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| Victoria statue, Agra, UP. interactive.britishart.yale.edu |
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| Queen Victoria statue, Agra indiatoday.in |
The prince of Wales (George Frederick Ernest Albert) accompanied by his wife was on a six month tour of the Indian subcontinent in Nov. 1905 - April 1906 to impress on the natives their regal imperial power and control over them. It began in Bombay in November and ended in Karachi in April 1906. The much hyped up tour was intended to “strengthen the loyalty of India” while allowing the future emperor to “know his people.” A newspaper report on the unveiling at Agra described the statue as presiding over a landscape of Mughal imperial monuments. As part of the tour, the prince of wales visited Madras (Chennai) and changed the name Black town to George town blending both old George town and black town. On this tour he unveiled Queen Victoria's statue in Bangalore in 1906 and also in Karachi The Sculptor was :Englishman Thomas Brock (1847-1922) who made several statues of Queen Victoria for the princely states.
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| 2020 Queen Victoria's statue, defaced in Leeds, UK..bbc.com |
In June 2020 a statue of Queen Victoria in Leeds was sprayed with graffiti including the words "murderer" and "slave owner". The bronze sculpture on Woodhouse Moor in the Hyde Park area of the city also had the words "colonizer" and "racist" daubed on it. Several statues were targeted after a statue of 17th Century slave trader Edward Colston was torn off its plinth in Bristol, UK and pushed into the bay near-by. Made by sculptor George Frampton it was unveiled in 1905, and set outside Leeds Town Hall. Victoria ascended throne in 1837 - four years after the Slavery Abolition Act was passed. William Wilberforce (24 August 1759 - 29 July 1833), a British politician, philanthropist, and a leader of the movement to abolish the slave trade. .https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-leeds-52985627.......................
Way back in 2014 hardly three months had gone by after 3 statues of Queen Victoria were vandalized in Mathura again in the same year in November three big statues of Queen Victoria in Agra were targeted. ''The statues were a part of the heritage of Agra and had been lying around as junk in the yards of various government offices and a group of concerned citizens had petitioned several times before the Agra Divisional Commissioner as well as the District Magistrate for the statues to be shifted to the Municipal Museum in the Paliwal Park where they could be installed.'' according to Vishal Sharma, Socialist. The statutes were shifted barely a month ago when this incident in Agra took place. It was done by vandals from Bajrang Dal, a Hindu organization. To them the colonial statues are reminders of repressive rule of the Raj and symbol of slavery.
The statues were removed and dumped in the backyard of a local museum. In places like Kolkata, Mumbai and Delhi soon after independence in the 1960s, the statues were shifted to the local museums. In Delhi one can see empty pedestal in the coronation park.
The city of Madras (Chennai) saw the first ever public protest in 1927 during the Raj to remove mass murderer Col Neil's (James George Smith Neil; 27 May 1810 - 25 September 1857 native of Wellington Square, Ayr, Scotland) statue from the public place (Mount road) in Madras. He killed thousands of Indian in 1857 during the great rebellion against the English company' misrule near Allahabad city, hence he got the nick name the butcher of Allahabad.
https://www.deccanherald.com/content/309829/empress-all-she-surveys.html
https://interactive.britishart.yale.edu/victoria-monuments/211/statue-of-queen-victoria
