Dubbed the Unity Statue, the statue honors the country’s first deputy prime minister, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel.
Patel, fondly known as the “Iron Man of India,” played a key rule in unifying India’s fractitious states into a single, independent country. He died in 1950.
India’s current prime minister Narendra Modi, is the impetus behind the project, according to a press release by Michael Graves Architecture & Design, the company overseeing the design and construction of the statue. Modi, who previously served as Gujarat’s chief minister, has long pushed for such a sculpture, and construction began in earnest after he was elected PM in 2014.