Personal anecdote.
A century after Moravian missionaries came to the part of the Indian Himalayas, where I lived for six years in the middle 1970s, the local Indians were still knitting the kinds of hilariously garish socks the missionaries taught them how to make. The socks were typically decorated in neon colored patterns, often with rows of little swastikas, the ancient Hindu symbol highjacked by the Nazis. Enough tourists were horrified by the innocent use of swastikas that the locals have since learned not to incorporate that into the designs.
In the remote Himalayan provinces of Lahaul and Ladakh, during the six months of winter, several months of the year are snowed under. The roads are covered and the villagers spend the winter at home, sitting around the tandoor stove, living on fruit, vegetables and meat set out to dry in the summer months, and knitting.
The socks knitted in winter are sold to tourists in the lower Himalayas in the summer. Unfortunately, in the 1970s anyway, the short fiber wool used to knit the socks unravelled quickly and the socks rarely lasted more than a few wears. Worse, was that the dyes used for the neon colored wool, invariably ran. If one made the mistake, as I did a number of times, of washing even one pair of Moravian style socks with any other clothing, all clothing would come out accidentally tie dyed. One could recognize friends who had made the same mistake when meeting them and their once beige sweater was now partly pink, partly green.
When I lived in the Himalayas, finding wool socks was surprisingly difficult. Indians apparently didn't have wool socks, so travelers to the mountains in winter were tempted to get the Moravian socks and learned to regret it.
I wonder if the socks, which look very much the same now as they looked before, have improved over the decades.
Lahaul is way up in the India Himalayas and there are many small, remote villages.
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Classic Moravian style knitted socks. The blue wool is natural and the neon design is made of "cashmilon"acrylic mix yarn.
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"Left: the left-facing swastika is a sacred symbol in the Bon and Mahāyāna Buddhist traditions. Right: the right-facing swastika appears commonly in Hinduism, Jainism and Sri Lankan Buddhism" |
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| Lahauli women sitting around a tandoor, wood burning stove, which is the way rooms are warmed and food is prepared in the Himalayas. |
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| The Moravian Mission house in Keylong, Lahaul, India. Way up on the Tibetan Plateau. This is how it looked in the late 1800s. |
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| Women from Lahaul, India, wearing the outfits the Moravian missionaries from Germany taught them to wear back in the 1800s. The women in Lahaul still wear this style of clothing today. |
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| Classic Moravian style knitted socks. The purple wool is natural and the neon design is made of "cashmilon"acrylic mix yarn. |
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| Classic Moravian style knitted socks. The neon design is made of "cashmilon"acrylic mix yarn. |
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| The Hindu deity, Ganesh with a swastika symbol of life in the middle. |
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| Classic Moravian style knitted socks. The red wool is natural and the neon design is made of "cashmilon"acrylic mix yarn. |
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Lahauli woman at a wedding party in Keylong, Lahaul, India, knitting Moravian style socks
Photo credit: Ramesh Lal |
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| Women from Lahaul, India selling the Moravian style socks they knitted in winter. |
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| Classic Moravian style knitted socks. The gray wool is natural and the neon design is made of "cashmilon"acrylic mix yarn. |
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