Power, politics and the chair: The hidden stories of seating in India

In her book From the Frugal to the Ornate: Stories of the Seat in India (Godrej & Boyce, 2022), Bengaluru-based designer and researcher Sarita Sundar writes about her grandfather’s charukassela (reclining chair) in Kerala: “It was the dignity and loftiness with which my grandfather assumed his seat that drew me — and most of the village – to his side… It was a station of vantage and power… his reputation for astute advice saw villagers seeking his counsel often. They were afforded positions, determined by their social standing… benches with backs, benches with stools or none at all.” Her research for the book brought her to serendipitous discoveries that kassera, the Malayalam word for chair, takes its inspiration from the Portuguese cadeira and that naalkaalige, the Telugu or Tamil word for chair, also means ‘four-legged one’.

The politics, history and subversion of the seat have, in recent times, seen exhibitions, symposiums and books dedicated to it. There can never be a single narrative or lens to view these ideas and to understand them, we need to go back to the evolution of sitting itself.

This ubiquitous leisure chair was a British favourite for those who took their repose seriously

Rising from the floor

Jay Thakkar, professor, CEPT University, Ahmedabad, says, “The story of sitting in the subcontinent begins at floor level and slowly rises, layer by layer, into the world of benches, stools and chairs. To follow how people sat is to follow how they understand the body, the divine, the community and their social hierarchy.”

It’s not uncommon in stone reliefs or Company Style paintings (from the 18th and 19th centuries) to see how seating signalled posture and function. For instance, while a worker may be squatting on the floor as he weaves a textile or shapes an object, the client or the owner is usually seen on a raised stool or mooda. If one were to begin with the rituals of prayer, in a puja, the worshipper is often sitting cross‑legged on a mat or cloth, as a conscious act of being in sync with the earth. Thakkar observes that the deity, however, is almost never placed on the floor. There will be a low wooden or ornate table to reinforce the sense of honour.

Low seating is ubiquitous across India, its variations depend entirely on region, climate and function. Be it a low seat (paatlo or palakka), a bench (paat or bankdo), a charpai or a baithak. From palaces to modern-day homes, their uses are multiple and quite often, they are easy to move around.

“These pieces are not just objects but instruments of social choreography. Who sits on the floor, who on a paatlo, who on the low stool with a backrest — each decision quietly arranges relationships of deference, care and authority within the domestic space,” says Thakkar, who has co-authored Sahaj: Vernacular Furniture of Gujarat (CEPT University, 2018).

Low seating with backrests have been associated with gurus and merchants for many years. At the Hastashilpa Heritage Village Museum in Manipal-Udupi, Karnataka, which preserves the architectural heritage of traditional homes from different parts of India, one can see a trader’s home from the 1800s. With large windows to pay daily wages to porters, the house has several low-seating arrangements for ease of transaction. While the traders sat upright on the wooden squares with backrests, workers were on carpets or outside. “The hierarchy is subtle but clear: The back‑supported body is one of authority, the unsupported body listens,” says Thakkar. It’s not hard to imagine a courtyard house in north India, where the charpai takes centre stage, with the matriarch seated cross-legged or with one leg on the floor, hookah in hand, watching the helps and daughters-in-law potter about.

While the paatlo or the palakaa consolidates the individual, the paat or patta (large raised wooden platform) is about the collective. During his field visits to Rajasthan, Thakkar would see men gather around at a chowk, seated on a paat, to play cards, hear speeches, hold informal panchayat meetings or nap in the afternoon. This seat, by its function blurred the lines, becoming both a living room and a community space for the village. Sometimes, several paats would be brought together for a wedding, transforming these benches into a single continuous surface on which an entire village could sit, eat, watch and participate.

Many households would also have gender and age diversification when it came to seating. The eldest family member usually got the charpai, while the next in line got a chair with a lower back, while the youngest was usually given a dhurrie. Thakkar calls it the diagram of age and seniority rendered in wood, rope and cloth.

The modern chair

Then came the modern chair with the British and the Portuguese, one with an aspiration tag. It was seen in offices, restaurants, clubs and elite homes by the early 1900s. “One sat on a kursi not simply to be comfortable but to show that one is next in line after the person on the charpai,” observes Thakkar.

The Planter’s Chair, seen as a mode of leisure, was a British favourite, which came with flexible fabric or cane. Cane chairs were an antidote to brave the humid Indian climate while the armchair and the dining chairs made their appearance felt in high-end restaurants across Bombay.

But even there, one saw differences in the use of wood. Dutch and Portuguese designs towards Goa and beyond used rosewood while the British couldn’t get enough of Burma teak and mahogany.

Abigail McGowan, professor, University of Vermont, USA, in her essay ‘Unsettling Chairs’ in Sundar’s book writes, “Even as dining chairs brought men and women to the table together side by side, armchairs tended to isolate male bodies from the demands of work and family alike.”

