Puthukkuli to Madhubani: India's Craft Atlas, GI Tags and the Textile Towns UPSC Tests

Every few years the UPSC paper asks a question that looks like a fashion quiz and behaves like a geography test: match the craft to its heritage state. Puthukkuli shawls, Sujni embroidery and Uppada Jamdani sarees appeared together in the 2018 prelims, and only one pairing in the question was right. Behind such questions sits a whole system, the Geographical Indication tag, that protects the identity of India's crafts, and behind the crafts sit communities whose names the exam also tests: the Todas of the Nilgiris, the women quilters of Bihar, the weavers of Chanderi and Kancheepuram, the painters of Mithila. This article maps them all.

Puthukkuli shawls: the Toda craft of the Nilgiris

The Todas are a pastoral tribal community of the Nilgiri hills in Tamil Nadu, traditionally centred on buffalo herding, living in settlements called munds in distinctive half-barrel huts, and wearing a long draped shawl as their garment of identity. That shawl, locally called pugur (meaning flower) and known in the market as the Puthukkuli or Poothkuli, carries the community's most famous art: a dense geometric embroidery in red and black on coarse white cotton, worked in a darning stitch from the reverse side so that the pattern appears on the face. Both men and women of the community embroider, and the motifs, triangles, diamonds, chevrons and stylised flowers, are passed down within families.

The craft received a Geographical Indication registration in March 2013, protecting the name Toda embroidery and valid, in its first term, until September 2028. The GI matters because the market is full of machine-made imitations; the tag legally reserves the identity of the hand-embroidered shawl for the Toda artisans of the Nilgiris. For the exam, the chain is Puthukkuli = Toda = Nilgiri hills = Tamil Nadu = GI craft. The 2018 prelims question paired Puthukkuli shawls with Tamil Nadu correctly, and made the wrong pairings look plausible by attaching the other two crafts to the wrong states.

Sujni embroidery: Bihar's stitched stories

Sujni (also spelt Sujani) is a form of embroidery from Bihar, traditionally practised in villages of the Muzaffarpur and Madhubani region, with its origins traced to Bhusura village. The word is explained as su (easy or simple) joined to jani (birth): the art began as the making of soft quilted wraps for newborn babies, stitched by women from layers of old saris and dhotis. Over generations the quilt became a canvas. Women embroidered it with running stitches in coloured thread, covering the surface with folk motifs, scenes of village life, domestic concerns, dreams and episodes from mythological stories, so that a Sujni quilt reads like a woman's diary in thread.

Sujni embroidery was granted a GI tag on 21 September 2006, one of the early craft GIs of Bihar. Today the embroidery appears on sarees, bed covers, cushion covers and wall hangings, and the GI protects the name against mass-produced copies. The exam trap is geographic: the 2018 question paired Sujni embroidery with Maharashtra, which is wrong; Sujni belongs to Bihar. Remember it as Bihar's narrative needlework, the quilt that tells stories, and keep it firmly separate from Maharashtra's own textile traditions like Paithani and Himroo.

Uppada Jamdani sarees: Andhra's gossamer weave

Uppada Jamdani sarees are woven in Uppada, a coastal town of the East Godavari region of Andhra Pradesh. The name carries its technique: jamdani comes from the Persian jam (flower) and dani (a container or vase), describing a weave in which the pattern is created by a supplementary weft laid in by hand as the cloth is woven, rather than printed or embroidered afterwards. Uppada sarees are famous for being lightweight and fine, cotton and silk blends so sheer they are sometimes described as woven air, with intricate floral and geometric jamdani motifs in gold and colour.

The saree has a GI tag protecting the Uppada name, and it anchors the Andhra Pradesh answer in craft questions. The 2018 trap paired Uppada Jamdani with Karnataka, which is wrong; Karnataka's famous saree traditions are Mysore silk and Ilkal, not Uppada. The correct chain is Uppada Jamdani = East Godavari = Andhra Pradesh = supplementary-weft jamdani weave. Jamdani as a technique is older and wider than Uppada, the great historic centre was Dhaka in Bengal, famous for its muslins, but within India's GI map Uppada is the Andhra address of the art.

What a GI tag is, and how it is granted

A Geographical Indication is a form of intellectual property right that identifies goods as originating in a particular territory where a given quality, reputation or other characteristic of the goods is essentially attributable to that geographical origin. In plain language, a GI tag says: this product can only honestly carry this name if it comes from this place, because the place made it what it is. The international basis is the TRIPS Agreement of 1994 under the WTO, which requires member countries to protect geographical indications.

