The collapse of the Shivaji statue in the coastal town of Malvan in Maharashtra within eight months of being unveiled by the Prime Minister is a deep embarrassment to the state government in Maharashtra.
Given a very short time span, it was built by an inexperienced Jaydeep Apte, 24. It was unveiled in a hurry solely to get votes in the Lok Sabha elections, it is being argued.
The collapse on August 27 is another blow to the coalition government including the BJP, the breakaway Shiv Sena faction and the breakaway NCP faction, its image is sliding every day.
The statue was unveiled on Navy Day last December and the Navy was involved in its construction but it is not clear how much involvement was there of the state government. The state government’s director of art, Rajiv Mishra, says the directorate had given permission for only six feet of height on the basis of the clay model submitted to it but it was built to a height of 35 feet without getting its approval.
Bhagwan Rmpure, senior sculptor, says it was wrong to allot the work to an inexperienced young man who had just passed out of college.
The crash is an insult not only to Shivaji, the revered figure in Maharashtra, but also to India’s great tradition of sculpture. The most famous statue of Shivaji was made after work of eleven years by Nanasaheb Karmarkar, well known sculptor, and was installed in 1928 at Shivaji Nagar in Pune by British governor Leslie Wilson..
Karmarkar worked on it in the Naval Mazagaon Dock and it was transported with much careful planning in a wagon by railway to Pune surmounting many logistics problems.
The area where it was installed was known as Bamburda village and because of the statue it came to be known as Shivaji Nagar which is now a prime area in Pune, adjoining Deccan Gymkhana area.
That statue has served as a model for several others over the next several decades. It was the first of its kind in India and was built with the initiative of the liberal Shahu Maharaj of Kolhapur. The British supported the move in recognition of the services rendered by Maratha soldiers in the first world war.
Karmarkar created numerous fine works and many of these can be seen in the museum in his house in Alibag district.
The most famous sculptor in India perhaps was Debi Prasad Roy Chowdhury, who was born in a rich zamindar family but had great sympathies for labour and socialism.
His most famous work is the Triumph of Labour, also known as the Labour statue, installed at the Marina Beach, Chennai, India. Erected at the northern end of the beach at the Anna Square opposite University of Madras, it is an important landmark of Chennai. The statue shows four men toiling to move a rock, depicting the hard work of the labouring class.It is the earliest one to be erected on the beach and is installed close to the site where the country’s first commemoration of May Day was held. The statue was installed on the eve of the Republic Day in 1959, as part of the Kamaraj government’s drive to beautify the beach. The statue remains the focal point of May Day celebrations in the city
On a summer evening in May 1923, M. Singaravelu, a labour union leader, conducted a meeting at the Marina Beach near Triplicane, calling for recognition of workers’ rights, and pledged to create a political party to represent the rights of labourers, which was India’s first ever May Day rally.[2] To commemorate this, the Labour statue, depicting an inspiring posture of a team of labourers engrossed at arduous work, was sculpted by Chowdhury who was the first Indian principal of the then Government of Madras School of Arts and Crafts (what is today the Tamil Nadu Government College of Fine Arts.
And collapse occurred on the coast where the first important naval figure in modern India, Kanhoji Angre managed to maintain an unquestionable hold over a heavily disputed stretch of coastline throughout the early decades of the 18th century. At its peak in 1729, Angre’s Maratha fleet held a mere 80 ships, many of them little more than overgrown fishing boats engineered by the local kolis (fisher folk) who populated his domain. Yet with the combination of that modest fleet and an unsurpassed strategic mind, Angre established a fearsome authority in the name of the Maratha Emperors over a vast swath of India’s west coast. The competition was fierce and came from some of the greatest powers of the day – the Portuguese, the British, and the Mughals in the form of their coastal vassals, the Siddis, as experts have pointed out. INS Angre establishment in Mumbai is a living reminder of that.
One of his strengths must have been an understanding of the role of the wind. As far as possible, no engagement on the high seas; coastal waters were preferred, since the stronger winds at sea would benefit foreign ships because of their better spread of sail
Attack was generally from the leeward or astern side. If enemy ships were to pursue the Maratha ships, the latter could make the use of shallow creeks and bays as a cover, where larger enemy ships could not follow
Attack from astern ensured that the enemy ships could not bring to bear her broadside guns while Maratha Grabs could deploy its guns firing over the prow
A constant readiness for a retreat, making use of the creeks and fort guns
Enemy ships were captured by hand-to-hand combat after boarding the ship
The crash of the statue is being widely resented and it is likely to hit the BJP’s expansionist plans in Maharashtra with the assembly elections due before the year end.
Vidyadhar Date is a senior journalist, culture critic and author of a book on the importance of public transport
