Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday unveiled a hologram of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose at India Gate, where he said a grand statue of the freedom fighter would be placed soon.
Marking Netaji’s 125th birth anniversary, the hologram was installed under the canopy where a statue of King George V had stood till its removal in 1968. The Amar Jawan Jyoti, or eternal flame in the memory of those killed in the line of duty in the 1971 war, had flickered in front of the empty canopy till last week. While government officials claimed the flame had been merged with the one at the National War Memorial nearby and not extinguished, the Amar Jawan Jyoti was removed from the site on January 21.
The statue, in black granite, would be made by a team of artists headed by National Gallery of Modern Art, Delhi director-general Adwaita Gadnayak, a Culture Ministry official said. Till the statue is completed, the hologram would be switched on at sunset every day, the official said.
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After switching on the hologram by pressing a button, Mr. Modi said the freedom struggle had involved the sacrifice of lakhs of people, but after Independence there was an attempt to erase their contribution.
Today, he said, the country was taking steps to correct those mistakes. He cited his government’s decisions, including observing Janjatiya Gaurav Diwas in honour of tribal freedom fighter Bhagwan Birsa Munda, constructing the Statue of Unity in honour of Sardar Patel and naming an island in the Andamans after Netaji, as steps in that direction.
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Mr. Modi said Netaji had stated that there was no power in the world that could shake India. “Today we have a goal to fulfil the dreams of Independent India. We have the goal of building a new India before the 100th year of Independence,” he said. He called on people to take inspiration from Netaji’s “can-do, will-do spirit” going forward.
Mr. Modi also conferred the Subhas Chandra Bose Aapda Prabhandhan Puraskar, or awards for disaster management, for 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 on individuals and institutes for their work in the field of disaster management. The winners for 2022 were the Gujarat Institute of Disaster Management and Prof. Vinod Sharma, a senior professor at the Indian Institute of Public Administration and the vice-chairperson of the Sikkim State Disaster Management Authority.
Speaking about the evolution of disaster management in the country, Mr. Modi said there was a holistic approach now, as opposed to earlier when it was akin to “digging a well when thirsty”. He said upcoming infrastructure projects, like the Char Dham highway project in Uttarakhand and expressways in Uttar Pradesh, were being constructed to be disaster resilient.