Intent on outdoing the monuments left behind by the British, India is to build its answer to the Statue of Liberty — a new 309 feet tall sculpture of a sword-wielding warrior king that will rise out of the Arabian Sea off the coast of Bombay.

The state of Maharashtra, which includes India’s commercial capital, has approved the construction of a massive bronze statue of Chhatrapati Shivaji, a seventeenth century Hindu freedom fighter who defeated the subcontinent’s Mogul overlords and harried British colonialists. The monument, which will be four feet taller than New York’s Statue of Liberty, will be built on top of a man-made island about a kilometre off Bombay’s southern shore.

“The people of the city want to reclaim their history,” Thanksy Thekkekara, the principal secretary of the government of Maharashtra, told The Times. “Today, they only have colonial landmarks, such as the Gateway of India. They want to leave their own footprints.”

At least 1 billion rupees (£12 million) will be spent on the project, which may also include a museum and picnic ground, reachable by ferry. “The final amount could be much more,” Mrs Thekkekara said.

Opponents have slammed the plans, arguing that the money would be better spent rebuilding Bombay’s crumbling roads, providing toilets for its millions of slum dwellers and supporting the surrounding countryside’s desperately poor farmers, hundreds of whom committed suicide last year.

Edwin Britto, of the opposition Janata Dal party, said: “Sometimes I feel like the people who run this country have gone insane. I am from Maharashtra; I would like to have a statue of Shivaji. But not when there are so many other things to do.”

Mrs Thekkekara said: “A statue may not be practical in the same way as plumbing is, but every city needs a monument.”

Despite little apart from the location being finalised, Congress, the leading party in Maharashtra’s ruling coalition, says the Shivaji project may be completed within two years. As a first step, Vilasrao Deshmukh, the state’s chief minister, this week travelled by speedboat to inspect the patch of sea chosen as a site — a trip that triggered allegations that the monument is part of a grand electioneering stunt.

“There is no budget provision for this statue,” Nitin Gadkari, the regional leader of the BJP, India’s main opposition party, said. “It is being done only to achieve political advantage before next year’s general election.”

The sculpture’s supporters deny those charges and say their monumental ambitions are inspired by America’s Statue of Liberty – a potent national icon that greeted millions of immigrants to a new land.

Many newcomers to Bombay, a city that is attracting as many as 400 immigrant families a day, may not find the image of Shivaji as welcoming. The warrior king – who in his lifetime was lauded as a just and secular-minded ruler — has been embraced as the figurehead of the Shiv Sena (the Army of Shivaji), an extremist Hindu political party whose supporters have a record of attacking migrants who travel to India’s most cosmopolitan city from poorer parts of in India.

Under the Shiv Sena’s watch, the memory of one of the earliest champions of Indian self-rule has already been used to obscure the remnants of the Raj. Victoria Terminus, the city’s main train station, is now Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus. The Prince of Wales Museum was renamed the Chhatrapati Shivaji Museum.

Meanwhile, staff at Bombay’s Public Works Department, who are already struggling to keep Bombay’s roads and buildings in some semblance of good order, appear perturbed when asked what building a 309 feet tall statue at sea will entail. “We may need at least twice the money being talked about, and even then it will be a very big challenge” one official said.

Undeterred, those behind the plans are pressing on. “The budget will be no problem.” Mrs Thekkekara said. “We are taking this very seriously. You don’t build a Statue of Liberty every day, you know.”

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