01The man who joined the states
In 1947 more than 560 princely states lay inside the borders of the new India, each free in law to choose. As Home Minister and Minister for States, Patel and his secretary V. P. Menon brought almost all of them in within two years, by persuasion, by the Instrument of Accession and, at Junagadh and Hyderabad, by force. The statue is named for that work. Its height, 182 metres, matches the number of seats in the Gujarat assembly.
02Iron from the villages
The statue was proposed in 2010 and its foundation laid on 31 October 2013. For it a campaign went to villages across India collecting old iron farm tools, a nod to Patel the farmers’ leader of Bardoli. The figure stands in a dhoti and shawl, walking, with a concrete and steel core clad in bronze panels. Sculptor Ram V. Sutar made the design. Prime Minister Narendra Modi unveiled it on 31 October 2018. A viewing gallery at about 153 metres looks over the dam and the Satpura and Vindhya hills.
The life of this place
- 31 October 2013The foundation stone was laid.
- 31 October 2018The statue was unveiled on Patel’s birth anniversary.
Closed on Mondays; Ekta Nagar (Kevadia) has its own railway station, and Vadodara is about 90 km away.