In India, GIs are granted under the Geographical Indications of Goods (Registration and Protection) Act, 1999, which came into force in September 2003. Applications are filed with the Geographical Indications Registry at Chennai, under the Controller-General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks. An association of the producers or artisans of the region applies, documenting the product's history, its unique qualities and the link to the place; the application is examined, advertised for opposition, and then registered. Registration is valid for ten years and can be renewed indefinitely. Darjeeling Tea was the first Indian product to receive GI status (registered in 2004), and the register has since grown to several hundred entries across handicrafts, agricultural goods, foodstuffs and manufactured products, from Banaras Brocades and Sarees to the Tirupathi Laddu.

For the exam, three GI questions recur: what a GI tag is (an IPR linked to place of origin), how it is granted (1999 Act, Chennai registry, ten-year renewable term), and which products hold one (Puthukkuli/Toda embroidery, Sujni, Uppada Jamdani, Madhubani painting, Kancheepuram silk, Chanderi fabric are the textile answers in this article). A GI does not guarantee the artisan a livelihood, as field reporting on the Todas themselves shows, but it does give the community a legal weapon against imitation, which is why craft communities pursue it.

The textile towns question: Chanderi and Kancheepuram

The 2014 prelims asked which of four towns, Bhadrachalam, Chanderi, Kancheepuram and Karnal, are famous for the production of traditional sarees or fabric. The answer was only Chanderi and Kancheepuram. Chanderi, in the Ashoknagar district of Madhya Pradesh, is a historic handloom town whose sheer, glossy Chanderi fabric, traditionally a silk-cotton blend with gold zari buttis, has dressed Indian courts for centuries; the weave holds a GI tag. Kancheepuram, the temple city of Tamil Nadu, is synonymous with the heavy Kancheepuram silk saree, woven with mulberry silk and gold zari in bold temple borders, also GI-tagged.

The two distractors teach the method. Bhadrachalam, in Telangana's Bhadradri Kothagudem district, is famous as a temple town, the abode of Rama at the Sita Ramachandra temple on the Godavari, not as a weaving centre. Karnal, in Haryana, is an agricultural and dairy city; Haryana's famous textile city is Panipat, the home-textiles hub built by weaver families who migrated during Partition. The question rewards knowing what a town is famous for, not merely recognising its name, which is the recurring logic of all town-craft questions.

Gatka: the martial art of the Sikhs

Gatka is a traditional Sikh martial art whose name refers to the wooden stick used in practice. It is the living descendant of the Shastar Vidya, the science of weapons, of the Khalsa: practitioners train with the soti (stick), swords, and other traditional arms, moving through choreographed forms that combine attack, defence and footwork. The art is most visibly preserved by the Nihang Singhs, the blue-robed warrior order of the Khalsa, and it is demonstrated at Sikh festivals and at the Kila Raipur Rural Olympics in Punjab, where Gatka bouts are a crowd-pulling event.

Gatka has been recognised as a sport with organised competitions, and there have been efforts to seek wider sporting recognition for it. For the exam, Gatka is the answer to questions about Sikh martial traditions: a stick-and-sword art, associated with Punjab and the Nihang tradition, distinct from the wrestling (kushti) of the akhara and from Kerala's Kalaripayattu. When UPSC lists martial arts by state, Gatka belongs to Punjab.

Madhubani painting: the art of Mithila

Madhubani painting is the painting tradition of the Mithila region of Bihar, centred on Madhubani district. It began as wall and floor art made by women: bridal chambers (kohbar) and household walls were painted for weddings, festivals and rituals, and the art moved to paper and cloth only in the twentieth century when it entered the market. Its visual signature is horror vacui, the fear of empty space: every inch of the surface is filled with figures, flowers, animals and geometric borders, drawn first in outline and then filled with colour from natural pigments.

