![]() While statues and large monuments are ancient and almost universal forms, their current resurgence in India links up with specific recent developments: the politics of caste, a post-liberalisation revival of religious patronage and the reconfiguration of the nation as an economic unit by the forces of neoliberal “free trade”. ![]() But given that the international response – if any – to such assertions is mostly one of distaste and bemusement, perhaps the Indian monumental statues’ claims to globality are best understood as ultimately addressed inwards, mediating local politics at various scales. If Lady Liberty, donated by France as a shared symbol of Enlightenment, soon became a symbol of the US as a centre of global power, these Asian nations can be seen as using the same idiom to claim their moment in the sun. Most of the world’s largest statues are in China, India, Japan and Taiwan. Currently, the tallest statue is the 420-ft Spring Temple Buddha in Henan, China, completed in 2008. Twice the height of the Statue of Liberty, this will be the tallest statue in the world – that is, until it is eclipsed in a few years by a proposed 695 feet (212 metre) Shivaji statue off the coast of Mumbai. On October 31, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will inaugurate the Statue of Unity, a 597-foot (182-metre) statue of Sardar Patel at Sadhu Bet, a river island near the controversial Sardar Sarovar mega-dam.
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