Crafting a National Identity in an International Market: The Beginning of Indian Design

Crafting a National Identity in an International Market

23 October 2024 -

Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister of independent India, wanted to put India on the industrial world map and laid the foundation for design. The Nehruvian vision for design marks the beginning of the roadmap, because Indian design followed that trajectory.

Saloni Mathur states that ‘design, until the time of independence, was promoted as traditional village arts and crafts and distinguished from industrial production’.(1) Hence, in independent India, there was no proper design idiom, and a substantial effort had to be made to establish this.

Nehru’s fascination with the West is well known. In this he was the quintessential Indian of the time, representing both Western and Eastern cultures, though his mind was more profoundly coloured by Western thinking because of his education at Cambridge from 1907 to 1910. In his own words,

I have become a queer mixture of the East and the West … Out of place everywhere, at home nowhere. Perhaps my thoughts and approach to life are more akin to what is called Western than Eastern, but India clings to me, as she does to all her children, in innumerable ways … I am a stranger and alien in the West. I cannot be of it. But in my own country also, sometimes I have an exile’s feeling.(2)

It was this sense of dislocation that set the tone for the development of the nation following independence. The years after 1947 were a time of reappraisal and reconstruction. A young country was confronted with the mammoth task of nation building and of balancing age-old traditions with modern technologies and ideas. According to Rashmi Tamhane and Swapnaa Varma, Nehru realised the need for a ‘language of design’, which could be developed at modern institutions and help further social progress; he had a clear vision for the development of both design and industry for the country.(3) They further elaborate that the task of using industrialisation as a means for the nation’s progress fell to Nehru because the colonial rulers had set up industries and had started developing local manufacturing capabilities mainly to produce, sell, and export products under licenses from parent companies in their own country rather than for India’s benefit.(4)

Nehru believed that India could catch up its delayed modernity by hastening the pace of industrialisation and building new dams, offices, iron and steel plants, factories, airlines, and cities at a historically unparalleled speed. In his words,

The main thing today is that a tremendous amount of building is taking place in India and an attempt should be made to give it a right direction and to encourage creative minds to function with a measure of freedom so that new types may come out, new designs, new types, new ideas, and out of that amalgam something new and good will emerge.(5)

India’s postcolonial world-view under Nehru rejected the bipolarity of the Cold War and came to be known as the non-aligned movement. The Indian government made an effort to convert this position into a design space with a new material culture that used knowledge and local materials to create domestic environments, conforming to the modern living of global standards. As Karim notes, ‘The Industrial Policy Resolution of 1953 articulated the “urgent need” for the development of industrial design and mass production.’(6) With the American standard of living being accepted as ‘ideal’, the Indian Secretariat of Development set-up twelve regional design centres in the late 1950s.(7) These cells designed, manufactured, and publicised prototype examples of everyday objects and furnishings (Figs. 01 & 02). The government responded to middle-class living with an industrial aesthetic.

The use of vernacular materials (bamboo and cane) combined with metal created a hybrid type of furniture that was unusual for India at the time. It can be suggested that because this hybrid furniture design ascribed to a new notion of Indianness, it was a precursor to the contemporary Indian furniture design market.

It marked a step towards creating an Indian identity that most of the contemporary Indian designers also pursue, whether visually or in their design ethos.

In keeping with Nehru’s vision, the National Institute of Design was set up in 1961 (Figs. 03 & 04) in Ahmedabad as a direct consequence of the Ford Foundation, Gautam and Gira Sarabhai, and the submission of the India Report (in 1961) by American designers, Charles and Ray Eames. The Sarabhai family were a strong advocate of art and design. Singanapalli Balaram highlights, Gautam Sarabhai’s approach towards pedagogy was one of creating within the student a concern for the quality of his or her physical environment and for its relevance to human needs.(8) The main premise that this approach was based on was ‘the need for good design in modern mass culture’.(9) It was intended to highlight NID as a symbol of a modernised and industrialised India. The establishment of the NID represented two things: a symbolic break from British dominance in teaching, and a step towards industrialisation.

The work of the Ford Foundation was influenced by the reciprocal flows of knowledge between the West and the global South. Karim outlines the fundamental reason for the NID being established when he says that it was ‘the result of a symbiotic relationship based on the Ford Foundation’s Cold War interest in Indian trade and culture’.(10) The Foundation’s philanthropy extended to all parts of the world and it gave a substantial grant of $750,000 towards the setting up of the NID.(11) International political diplomacy in design was the path forward for India. NID was a trailblazer in design education in India and has become synonymous as the best Indian design institute till date.

Nehru’s outlook for the new nation was to use design, not to shape the country directly, but to indirectly influence how better decisions in design could be made, in order to have an effect on industry and the society as a whole. For him, the use of international diplomatic alliances with artists and designers was not just about realising the need for design but about reducing the gap between the reality in India and the rest of the world. Design continued to make progress under Nehru’s leadership according to his plan and India was on a trajectory for growth, both in industry and design.

References

(1) Saloni Mathur, ‘Charles and Ray Eames in India’ in Jhaveri and Singh, Western Artists and India, p.86.

(2) Jawaharlal Nehru quoted in Chester Bowles, Ambassador's Report. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1954, p.59.

(3) Tamhane and Varma, Sār: The Essence of Indian Design, p.12.

(4) Roberto Bonfatti and Björn Brey, ‘Trade, Industrialisation, and British Colonial Rule in India.’ E-International Relations, August 10, 2020.

(5) Jawaharlal Nehru’s Inaugural Address on March 17, 1959, quoted in Vikramaditya Prakash, Chandigarh’s Le Corbusier: The Struggle for Modernity in Postcolonial India. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002, p.32.

(6) Farhan S. Karim, ‘Postcolonial Confluence: Appropriating Global Norms in Indian Design’ in Christine Guth, Encyclopedia of Asian Design: Transnational and Global Issues in Asian Design. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018, p.18.

(7) Ibid.

(8) S. Balaram, ‘Design Pedagogy in India: A Perspective.’ Design Issues, Vol. 21, No. 4, Indian Design and Design Education, Autumn 2005, p.16.

(9) Das (ed.), 50 Years of the National Institute of Design, p.36.

(10) S. Karim, ‘Postcolonial Confluence: Appropriating Global Norms in Indian Design’, p.2.

(11) Data from the NID Annual Report accessed at the KMC, Ahmedabad. The amount of $750,000 is in US Dollars. It has been quoted here as per the original amount and has not been adjusted for inflation.