Tradition recognises several styles. Bharni is the filled style, with rich colour; kachni is the line style, built on fine hatching; tantrik depicts Tantric deities and esoteric diagrams; godna derives from tattoo designs; and kohbar is the wedding-chamber idiom of fertility symbols, lotuses, bamboo and parrots. The themes come from the Ramayana, Mahabharata, Puranas and the natural world, and the pantheon is dominated by Rama, Sita, Krishna, Durga and Lakshmi. The art's modern masters are celebrated names: Sita Devi, who carried Mithila painting to national and international exhibitions; Jagdamba Devi, among the first to win a National Award; Godavari Dutta; and Mahasundari Devi. Madhubani painting received a GI tag in 2007, protecting the Mithila name.

The GI journey: from Darjeeling Tea to a crowded register

India's GI story begins with Darjeeling Tea, the first Indian product to receive GI registration in 2004, after the 1999 Act came into force in 2003. The Darjeeling case set the template: a century-old reputation, a defined growing area in the Himalayan foothills, and a flood of counterfeit tea being sold under the Darjeeling name worldwide. The GI gave the Tea Board a legal weapon to fight misuse in foreign markets, and the lesson travelled: if a name carries a premium, the place must own it. The register then filled rapidly across four categories the Act recognises, handicrafts, agricultural goods, foodstuffs and manufactured products, with handicrafts, textiles above all, dominating the early years.

The textile entries read like a map of India's loom country. Banaras Brocades and Sarees (Uttar Pradesh) carry the Mughal-descended zari tradition of Varanasi's weavers. Kancheepuram silk and Chanderi fabric protect the two towns of the 2014 question. Pochampally Ikat (Telangana) protects the geometric tie-dye weave of the Bhoodan Pochampally cluster. Kota Doria (Rajasthan) protects the gossamer check weave of Kota. Each registration follows the same legal path: a producer association applies to the Chennai registry, documents the product's history and its link to the place, survives examination and opposition, and receives a ten-year registration, renewable indefinitely. For the exam, the GI journey is a timeline: TRIPS 1994 - GI Act 1999 (in force 2003) - Darjeeling Tea 2004 (first GI) - Chennai registry - ten-year renewable term.

Paithani, Himroo and the Deccan weave belt

The 2018 question's wrong pairing of Sujni with Maharashtra works as a trap only because Maharashtra genuinely has great textile traditions of its own, and the paper counts on candidates confusing them. The greatest is the Paithani saree, woven at Paithan in Aurangabad district, a silk saree famous for its oblique square borders and the peacock motifs on its pallu, woven in gold zari so finely that the reverse shows no loose threads. Paithani is counted among India's most expensive handloom sarees, and it holds a GI tag. Himroo, from Aurangabad, is a silk-cotton brocade with Persian-derived designs, a legacy of the Mughal workshops of the Deccan, traditionally used for shawls and furnishing fabrics.

Maharashtra's GI textile map also includes the Kolhapuri chappal (a leather craft, not a textile, but the state's most famous GI alongside Paithani) and the Karvath Kati sarees. The point for revision is contrast: when a question offers a Maharashtra pairing, test it against the real Maharashtrian crafts, Paithani and Himroo. Sujni's narrative quilts belong to Bihar's aesthetic world, not to the Deccan's zari-and-silk idiom. The wrong option in 2018 was designed for candidates who knew Sujni was a craft but not whose craft it was.

Kalamkari: the pen craft of Andhra

Kalamkari is the hand-painted textile art of Andhra Pradesh (and Telangana), whose name joins the Persian kalam (pen) and kari (work): pen craft. Artists draw and paint mythological scenes on cotton cloth using a bamboo pen and natural dyes, fixing the colours through repeated washing and mordanting. Two great styles divide the art. The Srikalahasti style is freehand drawing, bold temple-hanging panels of gods and epics. The Machilipatnam style is block-printed, with Persian-influenced floral designs, a legacy of the Golconda and Mughal courts that traded through the Coromandel port.

Kalamkari holds a GI tag, and it is the natural companion to Uppada Jamdani in any Andhra textile question: one is painted, the other woven, both are GI-protected, both belong to the same state. The art's exam value is definitional: kalam = pen, kari = work; natural dyes; Srikalahasti (freehand) vs Machilipatnam (block print). Kalamkari also illustrates the GI logic at its purest: the designs, the dyes from local plants and minerals, and the pen technique are all place-bound knowledge, exactly what the 1999 Act was written to protect.

