thestar.com
Ujjal Dosanjh, former Canadian Minister of Health, said “Building a statue isn’t going to feed anyone, it isn’t going to clothe anybody, it isn’t going to provide schools.”
Retired Canadian politician Ujjal Dosanjh has written an open letter to the prime minister of India, criticizing plans to build a statue worth almost $700 million.
The statue will be of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, a 17th-century Indian warrior king who carved out a kingdom that formed the Maratha Empire and who revived many ancient Hindu traditions.
The statue will be the world’s tallest at approximately 190 metres and cost more than $675 million (Canadian), according to Dosanjh’s letter. International media reports have the statue ranging from 190 metres to 192 metres, and costing between $710 million and $720 million.
It will be built on reclaimed land in the Arabian Sea of Mumbai. Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid the foundation stone for the statue, which will be completed by 2019, over the weekend.
“Even in the midst of struggle, Shivaji Maharaj remained a torchbearer of good governance,” Modi said at the inaugural event according to Al Jazeera.” So many aspects of his personality inspire us.”
This prompted Dosanjh to write a column in the Indian Express newspaper accusing Modi of thrusting India into “the politics of pandering to regional and other identities.”
“From my perspective it’s political pandering. It’s trying to drudge up historical nonetheless important figures to appeal to regions and groups of people and appear to be doing something for them when in fact nothing is being done,” Dosanjh told the Star on Tuesday.
“I just think this is politics of distraction . . . . You have a prime minister in that country that has done nothing about corruption for two-and-a-half years.”
Dosanjh also referenced Modi’s currency swap two months ago, which led to cash shortages and Dosanjh said “hurt the economy and hurt ordinary people.”
The Indian government said at the time that demonetizing big currency notes was expected to bring billions of dollars into the economy and tax base, long hobbled by corruption and money laundering.
Ram Sutar, the sculptor of the statue of Shivaji, defended the statue, according to India Times.
“If people had worried about how much the Taj Mahal would cost, it would never have been built,” he said.
Maharashtra chief minister, Devendra Fadnavis, had a similar argument while speaking in the state legislative assembly, according to Al Jazeera.
“How can we think about the cost when it comes to building a memorial for Shivaji Maharaj?” Fadnavis said. “He is our pride and it is only fitting that we should build a grand memorial in his name.”
Categories: The Muslim Times