A government initiative to take Bengal's traditional craft to a global audience has had its first shipment reach the UK.
On Saturday, one of the major attractions at a Naboborsho Mela at Salvatorian College Harrow, London, was a Biswa Bangla stall displaying saris, shirts and tops made of indigenous handloom and stitches like baluchari, jamdani, garad, muslin, Bengal silk and kantha.
Biswa Bangla, the flagship brand of Bengal under the aegis of the MSME and T (micro, small, and medium enterprises and textiles) department of the Bengal government, has joined hands with a non-profit run by members of the Bengali diaspora in the UK to set up the stall.
"We want to popularise Bengal's handloom products in the UK. The stall is the first attempt at a basic market survey. The fair is a melting pot of people from different regions of the UK. Bangladeshis are an integral part of the Bengali diaspora. In the long run, we even want to popularise the products among Brits and other Europeans," said Anirban Mukhopadhyay, director of Heritage Bengal Global, the NGO.
That aim has led the organisers of the fair to focus on shirts, jackets, tops and other garments along with the sari, which has a limited and niche market.
"The Biswa Bangla Marketing Corporation Limited has undertaken a drive to promote Bengal's craft to the world. The UK is one of the first stops," said Chandranath Sinha, Bengal's minister of MSME and Textiles department.
On Saturday, the mayor of Harrow, Janet Mote, inaugurated the fair.
The shipment landed in the UK last week. It comprised around 20 items, with a combined worth of around Rs 1.5 lakh, said an organiser.
"We are trying to generate a viable demand for these products, initially online and later in the offline mode as well. Eventually, we want to have a Biswa Bangla store in London," said Mukhopadhyay, an IT professional based in Harrow.
Biswa Bangla, the name given by chief minister Mamata Banerjee, was conceived to showcase brand Bengal to a larger audience. The MSME&T department was tasked to implement the project. The first Biswa Bangla store came up at Kolkata airport's international terminal in early 2014.
In 2014, the first overseas show of Biswa Bangla was held at the North American Bengali Conference (NABC), in Orlando, Florida.
A store in London was part of the global plan but it did not reach fruition.
Debashis Ghosh, the project director of Heritage Bengal Global in Kolkata, worked with the Biswa Bangla team at the time of its inception as a project manager with the MSME & T department.
Now, he is back to collaborating with the Biswa Bangla Marketing Corporation as it wants to set foot abroad.
"I feel proud to be able to fulfil a decade-old dream to take Biswa Bangla to the UK. The fair in Harrow should not be a one-off event. We want to have a degree of continuity in this process. This time, we all want to ensure that the Biswa Bangla's promotions should be a sustainable initiative."