheaper variety of the zari-border sari.

For the 1986 Kerala visit by Pope John Paul II, Gopinathan had woven a special Kasavu shawl that is now on display at the Vatican Museum in Rome.

He said that since the time of Chithira Thirunal Balarama Varma, the last king of the erstwhile Travancore royal family of the Kowdiar Palace in Thiruvananthapuram, the zari used to be brought from Gujarat, and the practice still continues.

“The master weavers in Surat are specialised in coming out with authentic zari as the air there lacks salt, unlike what we have in Thiruvananthapuram. This way the zari stays as good as new for centuries. I can vouch that the Kasavu shawl gifted to the Pope will look new for several centuries,” Gopinathan said.

Lakshmi N. Menon, the visionary founder of Pure Living who transformed Chendamangalam handloom clothes that had been damaged in the 2018 floods into rag dolls called Chekutty Dolls, welcomed Priyanka’s gesture.

“A commendable effort on the part of Priyanka, as this will help the beleaguered handloom sector in Kerala gain global attention,” she told this newspaper.

“Recently, Vogue magazine (described) Kerala designers as south Indian designers and not Indian designers. Why should there be such a classification? So, when leaders like Priyanka flaunt the Kerala handloom sari, it definitely gets a boost.”