Politics of Statues

This refers to a recent PIL Against the proposed Statue in the Ocean to the memory of Shri Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj in Hon. High Court of Mumbai.

A precedent was set by politicians in Tamil Nadu sometime back which has gone unnoticed. Vivekananda Rock Memorial is familiar to many for its historical and cultural significance and remains a major tourist attraction of Kanyakumari. Recent addition of 133’ high (to represent 133 chapters of Thirukkural) Thiruvalluvar statue simply dwarfs the rock memorial. Just take a look at any photo available on web. I have great respect for Saint Thiruvalluvar for his teachings are relevant to even present day corporate governance and today’s life style.

It is a political move to dwarf a national memorial and draw attention to another as a part of vote-bank tactics and politics of hatred. I wonder whether anyone ever questioned this. If the idea is to have a befitting statue to a saint, surely they could have found any number of locations.



Mayawati institutionalized statue erection process and has taken it to sublime level. In a different way, recently the state governments of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka displayed maturity and statesmanship in signing truce to stop decades old war-of-statues between them and entered into a collaboration of unveiling statues in each other’s state with the participation of statesman of both the states. With this inter-state water disputes have taken a back seat. Bereaved state of Andhra Pradesh is seriously planning a memorial (obviously with a statue) for late YSR. Nothing short of it will be befitting as around 500 people have committed suicide or died of heart attack on watching the helicopter debris on TV.

The era of 6’ size statues for Gandhi, Nehru and Ambedkar is clearly on wane. It is positive sign in the sense our politicians have realized the need to live in present. Now dawns the new era of global size statues with Olympic size budgets. This clearly defines a new paradigm and a quantum leap in the thinking process of our wise politicians.

Since I am not in the profession of politics my dream may remain largely unrealized. I had a dream to utilize 0.0000001% black money lying in one of Swiss Banks to erect a statue of one of our late national leaders on Mount Everest so that his direct glance will bless the entire nation. Beijing may not view my idea sympathetically as the shadow is bound to fall on their nation.