When I called on the sculptor Niranjan Pradhan at his studio in Calcutta, he was busy making the finishing touches to his nearly completed statue of Raja Ram Mohan Roy, the great Indian reformer and educationist. It was to be air-freighted to Bristol the next day.
The statue was subsequently installed in front of the Council House on College Green, aligned with the statue of Queen Victoria in front of the Swallow Royal Hotel. The statue is 8.5 feet high, made of bronze and weighs approximately 900 kg. It cost 650,000 rupees, or £13,000.
When I asked how he came to be associated with this project, Mr. Pradhan said that he had already sculpted a bust of the Raja for Bristol City Council. 'Expatriate Indians in Britain, and British admirers of the Raja, have for some time been wanting a full-size statue of Ram Mohan, and Bristol, where the Raja spent his last days, was the natural place to put it.'
The City Council got in touch with Pradhan again through Mr. L. M. Singhvi, the Indian High Commissioner in Britain, and in 1996, at the invitation of the Council, Pradhan went to Bristol and inspected the site.
Pradhan is all praise for the Council, especially the former Lord Mayor, Councilor Mrs. Joan McLaren, Mr. Richard Holden, Co-ordinator City Centre Projects, and Mrs. Carla Contractor, a Ram Mohan enthusiast associated with the project. 'They all had a genuine interest in Ram Mohan and the prospective statue', said Pradhan, 'In my design I followed the Raja's portrait in the City Museum in Bristol. I hope it comes up to their expectations.'
Niranjan Pradhan (born 1940) is one of India's pre-eminent sculptors. A product of Calcutta's Government Art College, he is also on its teaching staff. His works have found homes in most of the big cities of India including Delhi, Bombay and Calcutta. Apart from being a sculptor he is also a painter.
Both in painting and sculpture Pradhan adheres to the Western style. Though the Raja's statue is in a traditional representative style, Pradhan's current works are all abstract. He works in a variety of mediums: bronze, wood, concrete, stone and terracotta. He is a great admirer of the sculptor Barbara Hepworth.
His wife, Suktisubhra, who accompanied him on him visit to Bristol, is also a well-known painter and a teacher in the same college. The Pradhans visited the places that have associations with the Raja, such as the Unitarian Church in Colston Square, Stapleton Grove, Arno's Vale and the Red Lodge, as well as other places of interest, including the University.
The installation of the Raja's statue in Bristol in the both year of India's independence was a significant event. Raja Ram Mohan Roy, who died in Bristol in 1833, was an ardent believer in liberty and always opposed despotism. Equally at home in the civilizations of the East and the West, he believed in a synthesis of the two.
One hopes that this statue will forge a bond of friendship between Bristol and Calcutta.
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