Sardar as pawn

There is something eerie and unreal about the initial sight of the statue of Sardar Patel. Semi- shrouded in the dust that is thrown up by the pre-inauguration activity, the statue appears and disappears behind trees as the approach road dips and rises. It is visible from about seven kilometres away, dwarfing even the more mature and aged trees and seemingly at level with the surrounding hills. The only way to approach it is from the rear, and this adds to the overall intimidation that it exudes. There should be a sense, at least, of looking at an engineering marvel, but what stands out instead is the destruction all around and the ugly stamp of “civilisation”. Then there is the statue itself. The expression on the face portrays none of the sharpness and disdain that the man was known for. Instead, the expression is almost morose (a protester quipped that this was understandable since he is doomed to spend an eternity staring at the Sardar Sarovar dam 3.2 km away). Indeed, the seemingly odd design decision of an approach from the rear was taken because the statue was meant to stride towards the dam. Engineers apparently cautioned against this stance for reasons of stability, and so Sardar Patel stands in a bland position that expresses none of the vitality of the Iron Man.

Five years ago, the site of the Statue of Unity still retained its wildness. Apart from a police checkpost and a ground flattened and bordered with whitewashed bricks, there was little else to prepare anyone for the scene that meets the eye now. The solitary sadhu who lived on Sadhu Bet, the conical island where the statue stands in the now largely dry Narmada riverbed, has long been evicted. Sadhu Bet itself has been reshaped. The upper 15 metres of the 70-m hillock was demolished, creating a natural platform at its present height of 55 m. On top of this stands the Statue of Unity, a 182-m-tall statue of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. The whole structure, including the base, measures a mammoth 237 m. The surroundings have been vanquished. Natural beauty has been replaced with thousands of tonnes of concrete—bridges, roads, viewing platforms, barricades, museums, guest houses, hotels.

And it is this that Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated, in Narmada district of Gujarat, on October 31, the 143rd birth anniversary of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. The Statue of Unity is just one more move on the political chessboard towards the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) brand of nationalism. The site was chosen and publicly disclosed just before Modi’s 2014 campaign and now, months before the 2019 elections, the statue has been inaugurated. Under the guise of their Gujarati origin, Modi and his team have slowly been appropriating Congress stalwarts such as Mahatma Gandhi and Sardar Patel (particularly galling since he had written a letter to M.S. Golwalkar against the Hindu fundamentalist vision of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh and asked him to work towards integration in the Indian nation). Whenever Modi has spoken about the statue project, he has projected himself and the BJP as the first to accord Sardar Patel his rightful place in history. The dig was invariably at the Congress. The BJP’s main thrust is to portray itself as a party that accommodates all great leaders, whereas the Congress is projected as a one-family party. But as Congress president Rahul Gandhi tweeted: “Ironic that a statue of Sardar Patel is being inaugurated, but every institution he helped build is being smashed….”

Twelve days before the formal inauguration, Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani flagged off from Bardoli an Ekta Yatra that travelled across the State purportedly to spread the Sardar’s message of unity. Bardoli in southern Gujarat was where Patel himself launched his satyagraha against colonial rule. The yatra was undoubtedly a soft launch of the BJP’s 2019 Lok Sabha election campaign. Winding its way through more than 5,000 villages displaying a prototype of the statue, it covered all the 26 Lok Sabha constituencies of Gujarat. Rupani equated Patel with Modi, saying the latter had taken on the Iron Man’s mantle. Just as Patel had unified the 562 princely states in India, Modi was aiming at unification by uniting all communities in the country, he said.

There has been resistance to the project from Adivasis and environmental activists, but it has been an uphill struggle for them because the might of the state is with the project. For the Adivasis, the issues date back to the 1960s when land was acquired for the Sardar Sarovar dam. Anand Mazgaonkar, an activist from Vadodara, said: “The first six villages acquired for Sardar Sarovar staff colonies were never recognised as project-affected. The 19 villages that were, in fact, recognised as project-affected are fighting because promises made to them again and again were not kept. The seven villages that would be affected by the Garudeshwar weir are fighting for their rights. And the 28 villages on the right bank of Main Canal, under whose noses the water flows, are not allowed a drop of water for their parched farms in this rain-scarce year and have resolved to fight.”

