India: Bhadohi, Panipat and the hand-tufted carpet

In October 2025 Aaj Tak reported that a carpet from Bhadohi, made for the Grand Mosque in Astana, Kazakhstan, had entered Guinness World Records as the largest hand-tufted carpet. It measured about 12,464 square metres, took about 1,000 artisans, and was made by Hands Carpets / Patodia Contract.¹1“Guinness record for the largest hand-tufted carpet (Bhadohi, 2025)”, 2025, research note. Record The record itself has not yet been found on the Guinness site.²2“Guinness record for the largest hand-tufted carpet (Bhadohi, 2025)”, 2025, research note. Record India’s hand-tufting is visible at that scale. When it began is not.

A colonial carpet belt

Europeans founded some of the best-known firms in the carpet belt of Uttar Pradesh that hand-tufting later joined. Hands says it descends from a carpet business that A. Tellery, a European, set up in 1881 to organise Bhadohi’s weavers, and that after Independence the business was sold to a Calcutta Marwari house; the Patodia family took control around 1980 (another account says at the end of the Raj) and built the Hands brand. The continuity from Tellery to Hands is the company’s own account.³3“Hands (Hands Carpets / Patodia Exports)”, founded 1881 (as A. Tellery's business), Hands (Hands Carpets / Patodia Exports). Record “Bhadohi’s ‘traditional’ hand-knotted industry was built by Europeans in the late 19th century”, late 19th century–1920, research note. Record

Obeetee, at Mirzapur, takes its name from the initials of its three British founders, F. H. Oakley, F. H. Bowden and J. A. L. Taylor, who set it up in 1920; the partnership was dissolved in 1932 and replaced by a company named Obeetee.⁴4“Obeetee”, founded 1920, Obeetee. Record Both firms now make hand-tufted carpet alongside hand-knotted. Obeetee describes the process as yarn punched into canvas with a tufting gun and then glued to a backing, but when it began tufting has not been found.⁵5“Obeetee”, founded 1920, Obeetee. Record “Hands (Hands Carpets / Patodia Exports)”, founded 1881 (as A. Tellery's business), Hands (Hands Carpets / Patodia Exports). Record

No date for the gun

No source yet found dates the arrival of hand-tufting in India.⁶6“No sourced date exists for hand-tufting’s arrival in India”, research note. Record The research brief reports that a Shodhganga thesis, papers from IICT, the carpet-technology institute at Bhadohi, the Carpet Export Promotion Council’s history, the National Handicrafts Policy report, the Harvard FXB Center’s report Tainted Carpets and a CUTS International case study were all checked and are silent on the date, though those checks have not been re-verified one by one.⁷7“No sourced date exists for hand-tufting’s arrival in India”, research note. Record

The nearest thing to a date is one sentence, without a reference, in a 2019 article on India’s carpet-weaving tradition by Pranshi Jain, an assistant professor of architecture and planning at MITS Gwalior, who lists tufted carpets among “contemporary” carpets.⁸8“‘This technique came after India achieved independence’”, research note. Record

In India, this technique came after the India achieved independence. This was the innovation technique which was introduced in this industry for making the production faster.

Pranshi Jain, “Carpet Weaving Tradition of India”, 2019

When hand-tufting overtook hand-knotting is also undated. An earlier reading put the change between 1995 and 2005. It rested on a Hindi passage, since not found again, about the shrinking market share of हस्तनिर्मित carpet, read as hand-knotted; the word means handmade, which in the trade includes hand-tufted, so the passage says nothing about tufting against knotting.⁹9“UNSUPPORTED: Hand-tufting overtook hand-knotting in India around 1995–2005 (rests on a mistranslation)”, 1995–2005, research note. Record Amar Ujala’s reports of 2025 and 2026 say only that knotted carpets are now a token share of exports and that hand-tufted and handloom goods dominate.¹⁰10“UNSUPPORTED: Hand-tufting overtook hand-knotting in India around 1995–2005 (rests on a mistranslation)”, 1995–2005, research note. Record

Teaching and making the tools

The tools are taught. A syllabus for the B.Tech in carpet and textile technology, issued by U.P. Technical University and hosted by IICT Bhadohi as its old syllabus, includes the “practice of tufting using hand & electric gun” and lists “tufting equipments used e.g. (tufting frame, tufting gun etc.) Schortz hand tufted machine”.¹¹11“IICT Bhadohi teaches hand and electric gun tufting as separate skills”, research note. Record IICT runs under the Ministry of Textiles.¹²12“IICT Bhadohi teaches hand and electric gun tufting as separate skills”, research note. Record K. K. Goswami, named as IICT’s director, edited Advances in Carpet Manufacture (second edition 2017), which has chapters on handmade carpets and a separate chapter on tufting.¹³13K. K. Goswami (ed.), K. K. Goswami, Advances in Carpet Manufacture, 2nd ed., chapters 12–13 (handmade carpets). Record His publisher’s biography calls him the “inventor of a new form of carpet backing”; no Indian patent for a tufting gun has been found.¹⁴14“India patents the backing, not the gun”, research note. Record

