On the morning of June 4, the people of Calangute village in North Goa awoke to a new 16-foot statue of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj having come up at the prominent Chogm circle near the Calangute police station on Saligao-Calangute road. A smaller bust of the Maratha warrior king, installed last year on the side of the same road, had disappeared. The statue of Shivaji, sitting astride a horse with sword in hand, has become a flashpoint of tensions in Calangute. The Calangute panchayat and Shivswarajya Calangute – a group that claims credit for building the statue – locked horns over the matter, with the panchayat passing a resolution calling for the statue to be removed on the grounds that its installation was “illegal”. The panchayat withdrew the resolution after protests and pressure from Shivswarajya Calangute and ‘Shiv Premis’. “It took about 3-4 hours. Just like the Pandavas built a temple in one night, we installed the statue. It was done at night to avoid inconvenience to the public, since there is traffic during the day,” said Dnyaneshwar Mathkar, president of Shivswarajya Calangute, which claims to propagate the ideology of Shivaji and has been leading the demand to install a “life-size” statue of the Maratha icon in Calangute. The smaller bust of Shivaji was removed on the same day the statue was installed, after a prayer service, as per customs, Mathkar added. According to police sources, at around 2 am on June 4, a group of at least 100-150 people under the leadership of the Shivswarajya group gathered at Chogm circle – just a few yards from the Calangute police station – and with the help of an earthmover and a crane, installed the statue by early morning. On June 6, the group organised an inauguration of the statue as the state commemorated the 350th anniversary of Shivaji’s coronation. On June 19, the Calangute panchayat, led by sarpanch Joseph Sequeira, passed a resolution directing authorities to “remove the statue within ten days”, failing which the panchayat would take action to remove it. The resolution had stated that the installation of the statue violated a 2013 Supreme Court order regarding the installation of statues on roads, and that no permission had been obtained from any of the sanctioning authorities before the statue was installed. “.whereas the statue is illegal and [if] the statue is retained at this location, then any anti-social elements may damage the same in future and it will lead to fights and breach of peace in the village,” the resolution added. As word spread regarding the resolution, on the morning of June 20, an irate group of at least 200 people claiming affiliation with groups such as Shivswarajya Calangute, Karni Sena Sangathan, Bajrang Dal and Shiv Sena among others gathered outside the panchayat’s office in Calangute, demanding that the resolution be revoked. They also demanded that the sarpanch, Joseph Sequeira, publicly apologise for “hurting the sentiments of Hindus”. As they camped outside the panchayat office for around six hours, the protesters broke a window of the office, scuffled with police and pelted stones. Eventually, Sequeira announced that he was withdrawing the resolution. “The order has been withdrawn. If I have hurt anyone’s sentiments by issuing the notice, I apologise,” Sequeira told the protesters, who celebrated their "victory" by exploding crackers near the Shivaji statue. Sequeira, who filed a police complaint following the incidents at the panchayat office, told The Indian Express: “As a sarpanch, I have acted as per the law and as per provisions of the Goa Panchayat Raj Act. It is now up to the authorities to act.” A cross complaint was filed against Sequeira by Goenchi Nari Shakti and Karni Sena for allegedly hurting religious sentiments and instigating ‘Shiv Premis’. The police are yet to register an FIR in either of the cases. The issue cropped up more than a year ago, in March 2022, when a small bust of Shivaji “mysteriously” came up at a private property on the side of the road near Chogm police circle in Calangute. Mathkar said his group had been pushing for a bigger statue of Shivaji for the past couple of years. “Shivaji fought many historic battles and sacrificed his life. We felt there should be a bigger statue to pay homage to Shivaji's bravery and to commemorate his life at a prominent junction here. It was the demand of locals. There was a small statue, but it was not prominent and we do not know who installed it. We had been pushing for a statue here for a couple of years and formally put in a request last year,” Mathkar said. Shivswarajya Calangute wrote to the panchayat in the first week of September 2022, seeking a no-objection certificate (NOC) to install the statue near the police station circle. According to panchayat records, the panchayat placed the letter for consideration in a September 30 meeting and unanimously resolved to send the letter to the North Goa deputy collector. However, Shivswarajya Calangute alleged that the panchayat stalled the issue for months and did not respond to their submission. Meanwhile, the group had already set in motion its plans for installing the statue, roping in a Pune-based architect in February 2023. The panchayat, on April 6, 2023, adopted a resolution “to erect a high-mast lamp for public convenience near the cross road location near the police station”, at the same spot where Shivaji’s statue had been proposed by Shivswarajya. The panchayat requested a site inspection by the Public Works Department (PWD) and traffic police cell, claiming that “it had become an accident-prone area”. Shivswarajya Calangute, in turn, wrote to the panchayat on May 2 requesting it to refrain from any development or beautification work on the roundabout “to safeguard our Shree Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj statue (bust) which is located near the said circle”. By then, the panchayat began anticipating communal tension, and on May 11 shot off a letter to various authorities including the Chief Minister’s Office, Public Works Department, SP North Goa, Collector North Goa and Goa State Infrastructure Development Corporation (GSIDC) stating that the group had “collected a huge amount and was in the process of installing the statue during the night illegally”, and noted that “there was apprehension of communal tension”. After being forced to back down, Sequeira rejected claims that the panchayat intended to “demolish” the statue. “I have the highest respect for Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj. We only wanted to shift it (the statue) to the side where [the bust] was originally erected,” he said at a press conference three days after the June 20 protests at the panchayat office. A proud Mathkar said: “100 din mein statue ready ho gaya (The statue was ready in 100 days). It is made of gun-metal.” “No response was received [from the panchayat], so we went ahead. We do not need anyone's permission. We collected donations from locals and took everyone into confidence. The total cost was around Rs 41.5 lakh. A concrete structure, to serve as a pedestal for the statue, was built in Goa,” he added. In the last few years, at least five or six statues have sprung up at various locations in Goa. In 2020, a life-size statue of Shivaji was installed at Hutatma Chowk in Mapusa, after obtaining permissions and a resolution of the Mapusa municipal council. In 2017, tension prevailed in Valpoi after a Shivaji statue was installed at Hathwada junction. Meanwhile, Calangute’s local politicians offered varying interpretations of the incident. Sudesh Mayekar who unsuccessfully contested the Assembly elections from Calangute on an AAP ticket in 2022 and joined the BJP after the polls, said: “After the statue came up, the panchayat made it a communal issue. There have been no accidents or any traffic related issue. Now, the panchayat is suddenly claiming that it is an accident-prone area and the statue being in the middle obstructs traffic. This is bogus.” Mayekar claimed that he was not affiliated with Shivswarajya. Another protester, Rajeev Jha, from the Kesariya Hindu Vahini in Vasco, said, “They (the panchayat) are trying to create a communal divide. If there can be a statue of Portuguese footballer Ronaldo in Calangute, and statues of leaders from other faiths, what is the issue with a statue of Shivaji?” Michael Lobo, the BJP MLA from Calangute, claimed that some people who had lost elections were trying to revive their careers through politics in the name of Shivaji. “I appeal to the people of Goa not to fall prey to such tactics,” he told the media last week. In a separate statement, Lobo added that there was no objection to the statue and the protests took place due to a “misunderstanding”.
