Victoria statue at Cubbon Park turns 117 on February 5

The Cubbon Park police station used to be a guard room built to protect the Queen Victoria statue in Cubbon Park in the early 1900s.

Sonali Dhanpal, a PhD scholar in Architectural History at Newcastle University, UK, shared many historical vignettes about the Queen Victoria statue which turns 117 on February 5, while speaking to history enthusiasts at a Heritage Walk organised by Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) last month.

After the British Crown put Mysore under ‘direct’ princely rule in 1881, it was still keen to reassert and emphasise its presence in Bengaluru.

At 11 feet and carved in white marble by London-based sculptor Thomas Brock, Queen Victoria’s statue in Bengaluru is one of fifty such statues commissioned, assembled and installed across the Indian subcontinent.

The statue stands at the entrance of Cubbon Park, at the intersection of the civil and military stations and Bangalore City (the centre of which was the Pete). Sonali explained how the statue stood as a marker of the division between a metaphorical ‘British’ and ‘Princely’ India.

Inaugurated by the Prince of Wales, George Frederick Ernest Albert who later became King George V on February 05, 1906, the Bengaluru statue cost Rs 25,000 to make. Krishna Raja Wadiyar IV, the then Maharaja of Mysore, was the main donor while the public gave the rest of the amount. This is mentioned on the statue under ‘Public Subscription’’, written in English, Kannada, Tamil and Urdu on four sides of the pedestal.

The statue has undergone changes and repairs since – “The sceptre came loose and the gold inlay in the letters was stolen by vandals,” she recalled.

The cross on top of the orb has not been fixed since it was damaged, apparently, during a political protest when people tied a banner to the cross, some say.

The discussion veered from the history of the statue to its symbolism, which, to many, is a mark of colonial oppression. Statues that have honoured racist and colonial regimes are now being toppled and defaced the world over as little is done to reckon with the histories they represent.

Sonali ended the walk by asking everyone to reflect on how accurate commemorative statues are of the history they represent and what we do with them when we examine the milieu in which they were installed.