On Wednesday, India unveiled the world's tallest statue, a $400 million effigy of Indian independence hero Vallabhbhai Patel.
The 182-metre (597-ft) steel and bronze "Statue of Unity" situated in Gujarat is twice the size of the Statue of Liberty. It is also a major project of the Hindu nationalist party's effort to rebrand their "forgotten leaders."
At the ceremony on Wednesday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said, "Patel wanted India to be a forceful, strong, sensitive, vigilant and accommodative nation, and we're working toward that,"
Modi, who ordered the statue built on the Narmada river when he was still Gujarat chief minister, said last year there had been efforts to "belittle" or "remove from history" the contributions of Patel, who helped unite India's 562 princely states as the first home, or interior, minister.
In order to build the statue, the funds were raised from various sources such as the government, state companies and other interested institutions. It took 33 months to complete and it was monitored by Larsen & Toubro Ltd.
The effigy shows Patel wearing a traditional attire with a shawl over his shoulders. At least 210,000 cubic meters of cement, 25,000 tonnes of steel and 1,700 tonnes of bronze to construct the statue.
Patel is one of the "forgotten leaders" who were originally from the opposition Congress party who fought for independence in 1947 from Britain.
The statue is also seen as an attempt by Modi and his party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, to showcase alternatives to the heroes supported by the Nehru-Gandhi family which currently rules the Congress before the next election.
The BJP says Congress has deliberately ignored leaders such as Patel, B.R. Ambedkar, who led the drafting of the constitution, and freedom fighter Subhas Chandra Bose.
The Congress, currently led by the great-grandson of Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister Rahul Gandhi, denies these accusations and stressed that it distorts history.
"Ironic that a statue of Sardar Patel is being inaugurated, but every institution he helped build is being smashed," Gandhi said on social network Twitter, using an honorific for Patel.
"The systematic destruction of India's institutions is nothing short of treason."
Other critics said that Modi should have allotted the money somewhere else, like providing money to the affected indigenous people who used to farm in the land where the statue now resides.
"You would surely ask, on whose land would this statue stand? Whose plan was this?" social activist Medha Patkar wrote in what she called an open letter to Patel.
"This land, river, forest that your avatar is going to stand on, belongs to adivasis."
