For six days this autumn, the CAA Building at Bikaner House in New Delhi turned a deep, resonant blue. Indigo: The Blue Gold II (2008–2026), curated by Prof. Lisa Trivedi, Professor of History at Hamilton College, New York, brought together eighteen years of Shelly Jyoti's work on a single colour from 27 October to 1 November 2026. Supported by Good Earth Heritage Foundation as Patron Partner and the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts as Knowledge Partner, the exhibition traced indigo from ancient textile traditions to colonial plantations, global trade, forced labour and the movement of people across continents.
At its heart sat a new body of work, Indigo: Migration Through Time, unfolding in three movements: Faceless Journeys, Displaced Ecologies and Unresolved Geographies. Every panel begins with hand-spun, handwoven khadi, dyed in natural indigo and printed in Ajrakh, the resist block-printing tradition of Kutch. The master printers who bring Jyoti's designs to cloth carry a migration story of their own.
From Sindh to Ajrakhpur
The Khatri printers trace their ancestry to Sindh, in present-day Pakistan. Around four centuries ago, Rao Bharmalji I of Kutch invited the cloth-printing families to settle in his kingdom, and they made their home in Khavda and later Dhamadka, beside the river water the craft depends on.
In January 2001, the Gujarat earthquake devastated Dhamadka and altered its groundwater, raising iron levels enough to dull the dyes. Many families moved once more, rebuilding near Bhuj in a new village named after the craft itself: Ajrakhpur.
Jyoti has worked with these families for well over a decade, and their history flows directly into the new series.
"My collaboration with the Khatri family in Ajrakhpur has deepened my understanding of migration through many oral stories shared of their lived history," says Jyoti. "Their movement from Sindh to Kutch, and their displacement following the 2001 earthquake, resonates with my exploration of belonging, memory, and cultural resilience. My recent works, Indigo: Migration Through Time, bring these histories into a wider conversation about displacement across generations."
Many Khatri families still have relatives in Sindh, across the international border drawn in 1947. That separation shapes Unresolved Geographies, the most abstract of the three movements, where body, landscape, water and movement dissolve into one another.
Unresolved Geographies: a face in profile dissolves into flowing strands and printed fields, body and landscape merging. Ajrakh on hand-spun khadi.
"Partition fractured historical and cultural connections between Sindh and Kutch," says Jyoti. "In Unresolved Geographies, I explore how political borders divide communities while memories, craft traditions, and cultural identities endure. The work reflects the tension between separation and continuity, and the histories that remain unresolved across generations."
The hands behind the cloth
Faceless figures recur across the exhibition. In one panel, three heads in profile, two in indigo and one in the pale tone of raw khadi, sit among bands of triangles, stripes and chevrons. They stand for the enslaved, indentured and migrant workers whose labour carried indigo around the world.
Faceless Journeys: three heads in profile, two in indigo and one in raw khadi, stand for the enslaved, indentured and migrant workers behind indigo's trade.
The making of each work is a partnership. Jyoti conceives and designs every piece; the Khatri masters of Ajrakhpur carry out the printing and dyeing, a process of more than twenty stages. Her 2023 retrospective in Chicago credited Juned Ismail and Mohamed Khatri with the printing, and at Bikaner House master craftsman Juned M. Khatri led a talk and Ajrakh workshop on 30 October.
"The intellectual concept, historical research, and creative vision are mine. The master artisans bring their traditional knowledge and technical skills to translate my ideas onto fabric," says Jyoti. "It is my ethical responsibility to acknowledge these custodians of a 4,500-year-old textile tradition by name and place in my exhibition literature and publications."
She recalls how one master craftsman summed up the partnership: "Just as Shelly cannot claim authorship of our craft, we cannot claim authorship of her craft."
"They print fabric for functional use, but when they print my designs, the fabric speaks my story of Gandhi and indigo," says Jyoti. "This captures the distinction between our contributions while honouring the knowledge and skill we each bring to the work."
