Sculpting the legacy of India's 'Dalit Queen'
By Penny MacRae (AFP) – 2 days ago
NEW DELHI — Towering statues of the heroes of India's "untouchable"
caste, shrouded in blue tarpaulin, provide a surreal sight for drivers
speeding along a highway near the national capital.
The statues are part of a grandiose memorial complex -- the pet
project of the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, Mayawati, and one of
several in the state that are being built on a scale to rival the
monuments of ancient Rome.
Once the site of frenzied construction, the half-finished memorial
park in the New Delhi satellite city of Noida is now silent and
deserted.
Guards brandishing bamboo sticks shoo curious visitors away from the
high gates guarding the entrance to the park, which is dominated by
the outsized statues mounted on huge plinths, sandstone walkways,
pillars and a massive rotunda.
"You can't come in -- these are Madam's orders," says guard Jagdish
Kashyap, referring to Mayawati, who is known as the "Dalit Queen"
after building her political base championing those at the bottom of
Hinduism's age-old caste pyramid.
The Supreme Court of India has forced Mayawati to suspend work while
it examines the constitutionality of spending hundreds of millions of
dollars in public funds to build the monuments.
The 53-year-old Mayawati, who likes to drape herself in diamonds and
shiny silk saris on her birthdays in what she calls displays of
"self-respect," says the memorials are intended as an inspirational
"lighthouse" for the Dalits.
India's 160 million Dalits were once known as "untouchables" and given
the most menial jobs. Many still face discrimination, forbidden to use
communal wells and excluded from social events, despite
anti-discrimination laws.
But the estimated 20 billion rupees (420 million dollars) she has
spent on marble, granite and sandstone memorials to the Dalit icons,
according to a Supreme Court suit, has appalled critics.
The money could have been far better spent, they say, to improve life
in Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state, which is desperately
backward and lacking proper medical facitilies and schools.
"The chief minister's aim is to get popularity and immortality not by
doing work for the millions of poor and downtrodden in the state but
by building statues," says the suit, which notes 12 projects on top of
dozens already built.
Mayawati has put up a slew of statues of her mentor, Kanshi Ram, who
brought her into politics and founded the Bahujan Samaj Party which
she now leads, and of B.R. Ambedkar, the Dalit who framed India's
constitution.
The former schoolteacher, who has declared her ambition of being
India's first Dalit prime minister, has also immortalized herself --
commissioning one statue that was 50 feet (15 metres) high.
Opponents accuse Mayawati, whose own statues show her toting her
trademark square handbag, of megalomania. She had one edifice of
herself torn down and replaced last year because it was three feet
shorter than an adjacent statue.
S.R. Darapuri, a police officer turned social activist who is a Dalit
himself, accuses the chief minister of wallowing in
"self-glorification."
"It's a shame the chief of a downtrodden party is squandering public
money putting up party icons," he said.
Mayawati says she is the victim of discrimination and hypocrisy,
pointing to monuments the ruling Congress party built to the
Nehru-Gandhi dynasty which has governed India for most of the time
since independence in 1947.
But none of the Congress monuments have been on such a vast scale.
Some 6,000 trees were felled for the Noida memorial which sprawls over
82 acres (33 hectares).
"This was all beautiful green space with trees. We went there for
walks in the morning -- now it's all paved," lamented Noida resident
Priyanka Sharma. "What has been done is unforgiveable."
A senior civil servant in the Uttar Pradesh government said Mayawati
called in bureaucrats after her re-election in 2007 and told them she
was building the memorials as "something that will last for
generations."
Mayawati said she wanted something "no succeeding government can break
down -- that is why she has built them with two perimeter walls," he
said on condition of anonymity.
Mayawati's arch-rival, Uttar Pradesh opposition chief Mulayam Singh
Yadav has already vowed that, if he returns to power, he will "raze to
the ground" the memorials which he likens to those built during the
Roman Empire.
Ajoy Bose, who wrote a biography of Mayawati and her rise from
daughter of a lowly government clerk to the country's most prominent
low-caste politician, said critics of her statue building spree were
missing the point.
"We may look at them in terms of aesthetics and cost" but for many
Dalits and other marginalised Indians the statues are "symbols of
empowerment", Bose told AFP.
"The Dalits were denied entry by upper caste Hindus into temples --
they lacked an iconography. Mayawati has tried to fill this pantheon
with figures like Ambedkar and she is the latest figure in this
pantheon," said Bose.
But for security guard Kashyap, the statues are a waste of money.
"These statues will not give work to anyone," Kashyap said, gesturing
toward the lifeless, concealed forms.
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