President Droupadi Murmu unveiled a bust of Chakravarti Rajagopalachari, the first and only Indian Governor-General of independent India, at the Rashtrapati Bhavan on Monday, replacing a monument by British architect Edwin Lutyens in a symbolic break with the colonial past.
Reacting to the development, Lutyens’ great-grandson, British biologist Matt Ridley, said he was “saddened to read that the bust of Lutyens (my great-grandfather) is to be removed from the Presidential Palace he designed in Delhi”.
Lutyens was the chief architect of New Delhi, the area where India’s power center resides, and is still often referred to as Lutyens’ Delhi.
Chakravarti Rajagopalachari, known as Rajaji, was a senior statesman, lawyer and writer who served as Governor-General from 1948 to 1950 and bridged the transition from British rule to the modern Republic of India.
In a statement, President Droupadi Murmu said, “This initiative is part of a series of steps being taken to shed the vestiges of colonial thinking and proudly embrace the richness of Indian culture.
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Who was Edwin Lutyens?
Edwin Landseer Lutyens was one of the most important and influential British architects of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Lutyens briefly studied at the Royal College of Art (then the South Kensington School of Art) but left early to set up his own practice around 1889. His early career focused on charming English country houses in Surrey and elsewhere, often collaborating with renowned garden designer Gertrude Jekyll.
Edwin Lutyens, in collaboration with Herbert Baker, designed several monumental buildings in New Delhi, including Rashtrapati Bhavan, North Block, South Block and India Gate, AFP reported.
In Indian Summer: Lutyens, Baker and the Making of Imperial Delhi (1981), historian Robert Grant Irving highlights Lutyens’ firm resistance to incorporating significant Indian architectural elements into his designs. Lutyens criticized the Indo-Saracenic style, i.e. the mixture of Indo-Islamic and European influences popular in British India in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Here is what PM Modi said
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday announced during his monthly radio address ‘Mann Ki Baat’ that unfortunately, even after independence, statues of British administrators remained in Rashtrapati Bhavan, while statues of great Indian leaders were not honored there.
Modi mentioned that during the ‘Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav’ he discussed the ‘Panch-Pran’ of the Red Fort, emphasizing the importance of freedom from the mentality of slavery.
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Prime Minister Narendra Modi has consistently sought to remove vestiges of India’s colonial legacy by transforming British-era monuments through large-scale redevelopment projects.
In 2023, he unveiled a new Parliament Building to replace the colonial-era structure originally designed by Lutyens in collaboration with his British counterpart Herbert Baker.
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Modi said the move to replace Lutyens’ bust was part of an initiative to achieve “liberation from slavery”.
“Statues of British administrators could have remained… but those of the nation’s greatest sons were denied space,” he said on Mann ki Baat radio. “Today, the country is leaving colonial thinking behind.”
In 2022, the Modi government installed a statue of independence leader Subhas Chandra Bose, revered for his armed resistance against colonial rule.
The statue was placed under a canopy near the India Gate war memorial in New Delhi, occupying a plinth that had long been vacant after once displaying a statue of British monarch King George V.
The canopy itself was originally designed by Lutyens.
Besides, there will be an exhibition on Rajagopalachari during the Rajaji Utsav, which will run from February 24 to March 1. “Visit there and see whenever possible,” Modi said.
(With input from agencies)
