Life-size sculptures for Dandi March memorial

Friday, Nov 01, 2013

Mumbai: Life-size sculptures of the 80 marchers who participated in the famous Dandi March along with Mahatma Gandhi will be created within the campus of the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT Bombay) for a grand memorial to be built in Gujarat.

The IIT Bombay has been assigned the responsibility of Design Co-ordination and Implementation in association with the National Design Team of the National Dandi Salt Satyagraha Memorial, a project of the Ministry of Culture.

As part of this project, IIT Bombay will organise two workshops from November 7 to 24 and December 7 to 22 where the life-size sculptures will be created by sculptors and students from different parts of the world. A group of renowned sculptors will be available throughout the workshops as resources to mentor the groups and ensure a high degree of aesthetic quality. Plaster casts would be taken of the 80 clay models produced in the workshops and taken for the processes of making final sculptures in stoneware.

The memorial will mark the historic Dandi March led by Gandhi in 1930 and is proposed to be built on a 15-acre plot in Dandi, Gujarat, at the site where Gandhi and his fellow marchers picked up salt from the sea to break the salt law of the then British rulers. The memorial is conceived as an experiential journey to recreate the spirit and energy of the march and understand the methodology of the non-violent movement, which finally led to India’s freedom from British colonial rule.

Proposed at the site is a statue of Gandhi inside a pyramid of light followed by a group of the life-size stone sculptures of the 80 fellow marchers.

By Pamela Raghunath Correspondent