It is a matter of some irony that as Queen Elizabeth II lay dying in Balmoral Castle, Scotland, over in India, once celebrated as the jewel in the crown of the British empire, its rulers were assiduously attempting to brush away remnants of the Raj.

An hour or so before she breathed her last, at New Delhi's grand Central Vista, Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the statue of independence hero Subhas Chandra Bose, who once operated from Singapore. Bose's statue, carved out of a 280-tonne block of black granite, now stands under a colonial-era canopy where a figure of King George V had stood from 1936 until 1968, at which point it was moved to another location.