However, it is possibly significant that, almost seventy years after independence, these statues are still standing; they have not been destroyed. They may be in a sorry state, but these grandees from another continent and another age, flawed and blinkered by the cultural conventions of their own times, have not been completely erased from the scene. Indeed, there have been sporadic reports in recent years that the park is to be restored as a tourist attraction. Does this suggest that in modern Delhi there is a niggling sense that this site and the people it commemorates might just be valuable to posterity? I certainly hope so.
TWC Edge June 2013
Notes 1
J..Lunt (editor), Sita Ram From Sepoy to Subedar (London 1988). This volume remains a classic of its kind, despite doubts cast on its authenticity from some quarters 2 Daily Telegraph, Old Statues Given Marching Orders … by the Left 20 th October 2000
3 C. Allen, Soldier Sahibs: the men who made the North-West Frontier (London 2000)
4 G. M. Fraser The Light’s on at Signpost (London 2003)
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