British Museum funds research on Kashmir’s last houseboat makers and the vanishing craft

When you instrumentality into relationship that houseboat operation successful Kashmir has been suspended for decades, the Delhi Development Authority’s projected ₹4-crore houseboat program (as a imperishable fixture astatine Baansera Park successful Delhi) underscores a striking irony. Meanwhile, a British Museum-funded task has been documenting the techniques and oral histories of Kashmir’s last-remaining artisans. The research, present complete, is acceptable for submission this month.

Nearly 4 decades ago, the Jammu & Kashmir authorities banned the operation of new doongas (houseboats) to curb unregulated maturation and contamination successful Dal Lake. Since then, galore maestro craftsmen person died, leaving down lone a fewer practitioners specified arsenic Ghulam Ahmad Najar. “I americium bound to these boats; determination is thing other I know,” says the boatmaker from Bandipora.