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Earlier this year, the Sawantwadi ganjifa, an art form that came to Maharashtra’s Sindhudurg region in the 16th century, got a geographical identification tag. It was the first handicraft from the region to get this honour.
Ganjifa, a card game, is believed to have come to India from Persia during the reign of Mughal emperors in the 16th century. “The theme of playing cards that came from Persia revolved around the king and his ministry. But in India, it was adapted to the storyline of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, In Sawantwadi, it was the dashavatara ganjifa that became popular,” says Shraddha Lakham Sawant Bhonsle, now referred to as the Yuvrani of Sawantwadi.
Since ganjifa had reached many parts of India, it took hard work of over a year to prove the distinctiveness of the Sawantwadi ganjifa for the GI tag. Shraddha says, “Every state is unique in its way of practising the art form. The ganjifa of Orissa, for example, is very different from that of Sawantwadi, of Andhra Pradesh, of Jaipur, etc. We applied for the GI tag in January 2023 and it took one and a half years of work to finally get it. Now the Sawantwadi ganjifa can now only be produced in the Sawantwadi palace. It gives us the ownership of the art form patronised by our ancestors for centuries.”
In the era of mass-produced card games and online gaming, creating one set of ganjifa cards takes a month and costs Rs 10,000-14,000. The palace has around 16 artisans and two woodworkers who create around 20-24 sets of the cards in a year. “The number 20-24 is our popular dashavatara ganjifa. We have 14 other sets also, which we make but aren’t that popular. While our oldest artisan is 82-year-old Mohan Kulkarni, the youngest one is only 19. Many kids come for internships or half-day work,” says Shraddha.
Shraddha also comments that though ganjifa is known as a card game, it is primarily an art form that one learns to experience. The art form has been promoted in various ways for visibility.
But to talk of its history, Sawantwadi was a small principality in Maharashtra’s Konkan region and not far from Vengurla. “In the 14th century it was ruled by Vijayanagar, in the 15th century by a Brahmin dynasty and later by Bijapur. Its culture bears the imprint of the southern Deccan more than that of Maharashtra. In the 16th century it came under the overlordship of the Bhonsles, and under Khem Sawant Bhonsle I (1627-40) it became semi-independent. Under the Maratha ruler Shivaji, the Bhonsles were made Sardesais of South Konkan. The small state flourished under Khem Sawant III, the Great (1755-1803), who married into the Sindhia family and had good relations with the Peshwas of Poona,” writes Rudolf Von Leyden in Ganjifa: The Playing Cards of India, A General Survey with a Catalogue of the Victoria and Albert Museum Collection.
Khem Sawant III was a patron of arts and music and instrumental in adapting and promoting the art of ganjifa in the region. “Brahmins from the Telangana and Andhra region had come to study dharmashastra under Khem Sawant III. They are the ones who took the art of lacquerware and ganjifa with them. In the 18th and 19th century, we had about eight to nine schools opened for this,” says Shraddha.
Leyden mentions in his book that the Telugu Brahmins had passed down the art to a special caste of artisans called the chitaris. When the author visited Sawantwadi for the first time in 1940, there were six or seven families making ganjifa cards and toys or furniture.
But Shraddha says, “At the time of Independence, as there was a lot of chaos in the country, most of the artisans decided to go separate ways. The art form was almost lost.”
Years later, as Lt Col Raja Bahadur Shivaram Sawant Bhonsle, during his tenure as an MLA, frequented people of Sawantwadi, he came across 80-year-old artist Pundalik Chitari, who at that time would make two sets of ganjifa in a year. This is where the story of the revival of Ganjifa begins.
“After meeting Pundalik Chitari, my grandfather-in-law told my grandmother-in-law about it. When both of them interacted with Chitari more about the art form, they realised it was their own ancestors who were patrons of ganjifa. So they learnt the art form from Chitari and started a company called Sawantwadi Lacquerware in 1971 in order to revive it. Both of them were artisans, so they got very interested in it. While grandfather would do all the woodworking, grandmother started painting. As she was from the Gaekwad of the Baroda family, she grew up around the zoo that is in the palace. So her artistry was around wildlife animals, birds, especially tigers. Grandfather started doing a lot of furniture sketches and we were one of the first ones to export furniture out of India. Sawantwadi furniture was on display on the Saks Fifth Avenue in New York,” says Shraddha.
Even though the couple started revival efforts together, it was queen Satvashiladevi Bhonsle who really took it one step higher. She used to participate in exhibitions and promote the art form before anyone who visited the palace. Even until two months before she passed away in 2018, she was still painting.
“She got a 21-gun salute for her dedication in the arts and crafts field. My mother-in-law, who has been married into the family about over 50 years now, would accompany her too. I came into the family in 2019. Today my mother-in-law and I handle it. It has taken a different course, because the younger generation is better with social media. The first thing I did was take it all digital. We started putting all the paperwork into computers, created a social media page—I have my own page—and we have done a lot of collaborations. Collaboration is key today. If you don’t collaborate with one other, you won’t go anywhere. It helps us meet a wider audience,” says Shraddha.
The Sawant Bhosale family has partnered with Reliance’s Swadesh brand of luxury ethnic handcrafts. Also, a part of the palace has been converted into a boutique art hotel. “It has helped us give the art form so much more visibility,” she says.
During the conversion of the palace, the art of ganjifa was carefully inculcated into the smaller aspects. “The six rooms that we have are based on a different avatar of Lord Vishnu just like in the dashavatara ganjifa set of cards, most famous in Sawantwadi. So in each room we have painted an avatar of Lord Vishnu, a 5-ft painting like the one on the king card. When you walk into the room you can experience the art form through paintings on doorknobs. The mirror in the bathroom has lacquerware… It is an art form that people learn to experience. Even though ganjifa is a game of cards, it was always more popular for its art,” says Shraddha.
“Usually we have a lot of collectors. Apart from that, there are people who come to the museum and take it home. We do workshops for people who come and stay with us. They get attached to it, so they buy sets to keep them as souvenirs,” Shraddha says.
Since 2014, workshops on the game have been held in Pune through INTACH, or the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage.
