In less than two weeks, Bangalore’s summer racing season will kick off at the century-old Bangalore Turf Club (BTC) in the heart of the city. Way back in 1916, Maharaja Nalvadi Krishnaraja Wadiyar leased out 92 acres of prime real estate in the neighbourhood known as High Grounds to the stewards of the Bangalore races, under the condition that the land be used exclusively for horse racing. On May 20, 1921, those stewards created the Bangalore Race Club (which, in 1956, became the BTC).
Horses and horsepersons have been around in Bangalore well before the BTC, of course, as the number of equestrian statues dotting the city reveal. The oldest is the statue of Sir Mark Cubbon, Commissioner of Bangalore from 1834 to 1861. Respected both by the locals and his fellow officers, the horse-mad Cubbon personally owned 60 fine steeds, which he stabled in the extensive grounds of his home (today the Karnataka Raj Bhavan) in the High Grounds. His statue, cast in bronze by Baron Marochetti, a Chelsea sculptor who was the toast of London society, arrived in Bangalore in 1866, and eventually found a home in the park that was named after him.
About a hundred metres behind Cubbon, in the forecourt of the Vidhana Soudha, stand two equestrian statues unveiled in March 2023, mere weeks before the Karnataka state elections. One features Kempegowda I, who established, some two kilometres to the south of his statue, the original pete of Bengaluru in 1537. In recent years, giant (non-equestrian) statues of the founding father – recognisable by his turban, his naked sword, and the ultimate symbol of south Indian machismo, a luxuriant moustache – have mushroomed all over the city, including at our eponymous, beautiful airport. (Similar iconography marks the statues of 19th century Belagavi revolutionary Krantiveera Sangolli Rayanna, after whom the City railway station is named – the only difference is that KSR holds a shield.)
The other statue is of Basaveshwara, saint, poet, political administrator and reformer from north Karnataka, who launched a radical movement for social change in the 12th century, and whose deeply inclusive philosophy, expressed as simple, accessible Kannada poetry, is evoked to this day, often in the well of the Karnataka legislative assembly behind him. Very close to this statue, on the Race Course Road, is another, bigger, equestrian statue of Basava. Both statues are distinguished by Basava’s crown, his sheathed sword, and the linga at his throat. Basava’s followers, the Lingayats, form one of the two most populous, powerful caste groups in the state; the other is the Vokkaligas, to which community Kempegowda belonged.
The only equestrian statue of a woman is to be found next to the Puttanna Chetty Town Hall on JC Road. From atop a pedestal that most resembles an upside-down wedding cake, the valiant Rani Chennamma of Kittur (in Belagavi district) presides fiercely over one of the most congested junctions in the city. In 1824, decades before Lord Dalhousie enforced the infamous Doctrine of Lapse, which did not recognize adopted children as royal heirs, Chennamma went to war against the East India Company to protect the rights of her own adopted son. An early victory turned her into a Kannada folk hero for the ages; sadly, she was arrested soon after and died in captivity in 1829.
In the verdant surrounds of Lalbagh stands the equestrian statue of Chamarajendra Wadiyar X, another adopted heir, who took the reins of Mysore back in 1881, following half a century of direct British rule. Executed in classical European style, and flanked by the goddesses of Liberty and Justice, the beautiful bronze statue is a tribute to a visionary ruler who ushered Mysore into a brave new age of science, modern industry, and representative government.
And then there is the equestrian statue of Chhatrapati Shivaji, who could never be mistaken for anyone else, on the ramparts of an ersatz fortress at the Sankey Tank in Sadashivanagar. Bangalore was once the fiefdom of Shivaji’s father, Shahaji Bhosale, and Chhatrapati spent a few happy years of his boyhood here, in blissful ignorance of what the future would bring.
(Roopa Pai is a writer who has carried on a longtime love affair with her hometown Bengaluru)