Advertisements from the late 1950s, from a foam company in a magazine, shows a man leisurely seated on a cushioned armchair, reading a newspaper, with his dog at his feet, while another ad for an air-conditioner that says ‘Secret for better homes’, has the man sitting comfortably in an armchair reading a book, while the woman is seated upright, looking at a book together with their child by her side. “Armchairs therefore offered particular refuge to only specific bodies, enshrining the power dynamics within the household,” writes McGowan.

The world at the time was also seeing a shift in approaches to design. Elaborate carving and padded armrests were making way for the Art Deco movement of the 1930s with their narrow seats and wooden arms. Designer seating such as the Eames and Barcelona chairs were on the bucket list of the wealthy. As India became independent and materials were available, companies such as Godrej & Boyce and Army and Navy stores in Bombay began producing standard furniture lines for homes and offices.

“Factory manufacturing made furniture available and inexpensive for the larger population. That’s the context in which Godrej was set up. And while industrial, assembly line furniture can potentially cut through the hierarchy of traditional seating, today you can even order a chief executive’s chair which is in some way different; it has a higher back or softer cushioning. So, in some ways, modern seating still continues to facilitate hierarchy,” says Sundar.

Designers began experimenting with materials from tubular frames to lightweight polypropylene chairs, otherwise called the Monobloc chair, those that could be stacked and mass produced. Haven’t we all seen them, at weddings, exhibitions, public gatherings of every sort? We would be lying if we say we don’t have at least one of them in our homes, for the sheer moveability and ease of comfort they provide. They are available the world over in varying designs and styles.

Eames lounge chair: What was born out of necessity during WWII is a luxury icon with its ‘fits like a glove’ seating comfort

The history of Indian chairs

However, besides the Chandigarh Chair, designed in the 1950s by Pierre Jeanneret and his team who built government institutions and offices across Punjab’s new Capital, India has little to boast about in its furniture design, which has little or no recall value internationally.

That’s why when Mumbai-based Chiki Doshi and Anand Gandhi managing directors, of the House of Mahendra Doshi, purveyors of antiques and period furniture since 1974, exhibited their restored pieces in an exhibition called ‘A History of India through Chairs’ last month, they wanted to testify to Indian craftsmanship and the possibilities in material. “Large manufacturers are not investing in good designers, we have a huge legacy of exemplary work down the ages.

In our exhibition, we showcased pieces from the early 19th century and onward, which were designs by the Dutch, the Portuguese, the French and the British, each of them acquired from different parts of India. But we will never know the provenance, the name of the carpenter or the designer. And today, with development in wood and technology, there is a huge scope in tapping the international market,” says Doshi, who has been with the company for more than three decades. “Nowadays, people in their 30s are taking a keen interest in period furniture.

They are house proud and are willing to make a conscious investment in furniture of a particular era,” he says, adding that many of his clients are from Delhi and north India.

“Good design is not unaffordable; rather it can bring value and quality to a space,” says Mumbai-based designer Ajay Shah. But he cautions that in India, we need to move beyond craft and make design development integral to our work.

“The creation of making something iconic is a lengthy process. It involves a company’s vision, the passion of its founder, committing to design, seeking new materials and technologies and a sustained effort over a long period of time,” says Shah. His furniture line under Industrial Playground has a specific aesthetic. The forms, materials and colour propose a lifestyle that’s less formal and conventional, bringing flexibility and lightness to spaces.

As a nation, we seem to have come full circle, from customising how our furniture should look to where we place them. The evolution of sitting in India, however, is not linear. Shabnam Gupta, principal designer, Orange Lane Studio, affirms that furniture is a keeper of space in a home. It determines comfort, function and direction. “At the entrance, it’s not uncommon for a client to want statement chairs. These are not very comfortable but they afford visual value. In the TV room, they expect to have sunken sofas or massage chairs. The living room is usually more formal. Sometimes, clients ask for a chair to face a particular direction as per Vaastu to help their decision making,” she says.

But then to subvert all these notions of being civilised and sophisticated, Mahatma Gandhi’s way of sitting in his ashrams was a disruption. He would choose to sit on the floor, be it to receive heads of state or important dignitaries, making them very uncomfortable in the process. It was another weapon to undermine British authority, as did his war against foreign goods and violence, observes Sundar.

On May 9, the International Design History Society will hold a symposium on ‘Crafting Furniture in the Global South’ where among other researchers, Sundar and academic Rachel Lee from TU Delft will talk about the craft and production of the Planter’s Chair.

Known as the charukassera in Kerala and the aram kursi in Bengal, it has connotations of colonial leisure. But even today, it is not uncommon to visualise one’s grandfather on such a chair, looking out of the window or receiving guests at the verandah.

So when we say we ought to have a ‘seat at the table’ or that we want the ‘best seat in town’, let’s remember, every chair we sit on comes loaded with the history, politics and stories of its time.