Those were the days: Gandhi statuary, stories in stone

This story has been republished on the occasion of Mahatma Gandhi's birth anniversary. It was originally carried on October 9, 2022.

CHENNAI: A statue is a preferred way to remember a celebrity. More than memories and pictures, a statue reminds us of them and their deeds. Gandhi would have been the last person to have desired a statue. And true to that, there are only a few Gandhi statues in the city with which he had a close relationship.

SECRET STATUES

The first Gandhi statues that started cropping up were on temple pillars. Done in secret during the British regime these plucky sculptors dared to do Gandhi look-alikes as relief sculptures on many temples which were being renovated in stone. It was easy because a Gandhi picture with a string of rudraksha beads would look like a satvik. Many temples around Madras have Gandhi-look-alike sculptures on pillars. The notable one is the Thiruvirkolam temple from where the Cooum River originates.

GANDHI ON THE MARINA

Gandhi had a great connection with Marina Beach. The first meeting he ever had with more than a lakh people attending was on the beach (he called Marina a quaint little beach). It scared the British and consolidated his position in the freedom fight hierarchy. Many mourned his death and when his ashes were immersed on the beach, many took a dip in the sea and shaved their head as a gesture.

It was apt that his statue is kept on the beach after freedom. Marina was not an open museum for statues then. Only a few statues of theosophists, lawyers and Swaminatha Iyer were on the other side of the beach road gazing into the sea. A bronze statue was made in 1956 by Debi Prasad Roy Chowdhury, the Principal of the Government School of Arts, Egmore. It was symbolic of Gandhi bent by age and the strain of the salt march leaning on the walking stick as he plodded forward.

Nehru flew down from New Delhi to unveil the statue. Because of Chowdhury’s good work with the statue in Marina, the West Bengal government ordered a replica from Chowdhury. The interesting aspect was that Chowdhury was asked by the government to transport and fix the statue by himself on the pedestal built by the Madras government.

The Sales Tax Department asked him to pay a tax on this piece of art. Chowdhury had to go to court and get it nullified. The entire cost of the project was around a lakh rupees. Gandhi statue and Labour statue both by Roy Chowdhury dominated the two ends of the Marina till they were joined by a host of others at the Tamil conference ten years later. A decade later, Chowdhury did the Gyarah Murti (a sculpture of 11 people), a statue commemorating the Salt March which is located outside the President’s House, at the end of the T-Junction of Sardar Patel Marg in New Delhi.

A BUST IN A BRITISHER’S CLUB

One can also find Gandhi statues in the most unlikely places as well. In 1925, Gandhi visited the Cosmopolitan Club that’s known for its strict dress code (collarless shirts are not allowed). Gandhi, by then, had changed his attire — after his Madurai visit, he insisted on visiting the club in half-naked fakir attire. Guessing this, the president of the club Thyagaraja Chetty (after whom T Nagar was named) boycotted the meeting. The rest of the officials, however, welcomed Gandhi with a garland of hand-spun khaddar yarn. Today, the Cosmopolitan Club flaunts a life-size oil painting and a bust of Gandhi in front of the building in remembrance of that stopover.

ARYA BASHYAM AND HIS STATUE

Freedom fighter, sculptor and artist Arya Bashyam’s painting of Gandhi led to a copyright legal issue and was in the courts for a long period. However, his statue of Gandhi is still today in Thakkar Bapa Vidyalaya in T. Nagar. The statue is in a safe location but not accessible to many who seem to have forgotten this statue exists.

THE COMPLIMENT OF A SON

Dhanapal, a renowned sculptor who was an alumnus of the Madras College of Arts, wanted to sculpt Gandhi. But he had never gone to the meetings Gandhi attended near his house in Mylapore. Being a creative person, he found an alternative - by looking at Gandhi’s photograph, Dhanapal made a bust of the Mahatma. But the sculptor was not satisfied. Devdas Gandhi, the youngest son of the Mahatma, was sent to see the statue. He spent an hour before the statue and turned to Dhanapal, teary-eyed and said, “I felt like I was in the presence of my father.” Dhanapal didn’t sell the statue but made replicas for Kovilpatti and Gandhi mandapam.