Statues of Mahatma Gandhi have been in demand around the world as a tribute to peace and as a signal of friendship with India. Two men have dominated the business of making Gandhi statues. Of the 70 statues commissioned between 2001 and 2010, Ram Sutar made 22 and Gautam Pal made 35 that were installed in Australia, Morocco, Peru, South Africa, Trinidad and Tobago, Germany and Djibouti and elsewhere.

Sutar, who is 89, grew up in Dhulia, a village in northern Maharashtra, and made his first Gandhi statue in 1948. The Mahatma first made an impression on Sutar when he was still a child, when Gandhi visited Dhulia. Born into a family of carpenters, Sutar was encouraged by an art teacher in school to apply to the Sir JJ School of Art in Mumbai.

He got his diploma at the school before moving to New Delhi, where he held a couple of government jobs before deciding to sculpt full time. The first statue he created was of Govind Vallabh Pant, and it still stands at Delhi’s Rail Bhavan. Sutar considers this one of the important public displays of his art, because it was only following this that others started commissioning him. The other work he cited as important during his formative years is the Chambal Devi monument at the Gandhi Sagar Dam in Madhya Pradesh.

Recognition for his depictions of Gandhi came in 1970, his son Anil Sutar recalled. The Indian Council for Cultural Relations, which wanted to present Gandhi statues to foreign governments to commemorate the Mahatma’s birth centenary, called 15 artists to send in models of their work. The Council sent pictures to various countries, asking them to make their choices.

"All the countries signed on the picture of my father’s model," said Anil Sutar, who works with his father in their studio in NOIDA. “Since then Gandhi statues made by my father have been installed in more than 200 cities across the world.”

But it’s not only abroad where you see his renderings of Gandhi. The senior Sutar is most proud of a 16-foot meditating Gandhi that stands today outside the Indian Parliament. This trademark Sutar sculpture of a seated, meditating Gandhi with a serene smile is also a favorite with art historian and sculptor Deepak Kannal. “Even when Gandhiji smiled, there was a streak, an undercurrent of pathos,” Kannak said. “I think Ram Sutar is the only person who can capture that pathos.”

“In Ram Sutar’s work you can see he brings in the real inner character of Gandhi ‒ the whole burden, his whole responsibility and the dignified meditation,” said Tejinder Singh Baoni, sculptor and lecturer at Chitrakala Parishat College of Fine Art in Bangalore.

Sutar, who works often in bronze, is also known for creating larger-than-life figures with ease, while staying true to proportion. He is one of the contenders to create the proposed 600-foot high statue of Vallabhbhai Patel in Gujarat.


Ram Sutar working in his studio.
Photo: www.ramsutar.com


In the year 2000, Gautam Pal met US President Bill Clinton and Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, a memory he still cherishes. His eight-foot tall statue of Mahatma Gandhi on the Dandi March had just been installed outside the Indian Embassy in Washington DC. (It was back in the news last week when Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited it during his recent US trip.)

"My approach is realistic," he said. "The judges selected my work for the perfection of Gandhiji and his movement and the clothes,” he said.


Gautam Pal with President Clinton and Prime Minister Vajpayee in Washington DC.
Photo: Gautam Pal


Kolkata-based Pal, who is 65, grew up in Krishnagar in West Bengal. The son of sculptor Kartikchandra Pal, he has been carving and chiselling ever since he can remember. Pal’s big break came in 1988, when he learned that the Ministry of Culture was looking for someone to make a Gandhi statue for Moscow. Pal’s model was selected from among 20 submissions.

Since then his Gandhis, rendered in bronze, have gone to such scattered locales as Mexico, Portugal, Canada and Senegal. Appreciation of Sutar’s work – and the competitiveness it engendered – was Pal’s big motivation. "Sutar is a great sculptor," he said. "My sculptures are more realistic than his work. I thought that only if I make my statues better than his I would be able to get the work."