New Delhi: A statue of the legendary Hardit Singh Malik, the first Indian fighter pilot of the Royal Flying Corps, will be erected at Southampton, a city in South East England.
Malik is famous as the ‘Flying Sikh’. Among his other nicknames is the ‘Flying Hobgoblin’.
BBC has reported that the memorial will be dedicated to black and ethnic minority service personnel who fought for Britain and lost their lives in the World Wars.
“More than 1.2 million Indians fought and 70,000 died during World War I, although only four became pilots,” the report notes.
More than 80,000 Indians were wounded, C. Uday Bhaskar noted in a piece for The Wire.
“Malik who had so proudly flown his Sopwith Camel aircraft over Belgium and France, risking his life for the allies, watched in horror as his colleagues from the RAF pounded his homeland with bombs killing innocent civilians,” a book by Shrabani Basu, on Indian fighters who fought for Britain, says.
Malik’s statue – for which the One Community Hampshire and Dorset (OCHD) and the Southampton Council of Gurdwaras had campaigned – will be made by sculptor Luke Perry.
The statue and plinth are going to be almost 17 feet tall, according to BBC.
It is planned to be installed by April 2023, the Daily Mail tabloid has reported.