India on Wednesday unveiled the world's tallest 400-million-dollar statue of the New York Statue of Liberty, representing independence leader Valabhai Patil.
The 182-meter "Statue of Unity", made of steel and bronze in the state of Gujarat, home to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Mudi, is part of efforts by Hindu nationalists to celebrate the party's "forgotten" leaders.
Mudi ordered the statue when he was the prime minister of Gujarat, and he said earlier that India had seen attempts to "underestimate" Patil and "remove his contributions from history."
Patil is known as Iron Man in India and helped unite the 562 Indian states when he was Britain's first interior minister after independence from British rule in 1947.
The construction of the statue erected on the banks of the Narmada River was funded by the federal government, government companies and other institutions and took 33 months to implement. The project was carried out by Larsen Tobero Construction and Engineering.
The statue shows Patel dressed in traditional Indian costume. He was co-built by 250 engineers and 3,400 workers. The Indian Prime Minister gave the statue to the people of India on the 142th anniversary of Patil's birth.
"To build this statue, hundreds of thousands of farmers from all over India have donated their equipment and parts of their land, and there has been a great movement around the statue," Moody said in his speech.
The Times of India reported that thousands of police guarded the statue's site during the opening, after local residents staged demonstrations over the past months, saying the project destroyed natural resources.