Mangali

Select Language Afrikaans Albanian Arabic Armenian Azerbaijani Basque Belarusian Bulgarian Bengali Catalan Chinese (Simplified) Chinese (Traditional) Croatian Czech Danish Dutch English Estonian Filipino Finnish French Galician Georgian German Greek Gujarati Haitian Creole Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Icelandic Indonesian Irish Italian Japanese Javanese Kannada Khmer Korean Latvian Lithuanian Macedonian Malay Maltese Marathi Nepali Norwegian Persian Polish Portuguese Punjabi Romanian Russian Serbian Slovak Slovenian Spanish Swahili Swedish Tamil Telugu Thai Turkish Ukrainian Urdu Vietnamese Welsh Yiddish

This is a collection of articles archived for the excellence of their content. Additional information may please be sent as messages to the Facebook community, Indpaedia.com. All information used will be gratefully acknowledged in your name.

Crafts

Prayer beads

Dec 24, 2022: The Times of India

Prayer beads produced at Mangali, a village near Hisar in Haryana, are supplied across the country and the world for use by people from different religions for prayer and meditation. But Mangali’s residents, 70% of whom are involved in the production of prayer beads, want to maintain a low profile and are not keen to be recognised for their work.

Mangali villagers, according to the details available, have been involved in crafting prayer beads for the past 60 years. Initially, they used to craft them using a handheld machine, but after 1980 they mechanised their craft with a tailor-made device called “Burma”, which turns wood pieces into beads.

Located around 12km from Hisar, the village has a population of around 18,000 to 20,000, with around 12,000 voters. A large majority of Mangali residents, across caste groups and communities, are involved in this business. From elders of the family to women, school-going children, and youngsters, all members of most Mangali households sit huddled in a corner where the machine is installed and craft prayer beads in their free time.

TOI visited the village and found that villagers were not willing to share anything about their handicrafts. They fear being taxed for producing prayer beads, which they are manufacturing in each household. If you ask any villager about details of village residents who craft prayer beads, they outrightly deny that any such material is produced in the village. Another reason for their reticence is that the police conducts raids on complaints about the use of “endangered” sandalwood to prepare these beads. However, according to the villagers, some FIRs have been registered with regard to sandalwood, but nobody has been convicted to date for.

It is only after much persuasion that some villagers agree to talk about their artistic work. The prayer beads manufactured in the village are supplied to many places in the country, including Delhi, Kolkata, Varanasi, Haridwar, Jaipur, Mathura, Bodh Gaya, Nashik and southern states. The beads crafted in the village are also sent abroad, especially to Arab countries.

In Hinduism, the ‘japmala’ contains 108 beads strung in a circle representing life’s cyclical nature. Sikhs also use the same while reciting verses of the Guru Granth Sahib. The number of beads in the Muslim rosary is a little lower and they refer to such prayer beads as ‘tasbih’. The villagers largely use keekar, sheesham (Indian rosewood) and teak wood to make these beads.

“Mangali is one of the largest and most significant producers of the beads used in prayers in the country as well as abroad. Surprisingly, the people of the village are not interested in regulating this business, fearing the loss of this regular source of income because of official formalities. Almost everyone in the village households produces beads to earn Rs 250-400 every day. Such an amount is significant for housewives and school-going children as they earn sitting in their house. They just produce these beads and hand over the same to the middleman for instant money,” according to Sumer Singh, a Mangali resident.

Sumer, 45, has been involved in this business since childhood. When he could not get a job after graduation, he adopted it as a fulltime job and has been involved in the cutting, finishing, and polishing of beadsat a small one-room factory established in one corner of his house. According to him, people will start earning more if they market their products better. Even after working for the past 60 years, they are entirely dependent on middlemen from other states, who make massive gains from their creations. Apart from religious beads, they also produce scented beads used in interior decoration or other ornamental purposes.

Sumer said that they have never quantified the turnover but according to their calculations, the villagers earn around Rs 8-10 lakh every month from the sale of these products.

Self-reliance

According to Bimla Devi, 50, who married a Mangali resident around 30 years ago, crafting prayer beads has made women in the village self-reliant as craft beads after finishing household work. They easily earn between Rs 250 and Rs 400 daily. “This amount is sufficient for them to meet their basic expenses and they need not look towards men in the family for money,” she said.