Known as India’s glass and bangle capital, Firozabad has sustained a centuries-old craft tradition dating back to the Mughal era. Today, the city’s workers face an uncertain future as the ongoing conflict in West Asia disrupts natural gas supplies, slows production, and exposes the fragility of global supply chains.
According to legend, it was a eunuch named Firoz Khwaja who founded the modern-day Firozabad near Agra in the state of Uttar Pradesh. By the early 17th century, when Europeans arrived in India, the city was already a major centre of glasswork. In 1631, the English traveller and writer Peter Mundy (1597-1667) wrote in his travelogue that the city was a “well-situated and thriving place, recognised for glassware and local trade.” The French jeweller and traveller Tavernier, who visited India during the reign of Emperor Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb, also mentioned Firozabad as a hinterland of Agra, famous for its glass trade.
Although proto-glass such as faience and glazed quartz beads existed in India as early as the late Indus Valley Civilisation, circa 1700 BCE, modern glassware arrived in India during the Mughal period, brought by Persian merchants. Under Mughal patronage, Indian craftsmen set up royal workshops across India — although much of this work focused on producing glass vessels and ornaments.
In Firozabad, the glassworkers specialised in making bangles. Most of these businesses were run by entire family units whose household labour turned the city’s pre-modern glass craft into a modern urban industry. In the early 1900s, Rustam Ustad (1892-1947) invented the iron rod for making bangles in two new styles known as ‘bok’ and ‘duniya do rangi’. In 1918, he also developed another new type of bangle known as ‘reshamchuri’. As the industry modernised in the post-Independence period and transitioned from coal to gas furnaces, the city became India’s largest glass manufacturing centre.
Today, Firozabad accounts for a majority of India’s total unorganised glass production, with over 100,000 people making bangles alone. Firozabad is the largest producer of bangles in India, accounting for almost half of the country’s total bangle production. Other glass products manufactured in Firozabad include tableware, lighting, containers, automotive glass, and laboratory equipment.
Today, Firozabad accounts for a substantial share of India’s unorganised glass production and remains the country’s largest producer of glass bangles. But the ongoing conflict in West Asia has placed the city’s already precarious and over-exploited workforce under renewed strain. Recent reports indicate that disruptions to regional energy supplies and shipping routes have reduced the availability of natural gas, the fuel that keeps Firozabad’s furnaces running at temperatures exceeding 1,000°C. With production cut back across many units and workers increasingly employed on rotation, a geopolitical crisis unfolding thousands of kilometres away has become a daily economic reality in India’s glass capital — a reminder of how deeply local livelihoods are entangled with global supply chains.
Learn more about how the ongoing crisis is affecting Firozabad’s glass industry here.
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