The Toda world beyond the shawl

The Puthukkuli shawl cannot be understood without the Toda world that wove it. The Todas are a pastoral people whose culture turns around the buffalo: their dairy temples (tirieri) are sacred buildings with tiny doorways, their priests are dairymen, and buffalo milk and its products structure their rituals. They live in munds, settlements of half-barrel huts of bamboo and thatch, each mund with its dairy temple at its ritual centre. Toda religion centres on the goddess Teikirzi and the great buffalo deity, and their social organisation into clans governs marriage, grazing rights and ritual duties.

This pastoral world is shrinking. Grazing restrictions have cut the buffalo economy, munds are giving way to concrete houses, and the young migrate for work, which is why the embroidery's GI registration in 2013 was also an act of cultural preservation: protecting the shawl's name protects the incentive to keep making it. Field reporting has shown the tag's limits, awards and exhibitions have not translated into steady incomes for the women who do the stitching, and much of the retail margin stays with intermediaries. For the mains answer on GIs, the Toda case is the perfect honest example: a legally successful GI that still leaves the artisan's economics unresolved.

Two more GI stories: Phulkari and Banaras brocade

Phulkari, the flower-work embroidery of Punjab, is one of India's rare joint GIs, registered across Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Delhi, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir, because the craft's region of practice crosses state borders. Worked in silk floss on coarse cotton (khaddar) in darning stitch, Phulkari covers the cloth so completely that the base fabric nearly disappears; its named forms, bagh (garden, fully covered), chope (wedding shawl), sainchi (figurative panels), mark the stages of a woman's life. The joint registration teaches a legal subtlety: a GI belongs to a region, not necessarily to one state.

Banaras Brocades and Sarees carry the zari tradition of Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, where Muslim Ansari weavers and Hindu traders have sustained a Mughal-descended brocade art for centuries. The brocades use gold and silver zari on silk to create the dense floral jaal patterns, and the GI protects the Banaras name against power-loom copies sold across India. The Varanasi cluster also illustrates the GI's economic argument: tens of thousands of weaver families depend on the premium that the protected name commands. Together, Phulkari and Banaras brocade complete the textile-GI map: joint GI across seven states on one side, and a single-city craft sustaining a whole artisan economy on the other.

The handloom map: a tour of the weaver's towns

India's handloom geography is a second atlas inside the craft atlas, and the exam walks it town by town. Panipat in Haryana is the modern textile city, the home-textiles hub of carpets, blankets and furnishing fabrics built by Partition-era weaver migrants. Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh is the brocade city, its Banaras brocades woven by Ansari Muslim weavers in Mughal-descended zari patterns. Pochampally in Telangana is the ikat town, where yarn is tie-dyed before weaving to create the sharp geometric patterns of the double-ikat Pochampally saree, a GI craft born of the Bhoodan movement's weaving cooperatives. Kota in Rajasthan gives Kota Doria, the gossamer check weave once called masuria, light enough for the region's fierce summers.

South of the Vindhyas the map continues. Kancheepuram is the silk-temple city, Chanderi the sheer-fabric town of Madhya Pradesh, Uppada the jamdani coast of Andhra, Paithan the Paithani home of Maharashtra. Each town's weave is an answer to its place: Kota's lightness to desert heat, Pochampally's geometry to the discipline of tie-dye, Kancheepuram's heaviness to temple ceremony. For revision, walk the map clockwise from the northwest: Panipat (Haryana) - Varanasi (UP) - Kota (Rajasthan) - Chanderi (MP) - Paithan (Maharashtra) - Pochampally (Telangana) - Uppada (AP) - Kancheepuram (TN). A town-craft question is always a disguised map question.

Beyond textiles: metal, wood and clay GIs

The GI register is not only looms. Moradabad in Uttar Pradesh is the brassware city, its metalwork GI-tagged, supplying a global export trade from thousands of small workshops. Khurja, also in Uttar Pradesh, is the pottery town, its blue-glazed ceramics a GI craft. Nirmal in Telangana gives the Nirmal paintings and toys, lacquered woodwork in Mughal-derived floral styles. Adilabad Dokra (Telangana) protects the lost-wax metal casting of the region's tribal craftsmen, tiny bronze figurines of deities, animals and lamps made by a technique older than history. Kondapalli in Andhra Pradesh gives the painted wooden Kondapalli toys, and Channapatna in Karnataka the lacquered Channapatna toys, the latter with a GI tag.