The resistance to the statue project is part of this struggle for rights. On October 31, thousands of tribal people grouped for protest. They tied black balloons to trees as close to the project site as possible. They blocked the approach roads with burning tyres. They tore down and blackened posters with pictures of Modi. In response, the Narmada district police arrested about 90 activists. Dr Praful Vasava, a tribal leader, said that it was a day of mourning for the tribal people who had lost their land and livelihoods. “No food was cooked in the 72 villages affected by the project,” he said. He said that when Adivasis tore down posters put up for the Ekta Yatra, the government replaced them with posters carrying pictures of the legendary tribal freedom fighter Birsa Munda along with smaller images of Modi and Rupani. Adivasis reacted by tearing off the smaller images.

Twenty-two village sarpanchs had written an open letter to the Prime Minister in which they said: “While we continue to struggle for basics like schools, hospitals and drinking water, you spend crores of rupees on a statue and its inaugural event. With a heavy heart, we tell you that we won’t welcome you on our land in our district… [for us] land, water and forest are natural elements we worship [and you have destroyed it with] ambitious developmental projects like the Sardar Sarovar Dam and the Statue of Unity.” The letter pointed out that despite being so close to the dam their villages had no water for drinking or irrigation. Indeed, they are detained by the police if they use the water from the dam.

More than 75,000 tribal people have been affected by the statue project. Mahesh Tadvi, an Adivasi activist whose family was first displaced by the Sardar Sarovar Project and later again by the statue, says that the affected people have sat on hunger strikes, written letters, met government officials, taken out morchas, but all to no avail. Punabhai Tadvi is the former sarpanch of Navagam, which is where the Sardar Sarovar dam was originally meant to be in the early 1960s. Later, it shifted 7 km away to Kevadia. Like their fellow Adivasis, the Tadvis had all been settled agriculturists who farmed the fertile land along the Narmada and grew gram, bajra, jowar, cotton and vegetables.

Those who gave their land for the dam did so on the understanding that they would get it back since it had been acquired only for warehousing construction materials. This never happened. About 20 families are still fighting to get back their land. The government is offering them a lump sum of Rs.5-7 lakh to close the matter, but they feel it is an undervaluation of their property. The land now is part of the Statue of Unity zone and will probably be used for some beautification project or a guest house; only, it will never be given back to Adivasis like Mahesh Tadvi, who rightly sees himself as twice displaced. He and many others had been eking out a living by farming land that did not belong to anyone, but now with commercial attention focussed on the area each bit of land means money. Tilling it now would invite the wrath of the government.

A viewing gallery inside the statue area will play a video of tribal culture. This cuts deep with the Adivasis who have been evicted from their land. With their crops in ruin, the Adivasis sit outside their huts in a daze. The natural sights and sounds they are used to have been destroyed. Instead of neem trees, they have diggers parked outside their homes. Prefabricated site offices are erected in their fields. Very few of them have been employed at the project site. “Every morning I go there to ask for work, and they tell me that I am uneducated,” said a woman. “How much education do you need to carry soil and bricks? And how educated are these others who have come from other States?” The government has promised more than 15,000 direct jobs to the Adivasis. There is, as yet, little sign of these.

Ironically for a government that almost made a career of the Make in India campaign, the statue was cast in China. Larsen and Toubro, the executing company, recommended that a Chinese foundry mould the bronze cladding of the statue, saying there was none in India that could handle the project or meet the urgent time schedule. In the early days of the project, Modi had initiated a loha (iron) campaign. He had called on all farmers across the country to donate one iron agricultural implement, a tribute to Sardar Patel’s farming background as well as to his nickname of the Iron Man of India. About 135 tonnes of iron was ultimately donated. Later, the iron was found to be of inferior quality and so was not used in the main statue but was apparently used in the base.