Indigo's twin crop
One of the most arresting works steps outside the blue. Three pale poppy pods rise on long stems against a field of madder red, framed by a striped indigo border.
The pairing carries real historical weight. In colonial Bihar, the same peasant communities pressed into growing indigo were also made to grow poppy. The opium was processed in government factories at Patna and Ghazipur and shipped to China through Calcutta, the same port from which indentured labourers sailed.
Poppy pods on madder red within an indigo border recall the opium that colonial Bihar's indigo farmers were also forced to grow.
"The poppy extends my inquiry into colonialism and the exploitation of India's agricultural communities," says Jyoti. "Indigo and opium reveal how natural resources became instruments of colonial trade and extraction. By introducing poppy pods, I widen the narrative beyond indigo to explore interconnected histories of land, labour, and imperial power."
Roots and regeneration
Displaced Ecologies turns to seeds, roots and trees as metaphors for communities that take root in new ground. Its most striking image is a tree divided at the horizon: an indigo canopy spreading over a field of block-printed birds and flowers, with pale roots branching deep into black earth.
Displaced Ecologies: an indigo canopy over printed birds and flowers, with pale roots reaching into black earth, a metaphor for communities taking root in new ground.
Jyoti describes Ajrakh as a craft in good health, flourishing today in both Gujarat and Sindh. It draws on clean water, natural dyes and generations of specialised knowledge, and she sees regeneration as care for all three.
"Ajrakh depends on clean water, natural dyes, and generations of specialised knowledge. When these ecological resources are threatened, both livelihoods and cultural traditions are at risk," says Jyoti. For her, regeneration means protecting the environment together with "the artisan communities and inherited knowledge that sustain the craft."
She points to the printers' own ingenuity. Master craftsman Dr Ismail Mohmad Khatri engineered a reservoir in Ajrakhpur that catches water and channels it into concrete vats for dyeing. "It's a great engineering marvel," says Jyoti.
One colour, two continents
Much of this work has travelled widely. The Chicago Cultural Center showed it in 2013, the South Asia Institute in Chicago staged her mid-career retrospective, Indigo: The Blue Gold, in 2023, and San Diego's Mingei International Museum acquired her Ajrakh panel The 18th Century Merchant Ship. In India, her recent works hang in the new Parliament House.
Ships sail through the exhibition too: a tall merchant vessel with sails of red block-printed cloth, ringed by indigo and framed by dense Ajrakh borders.
Shelly Jyoti with a merchant-ship panel: red block-printed sails ringed by indigo and framed by dense Ajrakh borders.
"Indigo carries different but interconnected histories. In America, it evokes plantation economies and enslaved labour; in India, it recalls colonial exploitation, Gandhi's Champaran movement and indentured labour," says Jyoti. "Through my work, I bring these histories into dialogue, exploring how one colour connects distant geographies through trade, resistance, and human experience. The commonality was human indignity practised by colonial powers for their capitalist gains."
Eighteen years of blue
Jyoti's journey with indigo began in 2008, through a collaboration with Laura Kina, the Okinawan American artist and Professor Emerita at DePaul University, Chicago, whose own ancestors worked on sugarcane plantations. Since then, her inquiry has grown from the indigo farmers of Champaran to the wider currents of colonial trade, slavery, indentured labour and displacement.
"After eighteen years, I continue to ask: how can one colour hold so much history and still generate new meanings?" says Jyoti. "Indigo remains a dialogue between nature, colonialism, resistance, migration, and regeneration. I will continue to explore whose stories it reveals and whose histories remain untold."
At Bikaner House, part of that answer hung on the walls: in khadi spun by hand, in printing blocks carved generations ago, and in the craft of a family that carried its knowledge from Sindh to Kutch and keeps printing it today.
