Voices of CIPRI India: Practicing CARE

The Cultural Intellectual Property Rights Initiative® (CIPRI) was established with a clear purpose: to contribute to building a system that nurtures, sustains and protects Traditional Knowledge (TK) and Traditional Cultural Expressions (TCEs) and to support the recognition of the rights of Indigenous Peoples, Ethnic Groups and Local Communities as custodians of these knowledge systems.

CIPRI and our network practice CARE by creating spaces and being involved in conversations that act as a catalyst for systems change. Dialogue is the first step to action. Care in the CIPRI community extends to how relationships and collaborations are built and maintained. This is evident in the way we engage with the communities we work with, collective decision making processes, and the way partnerships are structured. 

What do you CARE for?

A text by Text by Kuldip Gadhvi, United Artisans of Kutch

“CARE”- Collective Actions for the Restoration of Earth.

There are two types of Energies: Constructive and Destructive. Both are playing their roles in the ecosystem of the world. One is designed to destroy, kill, take over and dominate. The other is designed to CARE, protect and nurture. 

We humans evolve between these two opposite yet parallel realities and, depending on our individual circumstances, we have been choosing our paths, way of living, consuming and either protecting or destroying our ecosystem... A quiet and fragile ecosystem that we all have benefited from until now. 

How is this connected to Cultural Intellectual Property Rights® (CIPR)?

Due to our cultural heritage, traditions and slower lifestyles in the past, the Earth's ecosystem had its own natural pace, cycles and seasons; an automatic restoration mechanism. However, since industrial society started dominating our world, consumption habits, technologies, overproduction, overconsumption, greed to exploit natural resources and controlling people, whether directly or indirectly, such as imposing wars, diplomatic pressures or manipulating consumers in the name of Fashion, Textiles, Lifestyles etc., the Earth’s automatic restoration mechanism cannot keep up. Not demonstrating care, but rather continuing to contribute to irreversible damage, whether knowingly or unknowingly, to our only planet: Earth.

“Closing our eyes to the fire is not going to extinguish it.”

This is an urgent call for CARE. Collective Actions for the Restoration of our Ecosystem.

But How?

We at CIPRI are inviting you all to celebrate the month of Cultural Intellectual Property Rights as Human Rights across the world, from the villages of Romania, India and Latin America, to the metropolitan cities of Sydney, New York and London.

Please share how you CARE for your ecosystem and the rights of knowledge custodians, within your capacity and within the area of your work, or by making more ecologically conscious choices in your daily life? We are eager to hear from you!

Because we believe in the power of nature, harmonious coexistence and decentralization of decision making that impacts opportunities and natural resources, let's advocate together for our own planet and CARE for one another.

Actions: 

United Artisans of Kutch is reaching out to more individuals in remote villages and lesser known craft custodians of Kutch to link them with conscious and Caring individuals and businesses across the world to ensure their economic sustainability, as well as continuation of their Cultural Heritage to contribute to the decentralization of power over natural resources and opportunities.

While giant Fashion & Textile industries are competing to grow larger and dominate more of the global markets, United Artisans of Kutch is actioning the contrary by reaching out to remote villages and educating individuals about how to protect their cultural heritage and Cultural Intellectual Property Rights®. This can help one another to understand why we must CARE about the lesser known craft custodians, smaller businesses or any other slow paced lifestyles which must not be completely buried or forgotten under huge “social media dumps”.

