As the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi inches closer, it has pleasantly surprised everyone that the US, as a mark of respect for the father of the nation, has a large number of memorials, statues and busts of the apostle of peace, despite Gandhi never visiting the country. A list compiled by the news agency PTI, with the help of public sources, indicates that there are more than two dozen statues of the Mahatma in the United States. Additionally, there are over a dozen major societies and associations related to him in the country. 
"Outside India, the US has the largest number of Gandhi statues, memorials and busts of Mahatma Gandhi, eminent Indian American Subhash Razdan told PTI in an interview. The first of these, Gandhi Memorial Centre, in Bethesda, a Maryland-suburb of Washington DC, is still active and is engaged in propagating the values and teachings of Gandhi. The popular Union Square Park in New York City installed one of the first major statues of Gandhi on On October 2, 1986.

READ | PM Modi inaugurates Gandhi Solar Park& Peace Garden at UN headquarters

"Gandhi has a large following in the United States"

Razdan, chairman of Atlanta-based The Gandhi Foundation of USA, has been instrumental in the installation of several of these statues and busts in the US and was, in 2013, felicitated with the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman Award. According to him, Gandhi has a large following in the United States. He says the following and respect also comes from the fact that the civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr was inspired by the teachings and philosophy of the Mahatma.

READ | PM Modi's key quotes from his address on Mahatma Gandhi at the UN

In addition to that, the bronze sculpture of Gandhi by Kantilal Patel joined monuments to Washington, Lafayette, and Lincoln in Union Square Park as a quartet of works devoted to defenders of freedom. According to Razdan, several leaders, including former US president Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the US House of Representatives, are self-proclaimed followers of Mahatma Gandhi.

Among places to have Gandhi statues in the US are at the Flint Peace Park, Flint Michigan; Milwaukee County Courthouse, Milwaukee Wisconsin; at the Pacifist Memorial in Sherborn, Massachusetts; Millsaps College, Jackson Mississippi; Mission Inn Plaza, Riverside California; Embarcadero Centre, San Francisco California and Shanti Fund, Hauppauge, Long Island, New York.

READ | Handicraft exhibition to commemorate Gandhiji's birth anniversary

It has also been installed in front of old county courthouse, Charlotte North Carolina; Kapiolani Park, Honolulu Hawaii; James Madison University, Harrisonburg Virginia; India Cultural Garden, Cleveland Ohio; Martin Luther King Memorial Centre, Atlanta Georgia; Rockefeller Park, Cleveland Ohio; Houston Garden Centre, Hermann Park, Houston Texas; Center for Families, YWCA, Salt Lake City Utah; Toledo Area Sculptors Guild, Gibsonburg Ohio and at the Bellevue Public Library, Bellvue Washington.
A seven-foot-tall bronze statue of Mahatma Gandhi was unveiled in Davie Florida by former president A P J Abdul Kalam in 2012. In 2017, a life-size bronze sculpture of Mahatma Gandhi was unveiled at World Headquarters of Lions International in Oak Brook, Illinois.

Recently, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while on his week-long trip to the United States, while adding to the Gandhi wave in the States, inaugurated the Gandhi Solar Park and Gandhi Peace Garden along with UN chief Antonio Guterres and other world leaders at the UN headquarters.

PM Modi's address on Gandhi at the UN

While speaking about Gandhi, PM Modi underlined that the Gandhian principles act as a moral compass and stressed that Mahatma Gandhi's faith in the collective will, shared destiny, moral purpose, people's movements and personal responsibility are extremely germane to contemporary times. He further said that violent conflict, terrorism, economic inequalities, socio-economic deprivation, pandemics and the looming existential threat of climate change are impacting people, states and societies. In his address at the event, PM Modi also spoke about the contributions of the Father of the Nation to the cause of greater human freedom in the 20th century.

READ | Gandhi Peace Garden:Coordinator Arvind Vora talks about its importance

Talking about the solar parks that PM Modi inaugurated, the solar panels are powered up to reach the max of 50 KW of generation power. Furthermore, the energy generated in the park is equivalent to the energy that would have been created through the use of 30,000 kilograms of coal. It also has carbon sequestration of 1000 seedlings which will grow into trees over 10 years. 

Additionally, The Gandhi Peace Garden that was also inaugurated alongside the solar panel, is an innovative initiative under which the Consulate General of India in New York, Long Island-based NGO Shanti Fund and the State University of New York - Old Westbury have entered into an agreement to plant 150 trees. It is dedicated in the memory of Gandhi and is a crowd-sourced project, with people adopting trees in the memory of their loved ones. The garden is in an open site within the 600 acres campus of the University.

(With PTI Inputs)