In 1916, a new establishment opened its doors at 2139 Center Street in downtown Berkeley, California. Named Bagai’s India Arts and Curios, it was founded by Vaishno Das Bagai, an early South Asian immigrant to the United States.
This store stood half a block away from what is today known as Kala Bagai Way, named in honor of Vaishno Das Bagai’s wife, and a notable figure in the history of South Asian American immigration.
The store was featured in a 1916 article in the Berkeley Daily Gazette, which described the new business in vivid detail:
The India Art and Curio Store was opened here on Friday last at 2139 Center street. It handles all kinds of silk and gold embroideries, furs, woolen blankets and curious which are India’s own specialty. The silk embroideries are made by village women of different parts of India especially by those of Kashmere, who are cooped up in their little huts during heavy snowy winter months.
The gold embroideries have been made by the descendants of those who spent their lives in making dresses for the royal families of India several centuries ago. The hereditary professions are followed with a passion by these handicraftsmen and are never pursued with any calculation of the market value of these products.
With great difficulty these art products and curios have been collected and brought over to this country. Everything in the store has a history of its own which is told to visitors whenever asked
A large ad for the store in the previous day’s newspaper reads:
India Art and Curios
As an opening inducement our special line of all imported Himalayan furs consisting of wolf skins, hyenas, silver tip fox, and minx, and the indescribably beautiful Ko-bruk, which must be seen to be appreciated, all at greatly reduced prices. Visit the store and inspect this complete line of imported art goods, embroideries, etc., etc.
Bagai’s, 2139 Center St., near Oxford
Telephone Berk. 8774.
A final tiny ad for the store appears about four months later, promising 25% discounts. It’s unclear when the store shut down, and how it intersected with the Bagais’ attempt to move to Berkeley.
When we began the campaign for renaming two blocks of Shattuck after Kala Bagai, we had no idea that the Bagais ran a store half a city block away. Could Vaishno Das Bagai have imagined that a century on, the adjoining street would be renamed after his wife, a young Punjabi bride just learning English?
The city of Berkeley has a secret layer of South Asian American history, often unknown even to us. One of the joys of running the Berkeley South Asian Radical History Walking Tour is our ability to share fresh new discoveries like this, made only in 2021, after the street renaming.
Today, as we walk down Kala Bagai Way, it’s fascinating to reflect on not only this uncanny historical coincidence, but at all the secret layers of history even we don’t know. Bagai’s India Arts and Curios Store may have been a small establishment, but the immigrant business, and the people who ran it, are a precious layer of the people’s history of the city.
Sources
- Berkeley Daily Gazette, July 22 1916 evening, p. 3, col. 3, “New Art and Curio Curio Store Opened Here”
- Berkeley Daily Gazette, July 21 1916, page 2, column 2, large ad
- Berkeley Daily Gazette, November 6 1916, page 5, column 4, small ad
- Kala Bagai article on Wikipedia (which we wrote!)
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