India has quietly removed colonial statues from public spaces unlike the dramatic pulling down of monuments of slavers that unfolded in the UK and US
Early on the morning of August 10, 1965, a municipal watchman was on his rounds of Horniman Circle when he received a great shock: The marble figures of Lord Cornwallis and Lord Wellesley had been beheaded. Soon, reports of such mutilation came in from other parts of the city. Near Oval Maidan, Lord Sandhurst’s nose had been disfigured. Even Queen Victoria, seated on her magnificent marble throne at M G Road, was not spared: Her crown had been broken.
The marble statue of Lord Wellesley that was beheaded in 1965 in Mumbai