GREAT STATUE SEEN AS AN EMBLEM OF NEW UNITY IN INDIA

Shannon News, 14 September 1928, Page 2

GREAT STATUE SEEN AS AN EMBLEM OF NEW UNITY IN INDIA

FIRST SECTION OF NATIONAL SHIVAJI MEMORIAL UNVEILED AT POONA BY GOVERNOR.

Before a large and distinguished gathering, Sir Leslie AVilson, the Governor, unveiled the mammoth bronze equesman statue of Shivuji, foundet of the Maratha power in the seventeenth century, at Poona, the capital of the Deccan, the scenes of his chief exploits. The Prince of Wales, who had laid the foundation stone of the memorial eight years ago, sent a message declaring that the monument would stand for all time as a testimony to Maratha greatness in the arts of peace as well as those of war.

The Shivaji memorial consists of three sections. The first is the statue. The second is to be 1 a memorial hall with library and research institute. The third is the establishment of an endowment fund to assist research into Martha history and to publish results. Over 1,000,000 rupees has been collected under, the scheme Seldom, indeed, has a memorial movement been so well financed.

The equestrian statue is the work of an Indian sculptor, R. Karmarker, trained in England and America, who has carried out the work with celerity and skill. The statue measures 13$ feet, by 15 feet. It was cast at the Peninsula and Oriental Steamship Company's workshop in Bombay, under the superintendence of the sculptor, 250 workmen being employed in pouring the 40 tons of bronze into th« mould. The statue, which is the highest in India (the top of £he warrior's hat being 30f feet from the ground), claims to the largest one-piece easting yet essayed here. Just as the Hindu-Moslem unity problem was solved, says an AngloIndian journal, on a small scale in the casting foundry, when a Moslem and a Maratha led a motley band of workers to complete the bronze statue, so the Shivaji memorial might in its turn become the monument of a new communal friendship based on the toleration and fairness which marked many of the dealings of Shivaji with people of a different religion.