Two days before Independence Day, Jain University, Bengaluru, kicked off a fortnight-long celebration, as mandated by the HRD Ministry, by building a model of the warship INS Vikrant — the first aircraft carrier used by the Indian government in the 1971 Indo-Pak war.
The 22-feet replica of the warship keeps the memories of the war alive in the minds of millennials. The idea to build the warship model was conceived by the animation department of Jain University and it took one month to complete the structure.
Talking about this initiative Dinesh Damodaran, HoD of the animation department said, “Students of the animation department have come together to build a model of INS Vikrant R11 to showcase the significance of this warship. Every year we come up with some new initiative to observe Independence Day in our university and this year we conceptualised this idea to evoke memories related to one of our wars.”
In keeping with the new UGC norm released by the HRD Ministry to observe a fortnight-long Independence Day celebration from August 9 to 23, the department has put the model of the warship on display from August 13 and will continue to exhibit it till tomorrow.
Professor Somshekhar V K, Visual Art Faculty in the animation department said, “It took total 40 days to build this model and 25 students were involved. We closely studied the structure and design of the original warship, and then started with sketching and sectional drawing, and then implemented it in to the design. We tried to replicate all the significant details and bring 90 per cent similarity in the model.”
Hemant Raj, a student of Visual Art Animation said, “Before building the model we had a pre-production of nearly fifteen days. We studied the history of INS Vikrant and went through all its details and then built a base for the model.”
Apart from flag hoisting on Independence Day, the university’s celebration included a video session on INS Vikrant and a 10-minute talk on the historical warship.