Wealth, power and religious devotion are all expressed through textiles, and the exhibition will examine how fabrics were used in courtly and spiritual life. Sacred fabrics created for temples and shrines would employ the best of available materials and highest levels of craftsmanship. Examples on display will include a Hindu narrative cloth in silk lampas weave, depicting avatars of the deity Vishnu dating to around 1570; a 16th-century Islamic talismanic shirt inscribed with verses from the Quran in ink and gold paint; a Jain panel embroidered with silk thread and an 18th-century Crucifixion scene made in South-East India for an Armenian Christian church. This section will also explore the range, opulence, scale and splendour of objects handmade for the rich and powerful courts of the 17th centuries. Fine hangings and large floor spreads depicting beautifully flowering plants, used for decoration in the Mughal and Deccani courts, will be shown alongside one of the rarest pieces of Mughal dress and a lavish tent used by the infamous ruler Tipu Sultan. The tent will be fully erected in the gallery, allowing visitors to walk inside it to see the magnificent decoration to be viewed close at hand. 

The historical and ongoing importance of textiles to the economy of India forms a key focus of The Fabric of India, with the exhibition highlighting the prevalence of Indian cloth around the world over millennia. Indian textiles have long been exported globally, as will be demonstrated by the display of three of the earliest known surviving fragments of Indian fabric dating back as far as the 3rd century. A range of pieces designed for foreign export will showcase the remarkable ability of Indian artisans to adapt designs and techniques for a wide variety of different markets. Objects including an outstanding block-printed ceremonial textile from Gujarat, made in the 14th century for the Indonesian market and treasured as an heirloom piece for many centuries, and examples of simple handkerchiefs known as bandanas from Madras and Bengal, pervasive in the 18th and 19th centuries in the Middle East, West Africa and Britain, will demonstrate the wide variety of uses of exported Indian fabric. 

The global export of Indian textiles became particularly evident in Europe between the 17th and 19th centuries through the popularity of chintzes. A grouping of a beautiful wall hangings, bed-covers, robes and dresses featuring chintz patterns will demonstrate how traditional Indian motifs and techniques were reinterpreted to appeal to European consumers. The enormous popularity of such cloth will be illustrated through a display of bed-hangings originally belonging to the Austrian Prince Eugene (1663 – 1736), proof that Indian dyed cotton fabrics were coveted at the highest levels of European society.
 
The exhibition looks at the changing world as European industrialisaion threatened to eradicate Indian handmaking skills in the 19th century. Imitation versions of India’s cloth could be made at lower cost, particularly in British mills, and these fabrics were then imported to India, flooding the market, radically altering India’s textile economy and threatening hand-made production. Lengths of cotton and simple garments created from European-made materials will be on display to illustrate the phenomenon. 

It will go on to reveal the consequences of this exchange, illustrating the way in which European developments in industry provoked a resistance movement which saw textiles take on an important role in the development of Indian nationhood and identity. The Swadeshi (‘Homeland’) movement called for Indians to stop buying foreign goods and support indigenous production. By the early 20th century, Indian textiles became a major symbol of resistance to colonial rule, and in the 1930s Mahatma Gandhi further compounded this by asking Indian people to spin and weave their own yarn and fabric by hand, to produce a cloth known as Khadi. Wearing, spinning and weaving Khadi became a political tool of the Independence movement. 

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This autumn the Victoria and Albert Museum will present a series of exhibitions, displays, events and digital initiatives that will explore the rich and varied culture of South Asia, both past and present. The India Festival will mark the 25th anniversary of the opening of the Museum’s Nehru Gallery, which displays some of the most important objects from the V&A’s South Asian art collection produced between the 16th and 19th centuries. It is also 25 years since the launch of the Nehru Trust for the Indian Collections (NTICVA), which encourages the study, preservation and display of India’s art and cultural heritage. 

The V&A has one of the greatest collections of South Asian art in the world, and is particularly renowned for its Mughal court arts, textiles, paintings and sculpture. The Nehru Gallery was opened in November 1990 to give an evocative setting to the Museum’s important collection. Highlights include Tipu’s Tiger, a life-sized carved and painted wood model seen in the act of devouring a prostrate European figure, the golden throne created for Maharaja Ranjit Singh, a wine cup made of white nephrite jade for the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan, Mughal paintings dating to the late 16th and early 17th centuries, stunning examples of textiles and dress, and a 19th-century jewelled sword belonging to Maharaja Holkar decorated with diamonds, rubies and emeralds.
 

Coinciding with the opening of the Nehru Gallery at the V&A in London, the Nehru Trust for the Indian Collections (NTICVA) was set up in India. Central to its foundation was the V&A’s ambition to make its collections and those of other UK institutions more accessible to scholars from India, and to support the development of scholarship on Indian art and culture more generally. For the past 25 years the NTICVA has enabled scholars and professionals from India and the UK to develop and share skills and gain access to cultural resources in both countries. These aims are met primarily through administrating grants and offering a range of awards, from three month fellowships to be held in the UK to projects for fieldwork in India. The Trust has awarded nearly 500 awards in total. It has created a vital network of linkages between scholars and professionals in the two countries, with many alumni now in senior academic, museum and conservation positions in India and the UK.
Ambassador Ajai Malhotra IFS (Retd.), newly appointed Chairman of the Nehru Trust, said: “Over the past quarter century The Nehru Trust for the Indian Collections at the V&A, working closely with the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and a wide range of other organisations in India and the UK, has contributed significantly to the development of professional skills and scholarship in museology and conservation in India. The NTICVA will even more actively promote interest in India’s vast and magnificent art and cultural heritage in the years ahead. Through our annual awards and other initiatives we will also focus on increasing awareness about the value of museums and the importance of conservation efforts.”

The V&A also maintains active partnerships with many institutions in India and recent years have seen a varied programme of exhibitions touring to the country. In 2010 the V&A, together with the British Library and British Museum, signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the National Museum of India, acting on behalf of the Ministry of Culture in India, which outlined our continuing commitment to exchanges of staff and the provision of professional advice.