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For six days this autumn, the CAA Building at Bikaner House in New Delhi turned a deep, resonant blue. Indigo: The Blue Gold II (2008–2026), curated by Prof. Lisa Trivedi, Professor of History at Hamilton College, New York, brought together eighteen years of Shelly Jyoti's work on a single colour from 27 October to 1 November 2026. Supported by Good Earth Heritage Foundation as Patron Partner and the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts as Knowledge Partner, the exhibition traced indigo from ancient textile traditions to colonial plantations, global trade, forced labour and the movement of people across continents.
At its heart sat a new body of work, Indigo: Migration Through Time, unfolding in three movements: Faceless Journeys, Displaced Ecologies and Unresolved Geographies. Every panel begins with hand-spun, handwoven khadi, dyed in natural indigo and printed in Ajrakh, the resist block-printing tradition of Kutch. The master printers who bring Jyoti's designs to cloth carry a migration story of their own.
From Sindh to Ajrakhpur
The Khatri printers trace their ancestry to Sindh, in present-day Pakistan. Around four centuries ago, Rao Bharmalji I of Kutch invited the cloth-printing families to settle in his kingdom, and they made their home in Khavda and later Dhamadka, beside the river water the craft depends on.
In January 2001, the Gujarat earthquake devastated Dhamadka and altered its groundwater, raising iron levels enough to dull the dyes. Many families moved once more, rebuilding near Bhuj in a new village named after the craft itself: Ajrakhpur.
Jyoti has worked with these families for well over a decade, and their history flows directly into the new series.
"My collaboration with the Khatri family in Ajrakhpur has deepened my understanding of migration through many oral stories shared of their lived history," says Jyoti. "Their movement from Sindh to Kutch, and their displacement following the 2001 earthquake, resonates with my exploration of belonging, memory, and cultural resilience. My recent works, Indigo: Migration Through Time, bring these histories into a wider conversation about displacement across generations."
Many Khatri families still have relatives in Sindh, across the international border drawn in 1947. That separation shapes Unresolved Geographies, the most abstract of the three movements, where body, landscape, water and movement dissolve into one another.
Unresolved Geographies: a face in profile dissolves into flowing strands and printed fields, body and landscape merging. Ajrakh on hand-spun khadi.
"Partition fractured historical and cultural connections between Sindh and Kutch," says Jyoti. "In Unresolved Geographies, I explore how political borders divide communities while memories, craft traditions, and cultural identities endure. The work reflects the tension between separation and continuity, and the histories that remain unresolved across generations."
The hands behind the cloth
Faceless figures recur across the exhibition. In one panel, three heads in profile, two in indigo and one in the pale tone of raw khadi, sit among bands of triangles, stripes and chevrons. They stand for the enslaved, indentured and migrant workers whose labour carried indigo around the world.
Faceless Journeys: three heads in profile, two in indigo and one in raw khadi, stand for the enslaved, indentured and migrant workers behind indigo's trade.
The making of each work is a partnership. Jyoti conceives and designs every piece; the Khatri masters of Ajrakhpur carry out the printing and dyeing, a process of more than twenty stages. Her 2023 retrospective in Chicago credited Juned Ismail and Mohamed Khatri with the printing, and at Bikaner House master craftsman Juned M. Khatri led a talk and Ajrakh workshop on 30 October.
"The intellectual concept, historical research, and creative vision are mine. The master artisans bring their traditional knowledge and technical skills to translate my ideas onto fabric," says Jyoti. "It is my ethical responsibility to acknowledge these custodians of a 4,500-year-old textile tradition by name and place in my exhibition literature and publications."
She recalls how one master craftsman summed up the partnership: "Just as Shelly cannot claim authorship of our craft, we cannot claim authorship of her craft."
"They print fabric for functional use, but when they print my designs, the fabric speaks my story of Gandhi and indigo," says Jyoti. "This captures the distinction between our contributions while honouring the knowledge and skill we each bring to the work."
Indigo's twin crop
One of the most arresting works steps outside the blue. Three pale poppy pods rise on long stems against a field of madder red, framed by a striped indigo border.
