The pashmina fibre from Kashmir is the most luxurious among natural fibres. No wonder it is priced so highly. There are other countries, apart from India, that produce the fibre–Mongolia, China, Iran, Afghanistan, and Nepal. Yet, the pashmina from India is the best, thanks to the Kashmiris who spin and weave by hand.
Around forty tonnes of fibre is created from around two hundred thousand pashmina goats every year. But this is just surface-level information about the manufacturing process. A deep dive takes us to the land of Eastern Ladakh.
The word pashmina comes from the Persian word “pashm,” which means wool. Pashmina means cloth that is woven from wool. The name likely evolved from the Mughal era; it is known that Emperor Akbar gave the pashmina to his beloved wives.
Pashmina shawls have been an object of affection among Europeans for over two centuries. It is called “cashmere” in the West, as it comes from Kashmir. Napoleon Bonaparte’s wife Josephine was fond of pashmina. So was Queen Victoria of Britain.
Before the Europeans gained a fondness for shawls made from pashmina wool, a French traveller named Francois Bernier wrote about it in his book Travels in the Moghul Empire. He noted that “what may be considered peculiar to Kachemire, and the staple commodity, that which promotes the trade of the country and fills it with wealth, is the prodigious quantity of shawls which they manufacture, and which gives occupation even to the little children.” In today’s day and age, this would be considered child labour. Not something to praise.
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