We bet many of you don’t know the story behind the national emblem of India, leave alone who designed it. You would be surprised to know the fact and we feel bad to pen it down especially at this time, only due to the fact that the person who designed and made it, Mr. Dinanath Bhargava, died at the age of 89 in Indore yesterday. Mr. Dinanath Bhargava was the man behind the Lion Capital of Ashoka, the proud India’s national emblem. He also happens to be the person who scripted the initial few pages of the original manuscript of the Indian Constitution.
Dinanath Bhargava was born in the year 1927 and after pursuing 3-year Diploma in Fine Arts at Shantiniketan; he was noted by the Principal of Kala Bhavan Shanti Niketan, Nandlal Bose, who later selected him to be a part of the team responsible for designing the pages of the Indian Constitution’s manuscript. When Bhargava was working on the emblem, he used to visit the Kolkata zoo, which was about 100 kilometres away from the place where he used to reside, only to study lions so that they look close to reality in the emblem. When the initial sketches of emblem were selected, Bhargava was assigned to design the emblem for the first page of the Constitution, and his final design, the Lion Capital of Ashoka, was adopted on 26 January 1950, as the national emblem.
Dinanath Bhargava also decorated the first 30 pages of the Indian constitution’s first copy, using gold calligraphic text. He actually never saw or read the complete version of the manuscript until the year 2006, when he saw it finally at Lalit Kala Akademi.
Apart from these two major accomplishments, Dinanath Bhargava was also very much renowned for his wash paintings that are known for their lack of apparent brush strokes and semi transparent nature. He is also credited for bringing Madhubani paintings on cloth and was the director of All India Handloom Board till his retirement in 1986. He was also honoured by the Madhya Pradesh government for setting up carpet making industry in Gwalior and for his immense contribution to the Indian world of art and crafts.
Despite having done so many things, he remained untouched by the fame and drama all his life and he rarely sold any of his paintings. Indore HD salutes the man who not only did something incredible for this country, but also for the fact that he made Indore proud. We lost one of its best artists; the amazing man who gave India its iconic emblem.
