Statues: Art or Political Symbols

Specifically Roman sculpture [...] was a political as much as an artistic creation, its purpose being to give visual expression to Augustus' ideology of Empire.... His theoretically superhuman status was demonstrated at Rome and throughout the empire by the dissemination of portraits idealized into embodiments of beneficent but dispassionate authority.

The first statue in Southern India was of a Dewan, Sir T. Madhava Rao (1828-91), one of the greatest 19th century Indian administrators. Before the coming of British domination, and for a long time after, India had no statues. Muslim rulers built tombs as Islam, indeed, deems statues idolatrous. However, once the British began to put up statues in India, westernized Indians followed the example as a way of emphasizing both to the British and to allies and rivals their modernity.

"I have seen thousands of statues abandoned or simply neglected across the country. Our faith and systems lead us to believe that even a stone can acquire divinity through Pran Prathishta (or establishment of soul and spirit). A dash of vermillion, the presence of a benevolent tree, and another deity comes into being for worship. But in the case of non-religious statues, often this reverence quickly dissipates, as if the soul has left the body and the statue is just stone again." - Gireesh GV.

The sculpted likeness of a once-loved political figure or national hero loses sheen, its statue reduced to a foregone shadow, often at the centre of a busy square, often with a tattered old garland still hanging around its neck. Respect is lost - both for the artist and the icon he chiselled out of a fearless rock.

This bothers me, and even though I can't do much to change what is really collective, and selective amnesia, I feel that by recording them through my lens I add another annotation to this curious phenomenon.

Yet new statues arise each year, for our society needs to venerate, however transient that may be. An all-important hanger to conveniently hang our faith, or ideology on. And then to promptly forget - Gireesh GV.