The gift shop of the Pune Handmade Paper Institute (HMPI) is lined with shelves that hold many kinds of products, from hanging lanterns to festive envelopes, made of paper for which no tree was cut. The raw materials used instead are cotton rags and waste paper collected by vendors across the country.
Mangesh Lohapatre, Founder and CEO of Pune-based design firm Studio Mars that has been managing HMPI since July 2019, extracts a sheet from a herbarium packet and says, “This is the type of paper on which the Constitution of India was written.”
HMPI was a part of Mahatma Gandhi’s swadeshi dream. When Dr BR Ambedkar and other members of the Constituent Assembly declared India as a Sovereign Democratic Republic in 1950, they hand-wrote the words on stationery made at this factory located in the vicinity of the College of Agriculture in Shivajinagar.
Artists from Viswa Bharati in Shantiniketan, such as Nandalal Bose, Rammanohar Sinha and Kripal Singh Shekhawat, illustrated the pages with art that drew upon the country’s history, right from the Indus Valley civilisation. The Constitution is, at present, preserved in the Parliament library, in a case filled with helium.
“The quality of paper depends on the percentage of cotton and is calculated as gram per sqm (gsm). The higher the gsm, the more superior the paper. The paper for the Constitution is 100 per cent cotton and of 90–110 gsm. Since no heavy chemical was used, the paper for the Constitution has maximum strength and a life of more than 100 years,” says Lohapatre.
Handmade paper has been used in India since the 19th century.
A 2021 documentary, Haatkagaj Sanstha Pune: Bharat Ki Ek Virasat, by Balkrishna Damle traces the beginnings of the HMPI to Pune-based scientist K B Joshi who had developed a few samples of handmade paper. In 1936, he showed these to Gandhi. The latter, who stressed on employing people rather than machines in production, invited Joshi to work at the Wardha Paper Centre. “Joshi worked on handmade paper at Wardha but was not satisfied as he wanted to develop swadeshi techniques of making paper. He told Gandhiji about the traditional ways of making handmade paper. Gandhiji asked Vaikunthbhai Mehta, a doyen of the co-operative movement, to allow space in the Agricultural College in Pune. This is where HMPI was set up,” says the documentary. Jawaharlal Nehru inaugurated HMPI on August 1, 1940.
The road where it is located is named K B Joshi Path in memory of the founder. People who are regulars here are following the footsteps of several eminent personalities — Indira Gandhi had sent out invitation cards for Rajiv and Sonia Gandhi’s reception (6 pm, Monday, February 26, 1968, at Hyderabad House, New Delhi) on HMPI’s paper and the former Chief Minister of Maharashtra, Yashwantrao Chavan, used letterheads from the organisation.
Handmade paper has been used in India since the 19th century. When the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) in Delhi held an exhibition titled Gandhi Virasat: Kagazkala with Jaya Jaitly’s Dastkar Haat Samiti in 2019 to highlight the art of calligraphy on handmade paper, Sachidanand Joshi, member secretary of IGNCA, wrote in his introduction, “Indian handmade paper, made from hemp, was in great demand in Europe because of its texture, durability and simplicity.” “All paintings and manuscripts were on Indian handmade paper and have survived the ravages of time. The great talent of producing paper succumbed to industrial paper and India lost important skills for which it was known. It is ironic that whenever we look for good paper, whether for writing or long-term packaging and preservation, we are compelled to look for imported archival quality paper,” he adds. According to Jaitly, Gandhiji’s support for handmade paper-making and khadi was due to his belief in sustaining livelihoods and to “fight the domination of machine-made goods that harmed the environment and killed self-reliant local enterprise”.
In Pune, the handmade paper industry received a boost 250 years ago with the coming to power of the Peshwas.
In Pune, the handmade paper industry received a boost 250 years ago with the coming to power of the Peshwas. Historian Pandurang Balkawde says that the official work of the Peshwas required a lot of paper, which would be brought from Daulatabad, Devgiri and Junnar in Maharashtra. “Soon, the craftsmen were brought to the area around Kasba Path which came to be known as Kagdipura,” he says.
Felling of forest trees is banned in India, so the commercial paper industry largely uses wood from trees specifically grown for the purpose. According to a July 2021 tweet by the Federation of Paper Traders’ Associations of India, “In India, 35 per cent of the paper is produced using waste paper and 42 per cent is made using agro residues like sugarcane, wheat and paddy straw. Only 23 per cent paper is produced using wood, of which most is from imported wood pulp.” The industry maintains that it is wrongly accused of destroying the environment.
HMPI was a part of Mahatma Gandhi’s swadeshi dream.
Organisations such as HMPI, however, use only waste, which includes online delivery boxes that are emerging as major garbage. At HMPI, a beater, a machine that converts the paper or cloth into pulp, uses 200 kg raw materials to generate 175 kg paper, depending on the gsm. “As the world fights climate change and sustainability becomes the buzzword, I am awed that our leaders had laid the foundations to environment consciousness so many decades ago. As a new generation develops eco-friendly attitudes, we will see demand for handmade paper grow,” says Kartik Joshi, Marketing Manager of Studio Mars.
In keeping with Gandhi’s ideology to use machines only where it was absolutely necessary, HMPI has used only small machines, such as beaters, to pulp cotton and ensure that the paper has uniform thickness and strength. The factory is driven by manpower to this day, with sorting of the cloth and paper, operating the machines, drying the papers, cutting, cleaning and even stamping and labelling of files being done by hand. “I have developed an instinct for the quantity of pulp to spread on the vats to make a sheet of paper of a certain thickness, especially if it is watermarked paper for offices, colleges and universities,” says Mangesh Mahadam, who has worked here for 25 years.
The texture of the paper depends on use — smooth surfaces for official documents and letter papers and a rougher one for watercolour books and gift-wrapping papers. Handmade paper ages well and a vintage one acquires a warm yellow hue. The papers come in every kind of colour, thanks to dyes, and strength. “A handmade paper bag can carry up to 20 kg. Not many people know how strong and durable this paper is,” says Lohapatre, adding that HMPI is beginning aggressive awareness activities such as factory visits and exhibitions, like a recent one by Urban Sketchers Pune.
After its share of management changes and labour crisis, HMPI is finding its feet once again. The gift shop has innovative designs, such as DIY lanterns and sets of papier-mâché astavinayak Ganesha. “In 2019, just before the pandemic closed down all businesses and offices, we were doing business between Rs 5,000 and Rs 10,000 per month. Now, we make around Rs 5 lakh per month. This is not enough to sustain the staff of 50 but we are confident we will fill the gap as the world opens up. As the market for handmade products increases, we will see the prices stabilising,” adds Lohapatre.