Padmashali - History

History

The Padmashali community profess to have been following all the religious rites prescribed for Brahmins till the beginning of Kali Yuga. One of the members of their caste named Padmasaka declined to reveal the virtues of a miraculous gem which Lord Brahma had given to their caste to Lord Ganesha who sought to learn the secret which they had been enjoined to keep, and who on his wish not being gratified cursed them to fall from their high status. It is said however that one Parabrahmamurti born in Srirama Agrahara pleased Lord Ganesha by his tapas, who relaxed the curse, so that after 5000 years of Kali Yuga, they should regain their Brahminical status. This Parabrahmamurti, otherwise known as Padmabavacharya, it is said redistributed the caste into 101 gotras arranged in eight groups and established four Mathas with gurus for them. However, as a result of the curse, and also because their occupation was related to manufacture and trade, the Padmashalis were never accepted as Brahmins and instead were considered by some as Vaishyas and by others as even Shudras.

All Padmashalis are reported to have originated from the Satavahana Empire. It is said that the Padmashalis and another weaver caste, the Devangas, were originally one single caste in ancient times, following Vaishnavism. The Devangas later split from this single caste owing to differences in faith; these members were influenced by Shaivism and Lingayatism and accepted Goddess Chamundeswari, the fierce form of Goddess Durga as their kuladevi, while the remaining members i.e. the Padmashalis, continued to adhere to Vaishnavism.

The Padmashalis eventually specialised in weaving clothes of all varieties. They also made cloth from cotton and animate yarn (silk). Caste communities involved in the leather and wool-based household industries - which perhaps have an older history than cloth weaving - have developed an integrated process of production of raw material and its conversation into commodities. But unlike them, the Padmashalis developed exclusively cloth-weaving skills. They produced cloth as a marketable commodity, without having any organic links or skills in the production of the raw material. The Padmashali men had no expertise in ploughing and their women lacked seeding and crop-cutting skills. Thus their skill structure, over a period of time, became one-dimensional. By the time the British arrived, the Padmashalis were producing huge quantities of cloth and controlled a leading cottage industry in India.

The introduction of the railways in 1853 by the colonial British government helped penetrate the self-sufficient rural economy. With the forced introduction of machine manufactured goods, especially finished cotton goods from the factories in Britain (making use of advances from the Industrial Revolution), the domestic textile industry suffered losses. Being an important node in the rural economy, the Padmashali community also naturally felt the impact. Many Padmashalis as a result settled in the urban and semi-urban areas for better opportunities.