These non-textile GIs matter because the exam deliberately varies the category: a question that has tested sarees will next test brass, pottery or toys, and the candidate who knows only textiles is caught out. The pattern of each is the same as the textile GIs: a town-cluster, a place-bound technique, and a producer community whose name the tag protects. Learn them as a second table, parallel to the handloom map, and the craft section of the paper becomes two memorised tables instead of a hundred scattered facts.

The economics of the GI: who actually gains?

The GI is a legal instrument, and like all legal instruments it distributes gains unevenly. The textbook case for success is Darjeeling Tea: the Tea Board used the GI to fight counterfeit Darjeeling in foreign markets, protecting the premium that the garden workers' labour commands. The Banaras weavers' associations use the brocade GI against power-loom copies in domestic markets. In these cases the tag works as intended: it converts a place's reputation into a price premium that flows, at least partly, to the producers.

The honest counter-case is the Toda embroidery GI of 2013: the name is protected, imitations can be challenged, yet field studies find the artisans' incomes barely moved, because the tag does not fix the value chain, the distance between the woman who stitches in a Nilgiri mund and the tourist who buys in a city showroom. Cooperatives, direct marketing and design support matter more than the certificate. For mains answers, this is the sophisticated position: the GI is a necessary but insufficient condition for craft prosperity. It solves the identity problem (who may use the name) but not the income problem (who captures the value), and policy must address both.

The craft-prelims drill: correct the pairing

Filing a GI: how a weaver's association wins the tag

The GI process looks bureaucratic, but for a craft community it is a campaign. It begins with organisation: the applicant must be an association of the producers, a weavers' cooperative, a craft society, a state handicraft body, because the GI belongs to the community of the place, not to any single firm. The application filed at Chennai documents three things: the product's history in the region, the unique qualities that come from local skill, materials or environment, and the map of the territory to which the name belongs. For Puthukkuli, that meant documenting the Toda embroidery's motifs and the Nilgiri munds; for Uppada, the supplementary-weft technique and the East Godavari weaving cluster.

The registry examines the application, publishes it in the GI Journal for opposition, hears any objectors, and then registers the GI for ten years, renewable indefinitely. Registration creates two rights: the right to stop outsiders from using the name, and the right of authorised users, individual artisans registered under the GI, to use the GI logo. The exam's process question is answered in one line: association applies - Chennai registry - examination - GI Journal opposition - ten-year renewable registration. The opposition stage is the democratic heart of the system: rival claimants to a name, and there are many in India's shared craft traditions, get their hearing before the tag is granted.

Policy beyond the tag: ODOP and the craft economy

The GI does not work alone; state policy increasingly markets the tagged crafts. The best-known scheme is One District One Product (ODOP), launched by Uttar Pradesh in 2018, which identifies a signature craft or product for each district, Banaras brocade for Varanasi, brassware for Moradabad, pottery for Khurja, chikankari for Lucknow, and backs it with marketing, credit and exhibition support. The central government's ODOP initiative and the GI fairs organised by the commerce ministry extend the same logic nationally: the tag identifies the product, the scheme sells it.

The economics behind the policy is the price premium of authenticity. A GI-tagged Pochampally saree or Kancheepuram silk commands a higher price than an untagged lookalike, and that premium is the artisan's wage defence against power-loom imitation. Critics reply, with the Toda case as evidence, that premiums leak to intermediaries unless producer-owned retail, cooperatives and e-commerce, captures them. For mains answers on the craft economy, the mature structure is: GI (identity protection) plus ODOP-style marketing (demand creation) plus cooperative organisation (value capture). Any one leg alone, the argument goes, leaves the artisan where the tag found them.

The artisan's chemistry: natural dyes

Behind every GI textile in this article stands a chemistry of plants and minerals. Kalamkari artists fix their colours with myrobalan (kadukai) as a mordant, draw black outlines with fermented jaggery and iron, and build reds from madder root, yellows from pomegranate rind and turmeric, blues from indigo. Madhubani painters traditionally ground lampblack for outlines, turmeric and indigo for fills, and the red of sindoor. Bagru and Sanganer block printers of Rajasthan, the great hand-block centres, use the same madder-indigo palette, and the Ajrakh of Kutch builds its deep crimson and indigo through sixteen stages of dyeing and resist.