There are few statements - Voices of craft custodians at United Artisans of Kucth and the messages they each would like to share with you:

“I care for lesser known artisans of Kutch and their voices to be heard and their basic survival needs to be met.” Kuldip Gadhvi

“I care for my art of Ajrakh and my team. Besides I wish to expand the reach of my craft and make it attractive to the Gen Z” Altaf Khatri

“I care for women of Kutch and want to bring enough work/orders to their doorsteps so that they can stay happily busy, practicing embroideries and earn a little extra money for their families.” Ankita Gadhvi

“I care for my traditional bell making craft & its sustainability in the modern world” Mamad Jakab Lohar

“I care for my daughters & their wellbeing.” Manju Maheshwari

“I care for my community by providing them basic needs, medical assistant and making a clean and comfortable space for our visitors.” Anuben Vadha

“I care for our traditional weaving, my fellow weavers and their wellbeing.” Haresh Manodhiya

“I care for my craft: weaving and other handicrafts of Kutch as well.” Gautam Siju

Each of us CARES for something: for us, for others and for our world in one way or another, and this is how we could try to ensure the wellbeing of our planet and everyone living on it. The CIPRI Network also CARES for our global communities, various projects, partners, advocates and supporters. We will continue to advocate for the respect of Cultural Intellectual Property Rights as Human Rights across the world in our respective fields.

In the past financial year, from 1 April 2025 to 31 March 2026, the United Artisans of Kutch platform has directly supported more than 25-30 artisan families by generating orders and bringing visitors to their homes through its social media marketing. The total turnover of RS. 1000000 (10 lakh rupees) (over 9,000 Euro), was generated amongst weavers, printers, bell makers, embroiderers, quilters, doll makers, lacquer wood crafts, mud and mirror work, tailors, tassel makers, courier services etc. More than 60% are women artisans of Kutch spanning from 21 years to 80 years.

Thanks for your valuable time, presence, love and support.

“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together” (African proverb)

When the Sun is part of the Process

A text by Anouksha Pati, Studio Bagru 

In Bagru, a small town outside Jaipur, block printing is as much about waiting as it is about making. The printer applies dabu, a resist paste of mud, gum, and spoiled wheat flour, and then the cloth goes out into the sun. How long it stays there, how dry the air is, and how the fabric receives the dye that follows, none of this is fully controlled. It is just attended to. That distinction stays and matters.

What gets called imperfection in Bagru printing is actually a record of conditions. A slight misalignment, an uneven indigo bleed, a drying mark at the edge of a motif, each of these is the cloth remembering something. The humidity that morning. The particular quality of water drawn from a local well. The printer's pace, which itself responds to heat, fatigue, and the behaviour of the paste on that day. The cloth does not just carry a pattern. It carries and is a documentation of a set of circumstances, of nature and of human tendencies. To make it well, you have to pay attention to all of it. That paying attention, unhurried and responsive, is CARE. Not sentiment, but a sustained practice of noticing.

This is where conventional intellectual property frameworks start to feel inadequate. IP law tends to ask who owns the design. But in Bagru, the more honest question might be who holds the knowledge of how to read the weather, adjust the resist paste, know when the cloth is ready to move to the next stage. That knowledge is communal, ecological, and largely unwritten. It accumulates not in documents but in seasons of practice, in the bodies and intuitions of people who have done this long enough to feel when something is right or not. CARE, in this sense, is not added on top of the craft. It is the craft. And if we protect only the visual output, the motif or the pattern, we protect only the most legible layer of something much deeper. The cloth knows more than the design. We need frameworks for Cultural IP capable of listening to it, of caring for what cannot easily be named or owned.

Do you really CARE?

A text by Umeshwari Parmar, Pitambar India

We celebrate traditional crafts, collaborate with asrtisans and craft custodians, and call it sustainability. But is it CARE—or convenience? In places like Jaipur, where block printing and other heritage techniques thrive, demand has exploded. Artisans have more work, yes—but at what cost? 

To meet scale and deadlines, many workshops are forced to use cheap, toxic materials—harming both the environment and the very hands that keep these traditions alive. This is not the fault of the artisans. It is the responsibility of those who profit from their skill.

Providing employment is not enough. If your work depends on traditional knowledge, then your responsibility goes deeper: ensure safe practices, ethical materials, and dignity in production.

Without that, “support” becomes exploitation—just rebranded.

So ask yourself again: do you really CARE? Because real CARE is not a label. It is a choice—one that demands accountability, awareness, and action.