Would Sardar Patel have approved of the Chinese involvement in building his statue?

The report said that some components will be shipped in from TQ Art Foundry, which is situated in Nanchang in Eastern China

By: News Desk |
October 31, 2016 8:04 pm

Sardar Vallabhai Patel wrote a letter to the then Prime Minister Jawahar Lal Nehru on November 7, 1950. While referring to India’s changing equations with China as to their invasion of Tibet, he wrote painfully that the Chinese were not India’s friends.

“This feeling, if genuinely entertained by the Chinese in spite of your direct approaches to them, indicates that even though we regard ourselves as the friends of China, the Chinese do not regard us as their friends,” he had written.

“With the Communist mentality of ‘whoever is not with them being against them’, this is a significant pointer, of which we have to take due note,” he had written.

The Chinese are not with India on a number of issues including our inclusion as a permanent member in the United Nations security council. However, India is with the Chinese as to giving them business . Take the example of iconic Statue of Unity that Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated in 2013. The Statue of Unity will be 182 metres high, facing the Narmada Dam, on the island called Sadhu Bet near Vadodara.

It is being constructed with Chinese help. According to a report in Indian Express, engineers have decided to make a viewers gallery at the height of 157 meters at the chest level of the statue.

RCC spine is being built. Steel frames will be built to hold bronze cladding that will form the facade of the statue. The framework is being constructed in China. The bronze plates that would form Sardar’s skin and clothes are also being made in China.

The report said that some components will be shipped in from TQ Art Foundry, which is situated in Nanchang in Eastern China.

According to a report in the Times of India, the work was contracted to Indian firm Larson and Toubro. The Indian giant contracted the Chinese outfit for the work. The TOI report further said that the contract was given to the Chinese despite the fact that India was second largest in the world in the foundry sector. The sector employs 5 lakh employees.

Recently, a social media campaign was run, calling for the boycott of Chinese goods.