Sethu Das
Founder: Friends of Tibet + Design & People
After graduating from the Maharaja Sayajirao University, Vadodara, Sethu Das went to Srinagar for an assignment and accidentally reached Dharamshala, the seat of the Tibetan Government-in-Exile. And found his calling in life. Moved by the stories of Chinese atrocities in Tibet related to him by the former Tibetan political prisoners, he founded the Friends of Tibet, a pressure group in 1999 with one member — an organization he never registered!
In 2003, Sethu Das co-founded Design & People with the slogan — 'Design For People In Need'. Today Design & People is a global network of designers and architects working toward social and humanitarian projects. In 2019, he formed the Friends of Tibet [Research] to conduct and publish research on the heritage, legacy, and history of Tibet in collaboration with scholars, academicians, sociologists, and holistic health educationists. Among other things, Sethu Das has the rare distinction of dropping out of the Industrial Design Centre of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay, one of the premier institutes in India. He has held workshops on social and political design and has curated symposiums, which include — "Re-Designing the East: Political Design in Asia and Europe". Sethu Das has worked with The Economic Times, Netscribes, IIT Bombay, and the National Institute of Design (NID) as a Consultant and as a Resource Faculty. He has also served as an International Observer in Sri Lanka and in other conflict regions.
Sethu Das was mentored by his father Yesudasan, a political cartoonist from Kerala, and Richard Rosenkranz, a Pulitzer Prize nominee in history and a correspondent from the US Senate who later appointed him as the Director of the Florida-based World Tibet Day Foundation. He now devotes his time to various philanthropic initiatives of Friends of Tibet Foundation as its Trustee Chair. From being a designer to starting socially-conscious movements, he is a man of varied tastes and talents. You won't, however, find him enjoying a bottle of Coca-Cola!
writings.
Free to share, distribute or republish without permission.
With His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibetan people (2012). Photo: Ramesh Kumar PS
interviews.
Interviews with Sethu Das published by magazines and newspapers.
Tibet Rights Collective
(July 2023)
Mathrubhoomi
(July 2020)
Architect & Interiors
(September 2009)
The Epoch Times, USA (April 2008)
Malayalam, India
(April 2008)
'items', Netherlands (May 2006)
Outlook, India
(January 2005)
contact.
Sethu Das, PO Box 16674, Mumbai 400050, India.
