Honour the Sardar, don't forget Indira

Prime Minister Narendra Modi got the “Statue of Unity” — the world’s tallest statue — erected in honour of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and inaugurated it in Gujarat on Wednesday, the 143rd birth anniversary of the redoubtable freedom fighter and India’s first home minister, amid state-sponsored fanfare.

But all Indians, of all classes and regions, will find it inexplicable that Mr Modi should altogether overlook the fact that October 31 is also an anniversary of the tragic assassination of Indira Gandhi, who was not only the tallest of world leaders in her day but a deeply admired one within the country though she had her critics.

Mrs Gandhi was cut down on account of fighting Pakistan-fanned terrorism in Punjab. She had also helped bring about the birth of Bangladesh, cutting Pakistan to size. In independent India, no other leader can lay a greater claim to preserving the country’s unity and integrity. Yet, Mr Modi has chosen to forget this. The reasons are narrow, partisan politics. But ordinary people have longer memories.

Mr Modi especially got the Patel statue erected at a cost of some Rs 3,000 crores for reasons that are wholly unclear. In the absence of a clear explanation it may only be surmised that he aims to draw electoral dividend from this exercise.

Every Indian knows of the stalwart contribution of Sardar Patel in integrating the erstwhile princely states into newly-independent India. The great man needs no statuary edifice to remind us of his invaluable life, just like  Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru do not. Gandhi, Nehru and Patel (and Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose) sit in the hearts of all Indians. They are not in need of sarkari pooja and remembrance. The kings of yore built statues to themselves so that the world may not forget them. Mr Modi’s political energy that has gone into the Statue of Unity would thus appear to be an exercise in superfluity.

For the sake of perspective, we cannot but note that while Mr Modi, a Gujarati, built the statue to commemorate a fellow Gujarati, he forgot another Gujarati great — Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, who is still remembered and deeply admired by the world, though the RSS, from which the current PM springs, sees him very differently. This tells its own story.

And since the PM himself has made so much of the fact that the statue he has had built (at such great cost) is the tallest in the world, he should brace himself for the fact that this distinction is expected shortly to be eclipsed by the Shivaji statue in Mumbai. There is a cynical view abroad that since the achievements of the present regime are limited, by any yardstick, the PM wishes to go down at least as a builder of monuments.