If Mr Narendra Modi’s admiration for Sardar Patel is born of a genuine understanding of the latter, his Statue of Unity project merits the nation’s approval. Modi has decided to spend an estimated sum of Rs 2500 crore to erect Patel’s statue in the Narmada. Cynics and Modi’s critics will thumb their noses at the expenditure incurred at a time when a large number of people in Modi’s state are labouring under the burden of day-to-day subsistence. But Shahjahan would not have built the Taj Mahal had he applied this kind of logic to his historical aspirations. India would have missed one of the world’s wonders. Modi is the contemporary Shahjahan giving us the world’s tallest statue. Is Modi merely a modern day Shahjahan trying to engrave his name indelibly in the annuls of history? Or is he playing yet another political game to add a new avatar to the already overcrowded pantheon of the Sangh Parivar? Does Modi know what the Sardar really was, how diametrically op
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