| Statue of Mahatma Gandhi | |
|---|---|
 The statue in 2015 | |
 | |
| Artist | Philip Jackson |
| Year | 2015; 11 years ago (2015) |
| Type | Sculpture |
| Medium | Bronze |
| Subject | Mahatma Gandhi |
| Dimensions | 270 cm (110 in) |
| Location | London,SW1 United Kingdom |
| Coordinates | 51°30′02″N0°07′38″W / 51.500570°N 0.127241°W /51.500570; -0.127241 |
The statue ofMahatma Gandhi inParliament Square,Westminster, London, is a work by the sculptorPhilip Jackson.
In July 2014,Chancellor of the Exchequer of the United Kingdom,George Osborne, announced while on a visit to India that a statue ofMahatma Gandhi would be placed inParliament Square, Westminster. He said that "I hope this new memorial will be a lasting and fitting tribute to his memory in Britain, and a permanent monument to our friendship with India."[1] It was announced at the same time that sculptorPhilip Jackson had been asked to create the statue.[1] He had previously created the statue of theQueen Mother, theRAF Bomber Command Memorial,[2] and thestatue of Bobby Moore.[1] Planning permission was granted by Westminster City Council later that year in November.[3]
Financing for the statue was by public donations and through sponsorships.[1] This was supported by the work of the Gandhi Statue Memorial Trust, which was set up byMeghnad Desai, Baron Desai, as well as a special advisory panel created by the Government. This was chaired bySajid Javid MP, theSecretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport.[4] By the time that planning permission, £100,000 had been raised by the Trust, but a further £500,000 was needed and they sought to raise that by January 2015 in order to tie in with a planned visit to London byPrime Minister,Narendra Modi ofIndia.[3]
The statue was unveiled by the IndianFinance MinisterArun Jaitley on 14 March 2015. It was dedicated as a commemoration of the centenary of Gandhi's return to India from South Africa, which is generally regarded as the commencement of his efforts forIndian independence. Speakers at the unveiling of the statue includedPrime Minister of the United KingdomDavid Cameron, the Indian film actorAmitabh Bachchan and Gandhi's grandsonGopalkrishna Gandhi.[5]
In June 2020, during theGeorge Floyd protests, the statue was vandalised by protesters along with the statue of Winston Churchill. Someone painted the word "racist" onto the Gandhi statue.[6]
The statue is 9 feet (2.7 m) tall, and made from bronze.[7] It is based on a photograph of Gandhi standing outside the offices ofPrime MinisterRamsay MacDonald in 1931.[5] The plinth that the statue is mounted on is lower than those on the other statues in Parliament Square, which was a deliberate choice by the Gandhi Statue Memorial Trust.[8]
It was planned to be the final statue to be placed in Parliament Square.[9] Because of the placement of the statue of Gandhi, developers are expecting to move the placement for a planned statue of former British Prime Minister,Margaret Thatcher, to outside of theSupreme Court of the United Kingdom inMiddlesex Guildhall.[3]
On its unveiling, commentators noted the irony of the statue's placement near thestatue of Sir Winston Churchill that also stands in Parliament Square.The Telegraph ofKolkata noted that the fact "that Gandhi and Mandela now stand alongside a slew of white men in Parliament Square is proof of how much England itself has moved away from Winston Churchill's views on racism and imperialism."[10]
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