 UP Chief Minister Mayawati is a woman with a lot of guts and determination. But will her extravagant stone monuments actually benefit millions of her fellow Dalits. Towering statues of the heroes of India’s ‘untouchable’ caste, shrouded in blue tarpaulin, provide a surreal sight for drivers speeding along a highway near the national capital.
The statues are part of a grandiose memorial complex — the pet project of the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, Mayawati, and one of several in the state that are being built on a scale to rival the monuments of ancient Rome.
Guards brandishing bamboo sticks shoo curious visitors away from the high gates guarding the entrance to the park, which is dominated by the outsized statues mounted on huge plinths, sandstone walkways, pillars and a massive rotunda.
The 53-year-old Mayawati, who likes to drape herself in diamonds and shiny silk saris on her birthdays in what she calls displays of ‘self-respect,’ says the memorials are intended as an inspirational ‘lighthouse’ for the Dalits.
A lady who herself is a Dalit has been much in the news lately in India where she is the chief minister of India’s largest state, Uttar Pradesh. India’s 160 million Dalits were once known as ‘untouchables’ and given the most menial jobs. However, after Mayawati’s party, the Bahujan Samaj Party, recorded its biggest success in 2007 by winning the election in UP and came to power, the Dalit community see their future somewhat differently than their previous generations.
 Mayawati has put up a slew of statues of her mentor, Kanshi Ram, who brought her into politics and founded the Bahujan Samaj Party and of B.R. Ambedkar, the Dalit who framed India’s constitution. The former schoolteacher, who has declared her ambition of being India’s first Dalit prime minister, has also immortalized herself — commissioning one statue that is 50 feet high.
However, the Supreme Court of India has forced Mayawati to suspend work while it examines the constitutionality of spending hundreds of millions of rupees in public funds to build the monuments. The estimated 20 billion rupees she has spent on marble, granite and sandstone memorials to the Dalit icons, has appalled critics.
The money could have been far better spent, they say, to improve life in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, which is desperately backward and lacks proper medical facilities and schools.
‘The chief minister’s aim is to get popularity and immortality not by doing work for the millions of poor and downtrodden in the state but by building statues,’ says the suit, which notes 12 projects on top of dozens already built.
Mayawati’s statues also seem to be failing to build her image in the public eye. Many say that the carved stones are nothing but Mayawati wallowing in ‘self-glorification’. “It’s a shame the chief of a downtrodden party is squandering public money putting up party icons,” is the common judgment.
Some are skeptical about the ‘sheer waste of money’ and believe that these statues will not give work to anyone.
Meanwhile, the residents of Noida, where some 6,000 trees were felled for the Noida memorial, sprawling over 82 acres, have recorded their protest and lamented for depriving them of beautiful green space with trees which have now been turned into plain pavements.
Mayawati’s arch-rival, Uttar Pradesh opposition chief Mulayam Singh Yadav has already vowed that, if he returns to power, he will ‘raze to the ground’ the memorials which he likens to those built during the Roman Empire. Meanwhile, Ajoy Bose, who wrote a biography of Mayawati and her rise from the daughter of a lowly government clerk to the country’s most prominent low-caste politician, said critics of her statue building spree were missing the point.
“We may look at them in terms of aesthetics and cost’ but for many Dalits and other marginalised Indians the statues are ‘symbols of empowerment”, comments Bose.
Yet, Mayawati remains untouched which says a lot for her guts and determination. She has also benefited millions of her fellow Dalits, not just materially but in giving them pride and dignity as well. Democracy, however, demands more. It requires that the person whom it has helped to get to the top should also govern well and with integrity. Otherwise, it will bring that person down just as quickly. Mayawati, the democratically elected Dalit queen, faces her sternest test. 
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