I stumbled upon this man while researching for my article and called him. He wouldn't talk much but then he opened up after a while.
An edited verison appeared in the Indian Express on July 5, 2009.
Chinki Sinha
New Delhi, July 3, 2009
When he chips away at the marble or casts the molten bronze in a mould to make the many Dalit leaders’ statues that are slowly becoming part of Lucknow’s identity, Shraavan Parajapati has to be precise. He can’t deviate from the drawings handed over to him by the Chief Minister Mayawati. There’s no scope for liberties, and no room for an artist’s own vision.
That is frustrating at times. He isn’t a babu used to the orders. And at these moments, the artist in him takes over.
“It is odd at times. It hurts when I can’t introduce my creativity there,” he said. “But then, what can you do?”
Prajapati comes from a family of sculptors, his own claim to fame being a number of bronze statues he made for the late Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, including the one that was pulled down by the American troops in Baghdad’s Firdos Square. He had even met the slain leader in 1997, he said.
So when people say that statues of living leaders is an unknown phenomena, he simply dismisses those.
“In foreign countries, they do that. Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher also got her statue made. Saddam Hussein too,” he said. “The leaders like to be venerated. As long as you say yes to all they say, you are fine.”
Another grievance he has is the tight deadlines. If it weren’t for the rushed orders, he could have given the European statues that are now housed in the Lucknow Museum at the zoo a tough competition.
“Only if we had more time, we could have done the intricate work these statues have,” he said.
But Prajapati isn’t complaining. He has delivered 28 statues for the new projects, including nine of Mayawati herself. When Mayawati rode to power in 2007, clinching the majority of seats in the country’s most populous state, she engaged in an unchecked fantasy of constructing gargantuan new projects made of the pink dholpur stone, and marble statues, almost out of a vengeance. Before her arrival on the scene, BR Ambedkar’s statues were generally confined to Dalit bastis where they were made of the cheap clay and were painted in garish colors. The sophistication and splendor of marble was lacking. Most of the orders for these statues went to Prajapati, who said that he carves the statues himself, allocating two months on each of them on an average.
Now, Prajapati is on top of the list of the sculptors in the culture department of the Uttar Pradesh government bagging most of the orders for statues, one of which cost roughly Rs. 4.5 lakhs. The 18-feet high statues cost double the amount, he said.
When Mayawati wanted a 12-feet bronze statue of Ambedkar in 12 days, he was the one to take up the challenge and delivered on time. That’s why he has been the chosen one for the projects, he said.
In fact, he had already begun work on the 165-feet tall bronze statue of Ambedkar, an ambitious project that would have been taller than the Statue of Liberty and was expected to cost more than Rs. 200 crores. But when the Supreme Court orders came, the project was stalled.
“The elephants are the reason. There were too many of them and that caused the uproar. Otherwise the work would have gone on,” he said. “Haathi ne kaam bigad diya.”
In the work commissioned to him the BSP Supremo, he allegedly needs to make her statue look thin and also without double chin.
But a strange paradox is that Saddam Hussein's statue, one of the world's most famous for the fate that it met, is also Prajapati's most famous work. The artist claims he made six statues for Hussein and the one that became famous for its destruction was commissioned to him in 1995. But these are his claims only. Another sculptor who has laid the same claims is a Baghdad-based professor. Khalid Ezzat too has no paperwork to prove his claims, according to reports.
Also, since SP leader Mulayam Singh has indicated he would bulldoze some of the statues, this one too might get famous not for its artistic value but for the fate it meets.
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