GUWAHATI, Jan 16 - The original colour of the famous bronze statue of Mahatma Gandhi, which was sculpted by the legendary Ramkinkar Baij, has now been restored by city-based conservation group Heritage Conservation Society, Assam (HeCSA).
The statue, located atop the Sarania hillock in the city, lost its original colour due to the whims of the people at the helm of affairs who changed the colour umpteen times. Recently, the silver colour was applied on the statue.
Baij (1906-80), one of the vanguards of modern Indian sculpture, was conferred the Padma Bhushan (1970) for his contributions to the world of art. He had painted the statue, the largest of the Gandhi statues he had sculpted, with patina colour, which is the natural colour for bronze statues. However, the powers that be, for the last about 30 years, have failed to grasp the significance of this colour in the name of refurbishing it, and also buried the two human skulls that had been sculpted by Baij under the feet of the Mahatma, under the tiles, as detachable parts.
In fact, Baij had sculpted the skulls to create the impression of the Mahatma wading through a ground full of human skeletons. This idea provided an inner movement to the entire sculpture, bearing the Ramkinkar Baij hallmark. It was linked with the Mahatma�s visit to the riot-torn Noakhali area in East Bengal (now Bangladesh) in 1946. Our rulers seemed to be ignorant of this fact. Some of them even demonstrated the audacity to question the nonconformist abstract form used in the statue by the renowned artist. To add to the problem, some people had even added a pair of iron spectacles to it. The original statue had no pair of spectacles.
HeCSA has, by this time, requested the Guwahati Metropolitan Development Authority (GMDA) and the Guwahati Smart City authorities to remove the tiles so that the bronze skulls can once again be a part of the work of art, said HeCSA secretary Jayanta Sarma.
