Mapping Craft in Contemporary India: Dilli Haat and Dastkari Haat Samiti's Crafts Maps

This paper examines craft in contemporary India by looking closely at Dilli Haat, a popular commercial craft-village in New Delhi, alongside a series of crafts maps. Produced by the non-governmental organization Dastkari Haat Samiti in collaboration with local artists, the visual depictions on the maps identify, classify, and catalog a range of objects and artistic labor unique to the subcontinent. Both these crafts maps and the space of Dilli Haat serve in defining, fixing, and ultimately producing craft as specific forms of labor and types of objects, which are dependent on geography and inhabit an ambiguous relationship between “the village,” “the city,” and “the nation.”