India is having a national conversation about gold. And it has given us at Mortantra the opportunity to say something we have believed since the very first day we began.
Brass is not a compromise. It is a stance deeply held about what Indian craft is, where it comes from, and what it deserves to become.
When the Prime Minister asked India to pause on buying gold and let us break down the why
India once had its own gold. The Kolar Gold Fields in Karnataka, one of the deepest mines in the world. Alluvial gold in rivers, centuries of trade surplus that brought gold into this country as payment for spices, textiles, indigo. Gold flowed in because India gave the world things the world could not find elsewhere.
It was in that era when gold had Indian provenance, that stridhan was born. A woman’s personal wealth, her security as an emergency fund that nobody could take. When gold was genuinely ours, stridhan had logic. Then the mines ran dry. Kolar closed in 2001. The trade surplus disappeared. And today India produces less than 2 tonnes of gold a yearSneh Shah against 800 tonnes of demand. We import over $72 billion worth of gold every single year.
Our mines have been dry for 25 years. Which means for 25 years, gold has been an imported liability, dressed in the language of tradition.
Why We Believe in Brass
Brass is India’s metal. Not just because it is affordable and accessible. Brass is ancient, indigenous, and it has been carrying Indian craft forward for thousands of years without costing this country a dollar in foreign exchange.
Dhokra, India’s oldest known lost wax casting technique, practiced for over 4,000 years has always been done in brass. Nomadic tribes carried it across this country for centuries, from the forests of central India to the plains of Tamil Nadu to the deserts of Rajasthan. The craft survived because brass made it possible. Recyclable, Circulatory and rooted in this land.
Saying gold is essential to carry Indian culture forward is like importing Chinese polyester to do zardosi on. The craft is ours. The material does not have to come from somewhere else.
The Brass, Jamnagar and the Circular Economy
Jamnagar, a city in Gujarat, is the brass capital of the world. 70% of the brass processed there comes from recycled materials. It runs on a circular economy. Zero import burden, Zero drain on foreign exchange reserves. Every rupee spent on brass craft stays inside India, in a karigar’s hands, in an Indian workshop, in this economy.
Brass jewellery taking shape in an Indian workshop - every rupee stays in this economy.
This is what Atmanirbhar Bharat looks like in craft. This is what Vocal for Local actually means when it comes to jewellery. Brass is Made in India.
Gold jewellery cannot carry any of these labels honestly because the base material itself is imported.
What Mortantra Was Born To Do
Mortantra began with a simple, personal feeling. Our founder Shaili wanted a hasli for her wedding . She had seen one in a museum, behind glass, only executed in gold. She couldn’t find it in any market, in any store, in any form that felt wearable and real and hers.
That feeling of wanting to own a piece of your own culture, without the burden of gold, without spending all her father’s savings into gold and having nowhere to go is where Mortantra began.
The jewellery Shaili wore. Indian hands. Indian craft. A fraction of what solid gold requires.
She also grew up watching what gold cost families. The quiet distress of a middle class father who believed his daughter’s worth must be measured in a metal he had to import from somewhere else, something so burdensome only to know it is entirely foreign in provenance.
Mortantra was built to offer something different -
Indian hands. Indian workshops.
A karigar at work in an Indian workshop. This is what Mortantra is built on.
Fire and patience. Two things every piece of Mortantra passes through before it reaches you.
Stone setting and finishing - where raw brass becomes jewellery.
Indian craft traditions that are centuries old, with a whisper of gold plating where it serves the design, a fraction of what a single solid gold bangle requires. The import burden is negligible. The cultural continuity is entirely intact.
Indian Households Hold $5 Trillion in Gold
Indian households hold an estimated 35,000 tonnes of gold , worth an estimated $5 trillion at current prices. Sitting in lockers. That is not sovereign wealth.
For a family, gold is an asset. For this country, gold is a liability. The same metal. Two completely opposite truths.
Gold sustains a jewellery industry that employs millions. We acknowledge that fully. But at $72 billion of imports, it is also sustaining a dependency that weakens the rupee, contributes to inflation, and drains the foreign exchange reserves that keep our economy stable.
This Is Pro-India:
Mortantra is not anti-gold.
Every family that ever bought gold for a daughter did so from love. That intention was never wrong. The system around it changed. The meaning got somewhere lost.
What we are is pro-India. Pro-craft. Pro-provenance.
We believe that Atmanirbhar, Vocal for Local, Made in India these are more than just slogans. They are a direction for a brighter future of India.
And Indian jewellery craft, made in brass, worked by Indian hands, in Indian workshops, is one of the most honest expressions of that direction available to us today.
Maybe use this national moment to ask what the gold was actually for. And whether there is a more honest way to honour that intention.
Because knowing what is at stake, and choosing with that awareness that is the most patriotic thing any of us can do right now.
Look closely. The provenance is in every detail.
#MortantraForBrass