The pairing carries real historical weight. In colonial Bihar, the same peasant communities pressed into growing indigo were also made to grow poppy. The opium was processed in government factories at Patna and Ghazipur and shipped to China through Calcutta, the same port from which indentured labourers sailed.
Poppy pods on madder red within an indigo border recall the opium that colonial Bihar's indigo farmers were also forced to grow.
"The poppy extends my inquiry into colonialism and the exploitation of India's agricultural communities," says Jyoti. "Indigo and opium reveal how natural resources became instruments of colonial trade and extraction. By introducing poppy pods, I widen the narrative beyond indigo to explore interconnected histories of land, labour, and imperial power."
Roots and regeneration
Displaced Ecologies turns to seeds, roots and trees as metaphors for communities that take root in new ground. Its most striking image is a tree divided at the horizon: an indigo canopy spreading over a field of block-printed birds and flowers, with pale roots branching deep into black earth.
Displaced Ecologies: an indigo canopy over printed birds and flowers, with pale roots reaching into black earth, a metaphor for communities taking root in new ground.
Jyoti describes Ajrakh as a craft in good health, flourishing today in both Gujarat and Sindh. It draws on clean water, natural dyes and generations of specialised knowledge, and she sees regeneration as care for all three.
"Ajrakh depends on clean water, natural dyes, and generations of specialised knowledge. When these ecological resources are threatened, both livelihoods and cultural traditions are at risk," says Jyoti. For her, regeneration means protecting the environment together with "the artisan communities and inherited knowledge that sustain the craft."
She points to the printers' own ingenuity. Master craftsman Dr Ismail Mohmad Khatri engineered a reservoir in Ajrakhpur that catches water and channels it into concrete vats for dyeing. "It's a great engineering marvel," says Jyoti.
One colour, two continents
Much of this work has travelled widely. The Chicago Cultural Center showed it in 2013, the South Asia Institute in Chicago staged her mid-career retrospective, Indigo: The Blue Gold, in 2023, and San Diego's Mingei International Museum acquired her Ajrakh panel The 18th Century Merchant Ship. In India, her recent works hang in the new Parliament House.
Ships sail through the exhibition too: a tall merchant vessel with sails of red block-printed cloth, ringed by indigo and framed by dense Ajrakh borders.
Shelly Jyoti with a merchant-ship panel: red block-printed sails ringed by indigo and framed by dense Ajrakh borders.
"Indigo carries different but interconnected histories. In America, it evokes plantation economies and enslaved labour; in India, it recalls colonial exploitation, Gandhi's Champaran movement and indentured labour," says Jyoti. "Through my work, I bring these histories into dialogue, exploring how one colour connects distant geographies through trade, resistance, and human experience. The commonality was human indignity practised by colonial powers for their capitalist gains."
Eighteen years of blue
Jyoti's journey with indigo began in 2008, through a collaboration with Laura Kina, the Okinawan American artist and Professor Emerita at DePaul University, Chicago, whose own ancestors worked on sugarcane plantations. Since then, her inquiry has grown from the indigo farmers of Champaran to the wider currents of colonial trade, slavery, indentured labour and displacement.
"After eighteen years, I continue to ask: how can one colour hold so much history and still generate new meanings?" says Jyoti. "Indigo remains a dialogue between nature, colonialism, resistance, migration, and regeneration. I will continue to explore whose stories it reveals and whose histories remain untold."
At Bikaner House, part of that answer hung on the walls: in khadi spun by hand, in printing blocks carved generations ago, and in the craft of a family that carried its knowledge from Sindh to Kutch and keeps printing it today.
TO BE CONTINUED, FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY.
This is where the surface ends and the reporting begins.
The complete piece, the full archive, and access to The French Press Circle. Reporting answerable only to its readers.
Already a subscriber ?
Login
Read these on the house, with our compliments.
A selection from the current issue, open to all readers. Read them in full. The rest is one decision away.