The giant bronze statue will be unveiled by Indian Finance Minister Arun Jaitley at a ceremony attended by Prime Minister David Cameron, Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan and Gandhi`s grandson, Shri Gopalkrishna Gandhi.
The Gandhi Statue Memorial Trust has raised one million pounds (1.4 million euros, $1.5 million) of donations in six months for the project, including £100,000 from billionaire Indian steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal.
Mahatma Gandhi will join figures including Britain`s World War II leader Winston Churchill, who described him as a half-naked "fakir"
Other statues in Parliament Square include anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela and Jan Smuts, a South African prime minister in the first half of the 20th century who favoured racial segregation.
The unveiling marks the latest step in Britain`s efforts to recast both its past and present in India, once known as the "jewel in the crown" of the British empire.
In 2013,David Cameron became the first British premier to visit the site of a notorious massacre in Amritsar in 1919 where troops under British control gunned down hundreds of unarmed protestors.
David Cameron described the killings as "shameful" but stopped short of a public apology
No comments:
Post a Comment