(Published in Mint Lounge, July 11 2026)

If you were to visit the magnificent Pangong Tso (lake) in Ladakh you’d have to travel a number of hours from Leh. Driving up slim, gravelly roads, at Chang La you’d find dizzying views of the region’s Himalayan terrain. The oxygen levels are low at 5,000 metres, and for those visiting from the country’s other parts, it can all feel rather forbidding. Luckily, the lake will rapidly lift your spirits: barely vegetated chocolate earth tipping into a rich, extraordinary splash of colour. However, you’d also notice something surprising here. In this predominantly Buddhist zone—the lake is also sacred—with long cultural links to Tibet, a monumental statue will come into view. It is of a historical personage, a man we know, and many revere, as Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, the Maratha hero. There is only one, slightly odd detail: that in his own lifetime, Shivaji had probably never heard of Ladakh or Pangong Tso.

India is witnessing a golden age for statues. Governments across political lines are anxious to celebrate our land’s iconic figures, competing to make such tributes taller and taller. But we are also a quarrelsome people and can’t always agree on which of our greats deserve the honour. Just recently, as the Union home minister arrived to lay the foundation stone for a 125-foot statue to Syama Prasad Mookerjee in Kolkata, someone vandalised an existing bust of the same person in the same city. Disputes also crop up over colour: some years ago, in Uttar Pradesh, a statue of B.R. Ambedkar was vandalised. When a fresh one took its place, Babasaheb was dressed in saffron. The innocent mistake was rectified with a quick coat of blue. Then there are statues that can only be described as hideous. In Kerala’s capital, for instance, there is a bust of Indira Gandhi. If she ever saw it, Mrs Gandhi herself might have despatched a team for demolition.

Thiruvananthapuram, interestingly, is said to be the first place in south India where a statue—of the modern, street-facing, “what an honour” type—was raised to an Indian. Sir T. Madhava Rao (1828-91) belonged to a set the British called “native statesmen”. He served for many years as dewan (minister) to the Travancore maharajah, helping him modernise his administration, get his finances in order, establish schools, build roads, and transition from an old-fashioned semi-feudal government to a bureaucratic state structure. Eventually the maharajah in question grew envious of his minister’s fame and Rao left, but not before Travancore was recognised as a “model state”. In 1893, after Rao’s death—and in a different ruler’s reign—the city’s people honoured him with this memorial. It was a big deal: most such public statues celebrated India’s white rulers at the time. Here was a chunk of bronze dedicated to someone brown.

This is not to say that Indians lacked commemorative statuary. While the British are believed to have introduced the concept of the civic statue, our forebears took a more niche approach. Patrons of religious sites, for instance, often placed sculptures of themselves in these complexes: in the Madurai Meenakshi temple in Tamil Nadu, thus, you will find a pillar featuring a man with an ample midsection, his hands joined in a devotional pose. This is the famous 17th century ruler of the area, Tirumala Nayaka. In Tirupati, Krishnadevaraya of Vijayanagara presented in the 16th century bronzes of himself and his two consorts. Go back a few hundred years and you will see forms of Rajaraja Chola (947-1014) in the same mould. In all these, the pose is not heroic as in modern statuary. Instead, they suggest submission and surrender before god, advertising the relevant kings not so much as great conquerors but as Devotees No.1.

It is not just rulers, however, who can claim sculptural representation; there are cases of ordinary figures also making it to the archive in stone and metal. In the Padmanabhaswamy temple in Thiruvananthapuram, for instance, carved on to a pillar is the head carpenter who designed the present structure in the 18th century. At Pandharpur in Maharashtra, one encounters the samadhi of Chokhamela, a 14th century Dalit poet-saint; on certain occasions, a metal head, believed to depict him, is brought out and placed here for veneration. Of course, in this case, the man’s caste position determined where in the temple he was granted a spot—at the foot of the steps, outside the door. There are statues signifying tragedy too. At Chathurthiakary in Kerala, a sculpture represents a local hero called Perumparayan. A poor farm worker, he was buried alive to bridge a breach in a fast-collapsing bund. He was subsequently deified. Convenient, a critic might say.

In that sense, statues always also reflect something political. If the British went about installing versions of Queen Victoria and her progeny in India, it was not because they presented dazzling aesthetic possibilities. It was an attempt to reinforce British assertions of imperial might over the land. When, after independence, those statues were craned up and relegated to display slots in museums, this too was political: a (finally) sovereign nation making a statement. It is a time-consuming process, though, because there are presumably too many statues to withdraw. It was only a few months ago, for example, that Edwin Lutyens’ bust was removed from a spot in Rashtrapati Bhavan, replaced by a stately likeness of C. Rajagopalachari. The former was the architect of the presidential palace and, like the carpenter in the Padmanabhaswamy Temple, probably intended the bust to be a signature of sorts. In 2026, that 1929 signature was erased.

Many will approve but remember that it isn’t just the foreigner’s iconography that can become controversial. When Shivaji was installed in Ladakh, the 30-foot statue was celebrated in an official declaration as a “symbol of valour, vision and unwavering justice”. For the thousands of troops from all over India stationed in this physically exacting place—soldiers who have had to deal with the unpleasant business of Chinese incursions—this memorial to a familiar martial hero probably offers a morale booster. Yet a local politician could also not help but ask what “relevance” a structure like this held for Ladakh in its distinct context. The region has its own icon, Sengge Namgyal, also from the 17th century, with his own great military exploits. He too has a statue. Only that unlike the massive Shivaji raising his sword in warning to the Chinese, the “Lion King” of Ladakh sits at an intersection in Leh, watching over traffic.