{"id":73504,"date":"2025-08-19T01:31:29","date_gmt":"2025-08-18T16:31:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/aug\/18\/clive-of-india-isnt-welcome-in-shrewsbury-either"},"modified":"2025-08-19T01:31:29","modified_gmt":"2025-08-18T16:31:29","slug":"clive-of-india-isnt-welcome-in-shrewsbury-either-letters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=73504","title":{"rendered":"Clive of India isn\u2019t welcome in Shrewsbury either | Letters"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Jean Garner<\/strong> objects to his monument in the Shropshire town and is hoping for Thangam Debbonaire\u2019s support in getting it removed<\/p>\n<p>Thangam Debbonaire is concerned about visiting Indian citizens and dignitaries having to walk past a statue of Robert Clive in London (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/aug\/11\/labour-peer-calls-for-removal-robert-clive-of-india-statue-foreign-office\">Labour peer calls for removal of Clive of India statue from outside Foreign Office, 11 August<\/a>). I\u2019m sure the people of Shrewsbury are equally concerned about having to walk past the Clive statue on our high street and main square.<\/p>\n<p>Five years ago, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.change.org\/p\/shropshire-county-council-remove-clive-of-india-statue-from-shrewsbury-town-centre\">a petition<\/a> on the subject was signed by 9,000 people. The council responded by keeping the statue and taking three years to produce a small <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/uk-england-shropshire-65116317\">interpretation board<\/a>. The people of Shrewsbury do not want to be associated with this \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/indianexpress.com\/article\/research\/robert-clive-an-unstable-sociopath-and-a-racist-hated-both-in-india-and-england-6455033\/\">unstable sociopath<\/a>\u201d (as William Dalrymple called him), and look forward to Debbonaire\u2019s support for its removal.<br \/><strong>Jean Garner<\/strong><br \/><em>Minsterley, <\/em><em>Shropshire<\/em><\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/aug\/18\/clive-of-india-isnt-welcome-in-shrewsbury-either\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jean Garner objects to his monument in the Shropshire town and is hoping for Thangam Debbonaire\u2019s support in getting it removedThangam Debbonaire is concerned about visiting Indian citizens and dignitaries having to walk past a statue of Robert Clive i&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":327,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2230,514,62,902,4,2473,3380,52],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-british-empire","category-heritage","category-india","category-labour","category-politics","category-statues","category-thangam-debbonaire","category-uk-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/327"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=73504"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73504\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73505,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73504\/revisions\/73505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=73504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=73504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=73504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}