An open letter written to Sardar Patel by Medha Patkar of the the National Association of People’s Movements says the statue and all that it is supposed to stand for makes a mockery of the actual principles and legacy of Sardar Patel. She writes: “Can you imagine who has built your new Avatar? Many Chinese and some local Adivasi and national labourers have worked overnight on the ‘Sadhu Bet’, a hillock with Adivasi deity of their faith. You would surely ask, on whose land would this statue stand? Whose plan was this? This land, river, forest that your Avatar is going to stand on, belongs to Adivasis. The very same people your government and then leaders, Mahatma to Pandit Nehru, recognised as villagers with rights, as republics and offered security through Panchsheel…. Do remember the days when you carried out the operation to integrate the princely states with democracy, to make most of them sacrifice voluntarily for unity… [this government doesn’t] bring in sepoys or take over properties of the rich and the mighty. They take over the very life lines of land, water, river, forest of the weak and the marginalised…. Their lands, in six villages not even legally acquired, following British law of 1894, but simply taken over, paying a paltry sum of Rs.80 to 200 per acre in 1961, are now being diverted for luxurious hotels named after 'Shreshtha Bharath' or Swaminarayan Complex…. You, who were successful in recovering the farmlands for the farmers refusing to pay the oppressive tax would come down to support these tribals who are not granted anything as per the new law of 2013, nor are gifted with alternative land but are being made to accept Rs. 7 lakh package which they too are non-cooperating with. …they are being cheated out of their land for tourism!… I feel shaken to share with you what is being planned in your name... Shopping malls, five or seven star hotels, luxurious guest houses, helipads, statewise bhavans on the river bank with all its paraphernalia the shops, markets, massive food plaza, food courts, walkways, travelators…. All this when not less than 35,000 families, affected by the Dam in your name, are still awaiting full, fair and just rehabilitation.”

Environment concerns

Unsurprisingly, there are severe environmental violations in the project that includes a statue on a riverbed, new roads, huge new state guest houses, multi-star hotels, a tent city, a boating pond, a weir and more. All required environmental clearances, but none was sought. Petitions by Vadodara-based environmentalists challenging the lack of clearances were dismissed by both the Gujarat High Court and the western zone of the National Green Tribunal (NGT). However, it has to be said that in its dismissal the NGT said: “Considering the fact situation in the instant case, in our considered opinion, instant Application No.32/2015 is barred by limitation and will have to be dismissed [the petitioners had approached the NGT six months after the Gujarat government had handed over the work order to Larsen and Toubro]. Still however, we make it clear that this dismissal is not to be treated as precedent for other purpose. All the questions related to the matter are kept open for both the sides and may not be treated as foreclosed for any purpose.” One of the petitioners, Rohit Prajapati, said: “Our argument was that the actual details of the project were available only once the work order was given out. Only then could we ascertain the potential violations.”

Here, too, there are sad ironies. As Praful Vasava said: “First they dam the river and stop the natural course of the water. Then they create a boating pond and fill it with water so that boats can circle the statue. They’ve flooded fields of our cotton crop for this. Then they uproot the trees and trample the crops in the fields. After that they create a 17-km-long Valley of Flowers over 250 acres by taking soil from fields all around and planting flowers that do not usually grow here.” Nature is being recreated in a manicured form around the statue, much of it in flowerpots. It is totally alien to the surrounding environment. The towering indigenous trees have been felled. The bajra heads are caked with dust. The cotton fields have been flooded and in their place are plants more appropriate for urban gardens. In the magnificence of the Narmada valley, they look out of place and insignificant.

Tree stumps, still browny pink from being freshly hacked, are visible all along the newly created four-lane highway to Sadhu Bet. Rich soil dug up from fields has been dumped in the central divider to grow ornamental plants. The Statue of Unity is being pushed as a tourism destination, but the closest airport at Vadodara is a four-hour drive away. Once at the site, an average of Rs.600 per person will be the minimum to be spent, what with the ticket price of Rs.350 to go up to the viewing gallery of the statue, and other sundry expenses of boating and food.

Moving downstream away from the statue, this correspondent paused to view the landscape—once wild and magnificent, now desecrated by outsized constructions. Disturbed, a startled lapwing took off uttering its alarm call—“pity-to-do-it, pity-to-do-it” it shrieked in the characteristic tones recognisable to any birder. Nothing could be truer.