Battle of the statues in India
Gujarat and Mumbai to spend billions as they vie for world’s tallest title
SARDAR SAROVAR DAM: The world’s biggest statue is rising in a remote corner of India to honour an independence hero but it could quickly be outdone by a monument to a Hindu warrior king in the sea off Mumbai.
In a burst of nationalist fervour, around US$1bil (RM4.13bil) is being spent on the two giant effigies, each more than twice as tall as the Statue of Liberty.
A 182m-high tribute to independence icon Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel in Gujarat state will be the first to dwarf the Spring Temple Buddha in China, currently the world’s biggest statue at 128m.
Pick-axes are also swinging for a 212m-high likeness of 17th-century king Chhatrapati Shivaji, resplen- dent on a horse and brandishing a sword, which should dominate the Mumbai shoreline from 2021.
An army of 2,500 workers – including several hundred Chinese labourers – are toiling around the clock to put 5,000 squares of bronze cladding on the figure of Patel so it can be ready for inauguration on Oct 31 by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The US$430m (RM1.77bil) “Statue of Unity” overlooking the Sardar Sarovar Dam is a pet project of Modi.
He has predicted it will attract “hordes” of tourists, as the Statue of Liberty does in New York.
Visitors will be able to access a viewing gallery 153m – about chest height on the huge standing figure.
But they will have to travel 250km from the state’s main city of Allahabad to get there.
There is also a political motive to the mega project, with India heading into a campaign for a national election early next year.
Patel was deputy to India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru after independence in 1947 and Modi’s nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party says his name has been unfairly overshadowed by the dominant Nehru dynasty.
Patel became known as the “Iron Man of India” by persuading – through talks and a hint of force – some 550 princely states to become part of India after independence from Britain in 1947. He died in 1950.
Many Hindu nationalists feel it was a slight when Patel was asked to step aside to let the secular Nehru become the country’s first leader.
“Modi has used Patel’s legacy a lot in his election campaigns,” said Ghanshyam Shah, a former professor of class politics at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi.
“He is very likely to use the Statue of Unity during the upcoming campaign but I am worried about how it will influence voters,” Shah added.
In 2016, Modi also laid the foundation stone in Maharashtra state for the statue of Shivaji, a hero of the 80 million strong Marathi community based in the state.
Hindu nationalists have also adopted Shivaji, who made his name battling the Muslim Mughal empire. Critics say the US$515mil (RM2.13bil) statue is a way of winning Marathi votes.