The project has been instigated by Gujarat Chief Minister
Narendra Modi and will honour Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, the country’s first
Deputy Prime Minister and one of the founding fathers of the Indian Republic.
The 182-metre tall memorial, about twice the height
of New York’s Statue of Liberty, has been named by Modi as ‘The Statue of
Unity’. He says as well as attracting visitors from all over India and the
world, it will be a long-overdue tribute to one of the nation’s foremost
statesmen.
But there is far more to it than that.
Modi is almost certain to be the leader of the main
opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in India’s general election, due in the
middle of 2014. Opposing him will be the incumbent Congress Party dominated by
the Gandhi family. It is still quite possible a member of the latest generation,
Rahul Gandhi, will be Modi’s opponent for Prime Minister, although he has
denied it.
Patel served as deputy to India’s first Prime
Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, who is Rahul’s great-grandfather. While the two
were Cabinet colleagues, they were often at odds, most fundamentally over the fledgling
country’s economic path. Nehru favoured a socialistic planned economy, Patel
was a free marketeer.
Nehru also sought close relations with China,
believing the two Third World giants could dominate Asia in partnership; Patel
warned that China would only see India as a dangerous rival, a fact borne out
by the short-lived war between them in 1962.
Patel is also credited with doing the hard work
that forged India into a single State out of a ramshackle collection of
principalities. He is often referred to as India’s Iron Man.
With Nehru’s socialism long abandoned and India’s
economy booming under a free-market system, many historians now believe that
the country would have been better placed today had Patel been Prime Minister
in those early days.
Add this to the fact that Patel came from Gujarat
and is revered there, and Modi appears to be on to a winner. When the Federal
Environment Ministry announced that they would investigate the statue project –
which also includes a visitors centre, garden, hotel and convention centre –
veteran BJP leader Venkaiah Naidu hit back, saying the intervention was
inspired by the Gandhis who did not want to see Patel memorialised.
Naidu went on to list 450 schemes, projects and institutions
that are named after various members of the Nehru-Gandhi family.
The massive statue will not be completed for four
years, if at all. Well before that the BJP will be hoping it will have done its
work in helping to propel Modi to the leadership of the world’s biggest democracy.
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