The dye vocabulary matters because the GI system protects process as well as place: a Kalamkari GI claim rests partly on the natural-dye process, which chemical printing cannot honestly replicate. The exam occasionally tests dyes directly, indigo (the blue of the Indigo Revolt and of Ajrakh), madder (the red of the south), lac (the crimson of central India), and the revision handle is colour-to-source: blue-indigo, red-madder, yellow-turmeric/pomegranate, black-iron/jaggery. The artisan's chemistry is the invisible half of every textile answer in this article.

Women and the craft economy: the quilters of Bihar

The Sujni quilters of Bihar embody a pattern that runs through this entire article: India's great textile crafts are substantially women's work. The Toda embroiderers are women learning beside older women; the Madhubani painters began as women painting bridal chambers; the Phulkari embroiderers stitch the life-cycle textiles of Punjab's daughters; the Sujni quilters of Muzaffarpur and Madhubani stitch their diaries in thread. The market, however, has historically been male: the traders, exporters and showroom owners who set prices are overwhelmingly men, which is why the GI's promise of a price premium so often leaks before it reaches the artisan.

Policy has begun to respond through women's cooperatives and self-help groups, the channels the Toda field studies identified as the artisans' main route to market. The Dastkar and state handicraft-board networks, the TRIFED marketing of tribal crafts, and the GI-registered authorised user mechanism, which lets individual women artisans use the GI logo themselves, all aim at the same fix: shortening the chain between the woman who stitches and the buyer who pays. For mains answers on women and the economy, the craft sector is a ready case study: skilled, female, informal, and underpaid, exactly the workforce that place-based intellectual property was invented to protect.

GI tags at a glance: the famous firsts

A small selection, not a count: the register keeps growing every year, so treat any total as dated the day you read it.

A Geographical Indication is an intellectual-property tag that ties a product's quality and reputation to its place of origin. In India it is granted under the GI Act of 1999, registered at Chennai, and it lets artisan communities stop imitation goods from using their region's name.

Key Terms

• Puthukkuli: Puthukkuli is the embroidered shawl of the Toda tribe of Tamil Nadu's Nilgiri hills, carrying dense geometric red-and-black embroidery on white cotton; the craft holds a GI registration from March 2013.
• Toda: The Toda are a pastoral tribal community of the Nilgiri hills traditionally centred on buffalo herding, living in mund settlements of half-barrel huts, and known for their embroidered puthukkuli shawls.
• Sujni: Sujni is Bihar's narrative embroidery tradition in which women stitch quilts from layered old cloth with running stitches depicting village life and mythology; it received a GI tag on 21 September 2006.
• Uppada Jamdani: Uppada Jamdani is the saree woven at Uppada in Andhra Pradesh's East Godavari region, whose patterns are created by a hand-laid supplementary weft; it holds a GI tag.
• Geographical Indication: A Geographical Indication is an intellectual property right identifying goods whose quality, reputation or characteristics come from their geographical origin; in India it is granted under the 1999 Act through the Chennai registry for ten-year renewable terms.
• TRIPS: TRIPS is the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (1994) that obliges member countries, including India, to protect geographical indications.
• Chanderi: Chanderi is the handloom town of Madhya Pradesh's Ashoknagar district famous for sheer silk-cotton fabric with zari buttis; it is one of the two correct answers to the 2014 textile-towns question.
• Kancheepuram silk: Kancheepuram silk is the heavy mulberry-silk saree of Tamil Nadu's temple city, woven with gold zari in bold temple borders and protected by a GI tag.
• Gatka: Gatka is the traditional Sikh martial art of stick and sword fighting, descended from the Khalsa's Shastar Vidya and preserved by the Nihang Singhs; it is demonstrated at Punjab's Kila Raipur Rural Olympics.
• Shastar Vidya: Shastar Vidya is the science of weapons of the Khalsa tradition, the parent discipline from which Gatka descends.
• Madhubani painting: Madhubani painting is the painting tradition of Bihar's Mithila region, begun as women's wall and floor art and known for horror vacui, natural pigments and styles including bharni, kachni, tantrik, godna and kohbar; GI-tagged in 2007.
• Bharni: Bharni is the filled, colour-rich style of Madhubani painting, contrasted with the fine line work of the kachni style.
• Kohbar: Kohbar is the painted bridal chamber of Mithila weddings and, by extension, the Madhubani style of fertility symbols such as the lotus, bamboo and parrots.
• Nihang: The Nihangs are the blue-robed warrior order of the Khalsa, the principal preservers and demonstrators of the Gatka martial art.