Dashrath Patel, who helped set up the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad, died after a brief illness on Wednesday. He was 83
It’s hard to describe Dashrath Patel in words. He was like a fragrance that lingers in your memory long after you have been in its vicinity. He was a revolutionary with nuclear energy emanating from his imagination. His enthusiasm for life betrayed childlike freshness that could never be suppressed by the structure of an organisation or the dictates of administrators. His innate creativity found its expression in a wide variety of media he explored—exhibition design, photography, painting, and above all his abstract line compositions, which in my mind placed him equal to Paul Klee.
In fact, it was Dashrath who first introduced me to Paul Klee’s definition of a line, “Taking a dot for a walk”. That was Dashrath’s style of bringing alive most profound concepts with illustrations, quotes and narratives that were both inspiring and memorable. I can cite so many of his quotable quotes. One of the most memorable is about himself. “I am illiterate and speak broken English fluently,” Dashrath said, when talking about the lack of a structured education and his imperfect English. His narratives had a lot more impact on us, the students of the National Institute of Design (NID), than any profound philosophers or teachers who had undergone formal training in any field.
Dashrath was one of the co-founders of NID. He was the first radical, politically-minded designer I met. The only other person from the creative field who has had a comparable impact on my personal philosophy of design and life was Kamladevi Chattopadhyay who, through her close association with India’s freedom-fighters and political fraternity, brought focus on the role of rural artisans in India’s development. I remember visiting “Skills”, a project founded by Dashrath, Chandralekha, Sadanand Menon and a group of artists and designers in Madras during the exploratory stage of my thesis at NID. I was searching for inspiration to select a topic with a social cause and I could only think of Dashrath who would align me with such a cause and a sense of purpose for my design project.
At that time I vividly remember that “Skills” was being persecuted by the then MGR administration for conceptualising a poster with the image of a policeman bearing medals of honor, each carrying an inscription, “Rape”, “Murder” and “Robbery”. I walked away from a weeklong stay with my friends in Madras with a renewed sense of commitment to design for change. I ended up doing a project on design for solid waste management and selected Ishwarbhai Patel, of Safai Vidyalaya, as my guide. Ishwarbhai is known for pursuing Gandhi’s experiments in low-cost sustainable toilets.
Dashrath left NID while I was still a student. We had a mutual admiration for each other which was never expressed, but was clear in how we treated each other. He empathized with me because I was a student at NID during the days when then prime minster Indira Gandhi had put both my parents in prison. I admired him for his non-conformist zeal. He betrayed the creativity of Leonardo da Vinci with a revolutionary bent of mind. Dashrath’s life has taught me one most important thing: “Never let any established system constrain your imagination and pursuit of what you believe in. If you can dream it you can make it happen.” — Uday Dandavate
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