A 4,000-Year-Old Casting Technique Just Got Its First Legal Address

In 2025, the Bharewa Metal Craft of Betul, Madhya Pradesh — practised by the indigenous Bharewa community of the Gond tribe — received a Geographical Indication (GI) tag, joining a growing list of GI-protected handicrafts from the state that includes Khajuraho Stone Craft and Gwalior Paper Mache. Locally also known as Dhokra, the craft uses the ancient lost-wax casting process: a figure is modelled first in beeswax over a clay core, then encased in more clay, and finally fired so the wax melts away, leaving a mould into which molten brass or bell-metal is poured.

The technique itself is estimated to be roughly 4,000 years old, among the oldest continuously practised metalworking methods in the world, traditionally used by the Bharewa community for ritual objects, tribal deities and figures depicting rural and forest life. The GI tag, filed in September 2024 and formalised in 2025, gives the craft a legal designation tied specifically to Betul and its artisans — meaning, in principle, that only genuine Bharewa-made pieces from the region can carry the name commercially.

Whether that legal designation changes much for the artisans themselves is the open question Antare Kala has already raised once this year, in reporting on the Madhubani and Warli GI-tag debate: a certification mark alone doesn't stop cheaper, mass-produced imitations from undercutting authentic work, nor does it guarantee fair prices reach the Gond craftspeople actually doing the casting. What it does provide is a documented, traceable identity — a starting point, not an endpoint, for protecting a craft this old.

A Geographical Indication tag is a birth certificate for a craft's name — it doesn't yet guarantee the craft a living.

What we'll be watching next: whether Madhya Pradesh pairs this GI recognition with the kind of marketing, fair-price mechanisms and anti-counterfeiting enforcement that turns a legal tag into an actual livelihood improvement for Bharewa artisans.