Tamil Nadu Knife Sharpeners Struggle: Traditional Craft Faces Decline Amidst Online Competition

Harichandrapuram in Tiruvallur, about 70km from Chennai, is known as a village of knife sharpeners (saanakkaaran in Tamil). About 800 families live in this Urdu-speaking, Muslim-majority hamlet, more than half engaged in knife sharpening, the men travelling hundreds of kilometres across Tamil Nadu by train and bus in search of customers. Kareemullah K is one of them. In Harichandrapuram, Kareemullah lives in a hut, but the knife-sharpener spends most of his nights on pavements in various towns and cities, his 15kg iron sharpening wheel and megaphone tucked under his legs, a sack of clothes for a pillow. The 33-year-old says he travels between Chennai, Coimbatore and Erode, walking several kilometres each day. There are days he does not eat, going to sleep after drinking only a glass of water.

“I don’t ever really sleep,” says Kareemullah. “I have to stay alert for footsteps or a patrol van. The police question or threaten me because of the number of knives I carry. Sometimes, I am attacked by people who want to steal knives. I used to be scared, but now I see it as part of the job.”At dawn, Kareemullah is back on the road, calling out “saana kathi, saana kathi (shining knives),” hoping someone will open their gate.

Till a couple of years ago, knife sharpeners like Kareemullah were a common sight across Tamil Nadu, a spectacle for children playing on the streets. Today, in a fast-moving world where almost every service is online, these traditional artisans struggle to survive.“Harichandrapuram is one of the few known knife-sharpener villages in Tamil Nadu. There may be more community clusters we don’t know about, as no research or survey has been done on the community,” says Kombai Anwar, heritage educator and researcher who specialises in Muslim history.“The nearest school is almost 15km away, so most of us don’t study. Like me, many cannot leave this trade because it is all we know,” says Kareemullah, who learned the craft from his uncle. Most boys take up the trade, he says, while most girls are married off. “Now the younger generation is stepping out for better jobs as clerks and sales executives. A few women are studying, are more educated than the men, and are taking up receptionist and administrative roles, which is a good sign since the trade is on the decline,” he adds.“We have been living in this village for more than 100 years,” says Shahjahan M, who makes a four-hour commute to Chennai every day to sharpen knives, scissors, sickles and cleavers. “Initially, our forefathers did ammi kal kuththura velai (chiselling pits into hand-grinding stones) for a living and moved to knife sharpening after people began buying electric grinders. This is a generational trade. I learned the craft from my father, who learned it from his father.

”Shahjahan charges `40 for steel knives and `20 for iron ones. “You might think that’s fair, but the bigger the house, the harder they bargain,” says the 40-year-old with a tired smile. “When business is dull, we sell new knives.” Most sharpeners, says Shahjahan, earn about `5,000 a month. Repeatedly lifting the wheel on and off his bike has left him with chronic back pain that refuses to ease, no matter what he tries.Trade has halved, says Kareemullah, with people now buying kitchen sharpening stones online.

“But those can’t match what we do. After cutting vegetables six or seven times, the knives go blunt again. The sharpness we give lasts longer. It’s a technique. Now, my only customers are regulars and sometimes senior citizens who understand the craft,” says Kareemullah.

Roots of a craftAnthropologists say there is little research on knife-sharpening communities. Heritage educator Kombai Anwar says they have long been part of artisanal and semi-nomadic trade networks.

“Though this trade isn’t tied to any single caste or religion, such hereditary craftsmanship was historically viewed as ‘lowly’,” says Anwar.M P Damodaran, head of the department of anthropology at the University of Madras, says the knife-sharpening community traces its roots to Muslim blacksmith groups within older craft systems organised by material (wood, stone, metal, and leather), rather than religion.

“Hindus typically worked with wood, Christians with stone, Muslims with metal, and certain dalit groups with leather,” he says. “The division wasn’t religious to begin with.

Hindus largely worked with wood for temple construction. Many Christians came from masonry and construction castes, so their skills with stone continued after conversion. Muslims, on the other hand, were often metalworkers as Islamic traders introduced advanced metal tools and techniques from West Asia, influencing local craftsmanship,” says Damodaran.As urbanisation and industrial tools replaced blacksmithing, many of these metalworking families adapted by taking up knife sharpening and repair work, carrying their skills into a new, mobile form of labour, he says.