The tools are made and sold locally. In Mirzapur, Naksh Enterprises sells new manual speed-tufting tools for cut and loop pile up to 45 mm, at around ₹1,500, though commercial pile work uses 220-volt electric guns.¹⁵15“Manual speed-tufting tools are still sold new in Mirzapur, India”, research note. Record The manual tool’s history is told in chapter 9. At Meerut, Sheru Bros Engineering Works, a partnership firm that lists its founding as 1965, advertises electric hand-tufting guns, one at ₹9,000, and says it exports them to Egypt and South Africa; all of this is the seller’s own listing.¹⁶16“India now exports tufting guns: Sheru Brothers, Meerut (est. 1965)”. Record

Borrowed words

Hindi has a word for tufted carpet, गुच्छित कालीन (guchchhit kālīn), from गुच्छ, a tuft or cluster. It appears in the Hindi Wikipedia article on carpets, and a search for the exact phrase found it on no other Hindi page.¹⁷17“India has a word for tufted carpet, गुच्छित कालीन, and the industry has never used it”, research note. Record The trade writes English words in Devanagari instead: हैंड टफ्टेड (hand tufted) and टफ्टिंग गन (tufting gun), as in an Amar Ujala headline on हैंड टफ्टेड कालीनों.¹⁸18“India has a word for tufted carpet, गुच्छित कालीन, and the industry has never used it”, research note. Record The research also recorded a sentence from the same Wikipedia article saying that the machine for making carpet by stitching was invented in the southern United States shortly after the Second World War. It did not appear when the page was searched again, and its old-fashioned phrasing suggests it was taken from a mid-century Hindi encyclopedia.¹⁹19“Hindi Wikipedia: the tufting machine was invented in the southern United States after WWII”, research note. Record

Exporters, Panipat and the machine

The exporters span knotting and tufting. Surya began in 1976 in Ugapur, in the Bhadohi area, as a small supplier of hand-knotted rugs, and is now a large American supplier of hand-knotted, hand-tufted and flatwoven rugs.²⁰20“Surya”, founded 1976, Surya. Record Jaipur Living, founded in Rajasthan in 1978, is mainly a hand-knotting firm, but also makes rugs gun-tufted through a pre-woven cloth with a cotton-latex backing.²¹21“Jaipur Living / Jaipur Rugs”, founded 1978 (Rajasthan), Jaipur Living / Jaipur Rugs. Record Kaleen India, begun in 1996, has plants in Panipat, Mirzapur and Bikaner making hand-knotted, hand-tufted, flatweave and power-loom rugs.²²22“Kaleen India”, founded 1996, Kaleen India. Record These firms, and their American offices, return in chapter 11.

Panipat, in Haryana, owes its carpet industry, by one account, to migration. A CUTS International case study says the industry spread there “where the weavers migrated from Bhadohi-Mirzapur”.²³23“Panipat’s carpet skill came from Bhadohi-Mirzapur, not from Partition”, research note. Record The town is now also a centre of textile recycling: The Tribune reports more than 30 lakh kilograms of recycled yarn a day, and about 200 spinning mills (150 in another version of the story).²⁴24“Panipat: the world’s largest textile-recycling cluster became a rug town”, research note. Record

Industrial carpet came separately. Welspun Flooring was formed in March 2016 as a subsidiary of the home-textile maker Welspun India, and its plant near Hyderabad, under construction in 2018 for a start in 2019, makes carpet tiles, broadloom, artificial grass and click vinyl. The company calls it Asia’s largest; when it was commissioned has not been confirmed.²⁵25“Welspun Flooring”, entity 2016; plant from about 2019, Welspun Flooring. Record

The export trade is exposed. A 50 per cent American tariff took effect on 27 August 2025. Amar Ujala reported that 46 American buyers were expected at Bhadohi’s October fair, against a usual 55 or so, and the fair had about 110 fewer stalls. The tariff was cut to 18 per cent in an India–US agreement in February 2026.²⁶26“A 50% US tariff has brought Bhadohi’s American business to the brink (2025)”, 2025, research note. Record

This chapter argues that hand-tufting entered an export belt some of whose oldest firms were founded by Europeans, left no dated record of its arrival, and is still named in the trade in borrowed English words. Its weight in the trade today is reported; its beginning remains to be found.