The Chhot boat that was made at Dihimondal ghat in Howrah’s Shyampur in October 2022 might not have yet reached its final destination at the National Maritime Heritage Complex at Lothal, Gujarat, but the process of its construction is now lodged in the archives of the British Museum.
On the museum website, under the Endangered Materials Knowledge Programme (EMKP), one may find detailed documentation of the making of the Chhot boat in the Asia section.
From photographs, videos, textual accounts and technical diagrams, every step in the making of the endangered Chhot boat has been archived for academics and others.
A documentary film titled The Endangered Chhot and a diary detailing the entire process set the narrative of the documentation.
Besides, there are portraits of the Mondal family, the first family of Chhot builders in Shyampur who were commissioned by EMKP to build the boat, biographical interviews of Panchanan Mondol, the lead Chhot boat builder, photographs of the timber and tools used, making of the sail, caulking of the hull... all can be accessed on the website.
The Chhot boat is an extinct boat type used about three decades ago in south Bengal. Essentially a fishing and cargo boat, it was built in a V-shape to navigate the choppy waters of the Rupnarayan.
But the boat can no longer be used because of siltation. Small round-bottomed dinghies are now commonly used for fishing in these waters.
The EMKP, involved in a project to protect the diversity in material knowledge, sought to digitally document the making of the extinct boat.
The project was led by John Cooper from the University of Exeter, along with Zeeshan Alli Shaikh, a maritime archeologist, and Swarup Bhattacharya, the local collaborator and social anthropologist who sought out the Mondal family to have the boat made.
Cooper and Ali documented the process and hosted it on the British Museum website. The project was funded by EMKP and supported by the Central University of Haryana.
“Chhot represents a unique form of boatbuilding in Bengal with little documentation to date. Its traditional fixing involves securing the planks, keel, and posts with steel staples and interlocking joinery,” the website says.
“Moreover, it uses a ‘shell-conceived’ approach, wherein hull planks are completed before inserting the timber frame. These techniques were demonstrated over the course of a month — October to November 2022 — by the Mondal family of artisanal boatbuilders in Dihimandalghat, Howrah district, West Bengal, India.
Master boatbuilder Amol Modal directed the build, with insights from his father Panchanan Mondal and assistance from his brothers Manimohan, Dilip, and Dipak.”
Along with the making of the Chhot boat of Bengal, the EMKP hosts documentation of making clothing from paper in Japan, the material culture of Batek hunter-gatherers in the Pahang state, Malaysia, wooden reed-making in Lao Khrang in Thailand and many other extinct material knowledge systems.