What do you have to do to be worthy of your own statue?
Two statues were in the news this week, both controversial in their own way. First, Mayawati, the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, ordered a 45-day-old statue of herself be pulled down to be replaced by a bigger one.
Then Mumbai announced it was building a statue of Shivaji Bhosle, a 17th-century Hindu warrior king more often known by the honorific title Chhatrapati Shivaji. The statue, city officials said, would grace Mumbai’s Back Bay and be taller than New York’s Statue of Liberty.
Mayawati’s self-aggrandisement has provoked a mixture of amusement and scorn. The Hindustan Times pointed out that it takes a certain kind of chutzpah to spend public money on statues of yourself. Amit Varma, who blogs at India Uncut, worries we are at the start of a slippery slope: how long before Mayawati wants a statue of herself taller than Lady Liberty?
But perhaps Mayawati’s chutzpah serves a greater good. Mayawati is both a woman and a Dalit, the name given to those born into the bottom of the Hindu caste system. Neither group, on the whole, has traditionally enjoyed much power in Indian society. Maybe Mayawati intends her statues to herald that changes are afoot? Perhaps she really is India’s Lady Liberty?
Mumbai’s leaders, at least, have chosen to honour a figure whose place in history is more established.
But is Shivaji the best person to be immortalised as India’s New Colossus?
Although the statue is being planned by Maharashtra state’s centre-left Congress-NCP coalition government, Shivaji’s name is more closely linked with the nativist politics of Shiv Sena (the Army of Shivaji), a party in Mumbai which believes that India is an essentially Hindu society and that Mumbai’s long-term residents have greater rights than more recent arrivals to the city.
True, Shivaji was a Hindu who fought the Islamic leaders of the Mughal empire and annexed vast swathes of their land to create the Maratha Empire. But some scholars, including Rafiq Zakaria, have argued that Shivaji’s name has been misappropriated by Hindu nationalists. Shivaji fought not for Hinduism, but for religious freedom, according to Zakaria.
“To show bigotry for any man’s own creed and practices is equivalent to altering the words of the Holy Book,” Shivaji wrote, referring to the Koran, in a letter to the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb, who was felt to lack the religious tolerance of his more liberal predecessors. “Islam and Hinduism are terms of contrast. … If it is a mosque, the call to prayer is chanted in remembrance of Him. If it is a temple, the bells are rung in yearning for Him alone.”
Thanksy Thekkekara, the state government official who told me about the planned statue, said Shivaji was chosen because he was one of Maharashtra state’s “greatest icons” who fought against oppression, including the “Muslim oppression of the Mughals”.
She said he was a was a “great protector of the weak sections of society, including women and the poor.”
What do you think? Is there someone else more deserving than Shivaji of being cast in bronze 300 feet tall and set on a pedestal out in the Arabian Sea? And with the cost of installing the statue expected to be in excess of 1 billion rupees, about $25 million, is this a luxury Mumbai can do without?