Why India doesn't need Sardar Patel's Statue of Unity
On October 31, 2018, India's Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, will unveil the almost 600 feet (182 metres) tall statue of Sardar Patel (called the Statue of Unity). Widely reported to be the tallest in the world – four times as tall as the Statue of Liberty in New York – this statue has been built at a huge cost of about Rs 3000 crores.
Patel, former deputy prime minister of India, on whose 193rd birth anniversary the statue is being unveiled, is called the "Great Unifier" and "Iron Man of India" because he is said to have unified India after the Partition in 1947 and was reputedly a strong administrator.
But I look upon him differently.
I regard the Partition of India in 1947 – which resulted in over 500,000 horrible deaths and millions being displaced – as the greatest crime against India in its 5000-year-old history.
It was a historical British swindle, based on the bogus two-nation theory, and the culmination of the nefarious divide and rule policy whose terrible effects we are still suffering today.
Therefore all Indian political leaders of that time who agreed to it, Jinnah, Nehru and Patel, are in my eyes flawed figures. Should statues be erected in honour of these people?
India and Pakistan are really one country. We were one since Mughal times (in fact the Mughal Empire even included Afghanistan). We share the same culture, look like each other, and speak a common language Hindustani (called Hindi in India and Urdu in Pakistan). When I meet Pakistanis I feel no different from them, and when Indians and Pakistanis meet in foreign countries they socialise as if Partition had never taken place.
Partition did not merely result in the killings and displacement of large number of people in 1947. It had long-term effects. Because of it people of our subcontinent are still poor and suffer from a host of problems like massive unemployment and malnourishment, widespread farmers distress – a problem that has resulted in over 300,000 farmers suicides in India till date – almost total lack of healthcare and good education for our masses, atrocities on minorities etc.
Let me explain this.
If we had remained united under a strong secular modern-minded government then we would have emerged as a global industrial giant like China owing to our huge pool of thousands of bright engineers and scientists – many of whom are manning Silicon Valley in America or are professors in science, maths, and engineering departments in Western countries – as well as immense natural resources.
But instead, we are bogged down by communalism and casteism, and our priorities are building Ram Mandir, ghar wapasi, and cow protection in India, and terrorising Ahmadis and other minorities in Pakistan.
We are so industrially backward that we had to reportedly buy the bronze cladding used in the statue of Patel from China since our own foundries do not know how to make it.
We spend billions of dollars on buying foreign arms (India is reportedly the biggest purchaser of foreign arms in the world) in view of the permanently hostile relations between India and Pakistan, and this expenditure is a heavy drain on the meagre resources of our poor countries (though no doubt it increases the profits of foreign arms manufacturers). Much of this money could have gone on the welfare of our people.
India was, and still is, a semi-feudal country. In feudal and semi-feudal countries, there is latent communalism in society since religion is a powerful force. This communalism could have been destroyed or considerably reduced by rapid industrialisation, which would have definitely taken place in a united India under a strong secular modern-minded Indian government, which while upholding religious freedom would not have tolerated religious extremism and bigotry, and crushed it with an iron hand.
But Partition resulted in increasing communalism, by bringing the latent communalism in our society to the surface, thereby exacerbating it. This impedes our progress, since many Hindus and Muslims regard each other as enemies, and so we fight with each other, instead of regarding poverty, unemployment, malnourishment, lack of healthcare and good education as the common enemy.
So all those who had a hand in Partition, including Patel, in my view did not benefit India. Why then should we erect statues in their honour?