Lavjibhai Nagjibhai Parmar
A master weaver who kept Gujarat's 700-year-old Tangaliya weaving alive when hundreds of weavers had quit, honoured with the Padma Shri in 2025.
Tangaliya is a 700-year-old weaving style from Saurashtra in which knots of thread twisted around the warp create bead-like dots on the cloth. Lavjibhai Nagjibhai Parmar saved it when it was close to dying. In 2025 he was named for the Padma Shri in the field of art, from Gujarat [1].
A family craft
Parmar was born on 28 July 1959 and studied up to Class 8 in Wadhwan [2]. He then joined his father in Tangaliya weaving, and later trained at the Weavers’ Service Centre in Ahmedabad [2]. In 1990 he won the Ministry of Textiles’ National Award for a Tangaliya woollen shawl [2].
Saving the craft
Between 1996 and 2006, rising costs and the shift to synthetic clothes pushed about 300 to 350 weavers to give up Tangaliya [2]. Parmar kept weaving and changed the craft to survive: moving from pit looms to handlooms, introducing cotton and new designs [2]. Weavers who had gone to work as daily labourers in factories came back, and he gave them looms and space under his shed to learn [2].
In 2019 he received the Sant Kabir Award for a naturally dyed Tangaliya sari [2].
Sources
- [1] Padma Awards 2025: list of awardees — Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India. Accessed 11 October 2026.
- [2] Padma Awards 2025: citation for Lavjibhai Nagjibhai Parmar — Padma Awards, Government of India. Accessed 11 October 2026.
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