Revanasa Basava
With Lakkubai, in Hanumasagar. A few looms and a field. Weaving on a small scale, and it was the whole living.
Our Story
A Legacy Woven in Time
From a rented house in Betigeri to sarees known across the country. Four generations of one weaving family.
Our family did not begin in Betigeri. In Hanumasagar, a town then in Raichur district and today in Koppal, Revanasa Basava and Lakkubai wove on a small scale and farmed alongside it. Their third child, Shanmukhasa, was born there on 1 April 1935.
When the Razakars of the Nizam's Hyderabad made the village unsafe, the family left it and came to Betigeri to find work. They lived in a rented house. To eat, they sold household goods for women and children at fairs, weekly markets and village functions, and sold garlic beside them.
The loom is what turned it. Under the eldest brother, Megharajasa, the brothers gave themselves to weaving completely. The sarees sold faster than they could weave them, and so they asked the plain question: why not put up more looms, and sell what we weave ourselves?
Two hundred looms came out of that question, and with them a living for around three hundred families. Weaving made hundreds of people in Betigeri prosperous in their own right, and that, more than any single saree, is what this family counts as its achievement.
The Saree
What an Ilkal carries
The Ilkal saree is older than almost anything else you will wear. Weaving is recorded around the town of Ilkal, in Bagalkot, from the eighth century under the Chalukyas, and the form has held ever since: a cotton or cotton-silk body, a silk border, and a pallu joined to the body by hand rather than stitched to it.
In North Karnataka it has never been a costume. It is what a woman is married in, what she wears to the temple, and what she folds away for a daughter. A good one outlasts by a generation the occasion it was bought for.
Since 2007 the craft has carried a Geographical Indication, the law's way of recording that this saree belongs to this corner of Karnataka, and to the people who have always woven it.
Maker, Not Merchant
We make what we sell
Most places that sell sarees buy them in. We weave ours. The looms are ours, the weavers are people we know by name, and nothing here was bought from somewhere else and given our label.
- 1 Quality is settled at the loomWe choose the yarn and set the warp ourselves. A fault is caught on the loom, where it can still be fixed. Not at the counter, where it can only be argued about.
- 2 The designs are our ownWe draw them, and we put them on the loom. It is why you will not find the same saree in the next shop, and why a pattern from our grandfather's time can still be woven on request.
- 3 We can weave what you ask forA colour, a border, a length. A manufacturer can put it on a loom. A shop can only look for it on a shelf.
- 4 Nothing sits between the loom and youBasava Silk Creations was founded on a single principle: sold direct by the weavers. Four generations on, it still holds.
Four Generations
One family, one craft, carried forward
Each generation added something the last did not have, and gave up nothing that mattered.
The Brothers
Megharajasa, Shanmukhasa and Ganapatasa, beginning again in Betigeri with nothing but the trade they knew. Two hundred looms grew out of it.
The Shops and the Name
S.R. Basava & Sons first, then Shri Srinivas Handloom Works, Basava Handloom and Basava Textile. Today the name is Basava Silk Creations, and the principle has not changed: sold direct by the weavers.
The Brothers Today
Krishnasa, Balramsa and Srinivasasa Basava. Three brothers, the fourth generation to stand at these looms, and the ones who made the business what it now is.
In Memory
Shanmukhasa Revanasa Basava
1 April 1935 – 11 November 2025
He was the third of Revanasa and Lakkubai's four children, and the one who carried the weaving from a rented house to a name known well beyond Karnataka.
Having handed the business to his children, he turned to the town. He was a trustee and then president of the Shrirangapattana Mutt, and paid for what it needed out of his own pocket; the assembly hall was finished in his time and opened for anyone to use. Nobody who came to the house was sent away empty-handed.
Those who knew him in Gadag and Betigeri tend to remember the jokes first.
Behind the work stood Tippubai Basava, at the loom with him day and night, and in every decision he took.
From the tribute by Sri Chandrappa Barangi, Kannada teacher, Gadag. Nekara Sampada, December 2025.
Today
The brothers who run it now
Balramsa Basava took what his elders handed him and saw further than it. With Krishnasa, his elder brother, and Srinivasasa, his younger, he took the business where he could see it going. All three have given it everything they have.
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Krishnasa Basava Krishnasa Basava
The eldest of the three
[What Krishnasa looks after: the looms, the weavers, the buying, the shop. One line in his own words is worth more than three in ours.]
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Balramsa Basava Balramsa Basava
The middle of the three
He carried the business into its fourth generation and set the direction it has held since. [The decision he is proudest of: a year, a first order, a loom put up when it was not obvious.]
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Srinivasasa Basava Srinivasasa Basava
The youngest of the three
[What Srinivasasa looks after: the looms, the weavers, the buying, the shop. One line in his own words is worth more than three in ours.]
The looms are still in Betigeri. So are they.
The Weavers
The hands behind every saree
Every saree that leaves our workshop was made by someone we know by name. Many of the families weaving with us today have done so for three generations.
At its height the family's looms supported around three hundred households, and gave work to hundreds of people in Betigeri. Not as a favour, but as a trade they could grow prosperous on.
[How many weavers work with you today, and what the work means for their families.]
See the Collection