Opinion Remembering Achyut Yagnik: Mentor with a big heart

Yagnik was a polymath and scholar who encouraged and guided young researchers, activists

August 5, 2023 11:25 AM IST First published on: Aug 5, 2023 at 06:00 AM IST

I met Achyutbhai on a January morning in 1990, after I had graduated from the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad. Waiting for me in the doorway of Setu, the organisation he established in 1982, was a stocky man in kurta and trousers, cheeks rosy in the winter morning, asking me with a friendly smile if I would like some tea. Over that cup of tea, I told him that I had written an undergraduate thesis on Gandhi’s communication strategies and I wanted to study the Salt Satyagraha but was unsure about how to get started. “Start here,” he said, “trace the march and I’ll introduce you to people you can interview”. I joined Setu and it was the beginning of an association of three decades, over rather too many cups of tea that ended in the early hours of this morning.

He introduced me to grassroots activism, books, and poetry and listened keenly to my experiences and opinions. He complimented me on my ability to read, write and speak Gujarati even though the Tamilian in me struggled with gendered nouns.

The Gujarati language was dear to Achyutbhai. He was an accomplished, and published, poet in the language and had a wide knowledge of medieval and modern Gujarati poetry. In the early days, I was puzzled by the number of dictionaries and thesauruses at Setu — till I saw his interest in etymology and how Persian, Arabic and Portuguese words found their way into Gujarati. His curiosity and fastidiousness were infectious, and we all became conscious of the way we used words, in any language.

His other great interest was in the architecture of Gujarat. He took me to the temple and Buddhist site at Shamlaji, pointed out the Scythian influence in the boots the Sun god wore at Modhera, showed me the Jain temples at Taranga and Bhadreshwar, the Varaha temple at Kadvar and the mosques at Somnath. The historical coexistence of diverse communities was the foundation of his commitment to building communal harmony in Gujarat, a commitment that was tested repeatedly by politics in the state. Through the 1990s, Setu published historical examples of religious synthesis and harmony reflected in the sculpture, architecture and everyday life in Gujarat.

The richest phase of our association was the years when we wrote two books together — the first was a social history of Gujarat spanning the last 1,000 years and the second marked 600 years of the founding of Ahmedabad.

Achyutbhai had a large personal collection of 19th-century Gujarati books, which he had donated to Setu and added to it books on art, sculpture, poetry, on Gandhi and Gandhians, and almost every aspect of life in Gujarat. It was as if he built the library anticipating the two books. My modernist education brought in material on the 20th century. He was very attentive to my insights.

Each book took us about three years of working day after day, week after week. We argued, wrote, rewrote and the dustbin overflowed with rejected drafts. We often wondered later how we accomplished the task and still managed to stay on speaking terms. Mostly, it was Achyutbhai’s ability to share his knowledge (I used to call him Encyclopaedia Yagnika), listen keenly when I had a contrarian view and then work with me to reconceptualise and rewrite. For many years after the books, he was confident that politics in India would not go the way it did in Gujarat, that India was not Gujarat.

As news of his passing spreads, many people will remember how they were encouraged and supported as young researchers and activists. He took them on field visits, showed them books, introduced them to senior scholars and activists and, above all, listened to what they had to say. He was convinced that social action and social knowledge went hand in hand, that research must support action to secure the rights of marginalised communities and that all action contributed to building knowledge. He visualised Setu as the bridge between these two spheres of human endeavour and made it his job to support every idealistic young person and put them in touch with others.

The writer was Dean, School of Design, Ambedkar University, Delhi and is now visiting professor at Institute of Design, Nirma University, Ahmedabad