India – Women’s Hair Offerings to Temples May Be Sold by Temples for High Profit

NEW DELHI, India (WOMENSENEWS)–When Nafisa Ali, a Bollywood actor and
Miss India 1976, shaved her hair, she wasn’t trying to make a style
statement.

She offered her waist-length locks at the 1,200-year-old Sri
Venkateswara Temple in Tirupati, a town in Chittor district of the
southern state of Andhra Pradesh, to thank its deity for granting her a
private wish she had made on behalf of her family that had given her life
new meaning. The tradition of offering hair is a symbol of religious
devotion and surrender of the ego.

“Twelve years ago, when I was 37 years old, I had taken a vow that if
my wish was granted, I would give my hair at Tirupati,” Ali told Women’s
eNews.

Little did she know that this mark of respect to the Hindu gods would
be collected in gunny bags by temple workers and stored in special
containers for auction to hair exporters.

It’s not possible to say exactly where the actor’s hair went, but a
great deal of women’s hair collected at temples winds up as hair
extensions for Hollywood film actors who pay as much as $3,000 for the
final product.

Although both men and women offer their hair at temples, most of the
hair that is exported for the lucrative salon business comes from women.
Women’s hair is usually long, dark and silky, and is most prized by
merchants and wig-makers.

Exporters say hair from men is usually used for coat linings and to
extract L-Cystein, a protein used as raw material for a range of products
including baby food and doughnuts.

Five Categories of Hair

Wholesalers sort hair into five categories. The kind that is black and
longer than 6 inches is the most sought after. This “remy” or “black gold”
category sells for as much as $160 per kilogram.

The second category of black hair, between 8 and 16 inches long, sells
for around $44 a kilogram. The third category of black hair, shorter than
8 inches, sells for under a dollar a kilogram. The fourth and fifth
categories are gray hair shorter than 8 inches, which sell for about 10
cents a kilogram.

Once exporters have bought hair they re-sort it into straight, wavy,
silky and curly hair. The hair is then shampooed, dried in the sun and
combed.

Every year hair worth about $136 million is shipped from India, one of
the largest exporters of human hair, to factories in China. There, Chinese
hair is mixed with Indian hair to make wigs and hair extensions for
Western markets.

While China is the biggest market for Indian hair, Jaswanth
Soundarapandian, regional director of the government’s council on hair
export, says other countries are also important. He told Women’s eNews
that hair worth $82 million was exported to the United States during the
2004-05 fiscal year, 30 percent more than the previous year. He said that
for the three-quarter period between April 2005 and December 2005 exports
fetched $54 million.

“There has been a steady rise in demand from China,” he says. “However,
while it remains our biggest buyer, the burgeoning hair fashion trends in
countries like the United States of America and European countries have
helped to expand trade.”

Hollywood a Major Consumer

Exporters say buyers from countries such as the United States pay $1.50
for a strand of hair that expensive beauty salons may then weave into
extensions or wigs that can sell for between $1,500 and $3,000. Exporters
say that Hollywood is one of the biggest consumers of human hair.

“Hair that is thrown away is waste but hair that is collected is
money,” says Kishore Gupta, one of the largest exporters of human hair.
Gupta says his Chennai-based Gupta Enterprises boasts an annual turnover
of over $20 million and that he expects this figure to grow in coming
years.

Hindu temples, where devotees such as Nafisa Ali tonsure their hair,
are the largest hair suppliers. The top grosser is the famous temple in
Tirupati.

Every year, over 9 million devotees stand in serpentine queues to pay
obeisance to its deity and have their heads shorn to fulfill a vow or
pledge. After the hair is collected, the temple stores it in 14 steel
containers, with male and female hair kept separate. Once the warehouse is
stocked, auction notices are advertised in four languages, all south
Indian, in three popular newspapers and on the temple’s official Web
site.

In the most recent financial year the temple sold over 3 million kilos
of hair for about $1 million.

Hair Offerings Rising With Population

Temple administrators say that the volume of hair has been increasing
every year since the 1980s as the number of devotees has risen in tandem
with the overall population of the country.

The temple, which employed only a few barbers in the 1960s and 1970s
now employs 600 barbers who work around the clock. Demand for their
services is so intense that the temple has begun allowing women into the
formerly all-male ranks.

In May 2005, 100 female barbers joined the “kalyanakatta,” the temple
enclosure where tonsuring is performed. The female barbers cater to female
devotees, who number about 4,500 out of the 20,000 who tonsure their hair
every day.

While the female barbers earn about $68 a month, their female clients
are paid nothing. Male and female devotees offer their hair as part of
religious practice.

Exporters also buy hair from salons and rag-pickers. In the village of
Bhagyanagar, Karnataka, about 2,000 families depend on the hair they
collect from garbage dumps.

Gupta, the hair exporter, said that he distributes plastic bags to
women in the local village near his factory in Eluru, Andhra Pradesh, to
keep outside their huts. Every time they comb their hair, those that fall
are collected in the bag. After a week, a broker will collect these bags
and pay the women a small sum.

Swapna Majumdar is a journalist based in New Delhi writing on
politics, gender and development
issues.