India to get her own 'liberty' statue soon

The statue, once completed will become one of the top ten tallest statues in the world. The government hopes to unveil the statue to the public by 2010.

Unlike the Statue of Liberty which became a symbol of hope to the millions of immigrants who sailed by her to begin new lives in the US, the Shivaji statue, once completed, will probably remind people of the nativist political parties in Mumbai, who are resisting immigration into Mumbai by Indians from states other than Maharashtra.

Of late, the Shivaji icon has come to be associated with the militant right-wing Maharashtra group, Shiv Sena, which demands more should be done to promote the rights of "local" people in the state rather than "outsiders" and threatens to oust the immigrants from the state.

ABOUT CHHATRAPATI SHIVAJI

Chhatrapati Shivaji, also known as Shivaji Bhosle, was the founder of Maratha empire in western India in 1674.

He is considered a great hero in India, especially in the present-day state of Maharashtra. Using guerrilla tactics well suited to the rugged mountains and valleys of the region, his numerically smaller army successfully resisted expansion plans of the dominant Mughal empire and annexed land from its Muslim rulers.