India’s “Dalit Queen” Mayawati warned Saturday that any move to raze towering statues she built of herself and other low-caste icons could create law-and-order problems in the country. The firebrand leader was speaking to party workers after being dethroned last month as chief minister of Uttar Pradesh following a colourful and scandal-tainted term running the country’s most populous state.
While in power she spent millions of dollars concreting green areas to build huge marble, granite and sandstone statues of herself and other Dalit leaders as well as hundreds of stone elephants, her Bahujan Samaj Party’s symbol. “We never tried to disturb memorials and parks named after their (the new ruling Samajwadi Party’s) icons. We honoured their feelings and I hope the new government will do the same,” Mayawti said in televised remarks. Any attempt to touch the so-called “memorial parks” could “lead to law-and-order problems, not only in the state but also in the country,” Mayawati, 56, said in the Uttar Pradesh capital Lucknow.
She was referring to media reports the new government, led by a charismatic 38-year-old engineering graduate Akhilesh Yadav, may open hospitals and schools in the parks she built on a scale to rival the monuments of ancient Rome.
