Do you know how many silk chrysalises or pupae are boiled to death to help make a silk saree? “Around 10,000,” says Kusuma Rajaiah, a technocrat in handloom technology, who has recently retired from Andhra Pradesh State Handloom Weavers Co-operating Society (APCO), Hyderabad.
He devised the technique of obtaining silk yarn from cocoons without killing the pupae inside them for the first time in the world in 1991. After a prolonged and persistent effort he launched what is called ahimsa silk in the market in 2001. Ahimsa is used to describe this innovation, because silk is produced in a process where no silk pupa is killed. For this reason, the product is also called peace silk.
This guiltless silk (my own coinage after the fashion of guiltless pizza, alfredo, gourmet, etc.) is extracted after the silk pupa has completed its metamorphosis and has emerged from its cocoon. There are many types of silk producing....
