George V is back; the statues in West Bengal are on the move. All those proud, iron figures which have been languishing since Indian independence in an old colonial residence outside Calcutta, are to go back into the public eye as the local authority - the world's longest-serving democratically-elected communist government - decides the time has come to look beyond old animosities.
"At the time they were taken down, there was a good deal of anti-British sentiment," says Kshiti Goswami of Calcutta's Public Works department. "But there is no longer any wrath against the British in West Bengal." And so the statues will be re-erected on the banks of the Ganges.
That this public servant should display such equanimity is surprising, given his sympathies. Among the portraits on the walls of his office are those of Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara and Subhas Chandra Bose, a radical leader of India's independence struggle. "It's time to take these statues out of the darkness and into the light," Goswami says. "They're precious and have international appeal."
The re-erection of the statues also brings back into the light part of Irish history - the part played by the Irish and Anglo-Irish in maintaining the Raj.
As well as King George V, those yet languishing in the Calcuttan suburb of Barrackpore include 19th-century British prime minister Sir Robert Peel, several viceroys of India, a general and various colonial figures. Many of them have Irish roots, because a great number of Irishmen and Anglo-Irishmen found distinction in the service of the British empire.
The Irish came to India largely by three routes: the military (first with the East India Company army and, after 1858 when responsibility for India was transferred to the Crown, with regular British army forces); by way of the Indian Civil Service, the main administrative arm of British rule in India; and, finally, as missionaries.
Most numerous were those who wore military uniform. It was not by chance that the eponymous hero of Rudyard Kipling's novel, Kim, was the son of an Irish soldier. During the early 1870s, Irishmen made up nearly a quarter of those in the British army. As one adage about the British Empire maintained: "The Irish fought for it, the Scottish and Welsh ran it, but the English kept the profits".
Some Irish regiments had a worse reputation than others. The Munster Fusiliers were, in the words of a British general, "fine men but sadly naughty boys" - overly given to boozing and brawling. Most notorious of all were the Connaught Rangers who were, according to the writer of one memoir, "more respected and feared by the natives than any other British unit in India".
If the British army's rank and file in India were frequently Irishmen, officers and senior administrators mostly came from the Irish ascendancy.
Remarking on the prominent role of the Anglo-Irish in building the empire, James (later Jan) Morris speculated in the Pax Britannica trilogy: "They knew imperialism from both sides, and perhaps understanding its dilemmas more clearly than most, threw themselves into the imperial adventure with an extra gusto or sense of involvement."
But whether their experience at home made the Irish any more sympathetic in service abroad is open to question. According to one academic source, the Irish "were as brutal as any other white colonisers."
The history books, however, look kindly enough on the Irish contingent at Barrackpore. Hand outstretched on his elegant mount is Lord Mayo, Viceroy 1869-72, descended from generations of settlers in Ireland. Richard Southwell Bourke, sixth Earl of Mayo, was born in Dublin. The eldest of 10 children, he spent his early years at the family's house at Hayes in Co Meath, where he learned to shoot and ride to hounds. He studied at Trinity College Dublin and later served as an MP for Co Kildare. His rule in India was cut short by an assassin's dagger during a visit to a penal settlement on the Andaman Islands.
Near him, gazing out from under the brim of his pith helmet, is Lord Landsdowne, Viceroy 1888-94, and heir to the Landsdowne estates in Co Kerry. Landsdowne could trace his Irish ancestry back to the Norman Conquest. He served as Governor of Canada, then as Viceroy of India but, by all accounts, his heart belonged in Derreen, where he spent much time improving his estate's gardens. He was devastated when the house was burned to the ground during the Civil War, in 1922. But it was rebuilt and he continued to spend time in Ireland until his death while visiting his daughter in Clonmel in 1927.
And walking towards them is the cloaked figure of Lord Lawrence, administrator of the Punjab and Viceroy 1864-69, one of 12 children of an Anglo-Irish soldier. John Lawrence was educated in Derry at his uncle's school, the Free Grammar School, later Foyle College: "I was flogged once every day of my life at school," he remarked, "except one - and then I was flogged twice."
While on leave, he married the daughter of a Donegal clergyman and returned east with the words: "If I can't live in India, I must go and die there."
He is best remembered for his part in bringing the Punjab under British control in 1872.
The imperial effigies have been located in the grounds of Flagstaff House at Barrackpore since 1969. Built as a retreat for the colonial Governor General on the banks of the Ganges, the elegant house and gardens have provided an ideal if secluded setting for the statues.
THE authorities have turned down a request that the statue of Lord Mayo be sent to a college in Rajasthan which is named after him. They feel the collection should remain in Calcutta, imperial India's capital until 1911.
"These statues have considerable historical and aesthetic value," says S.K. Thakurta of Calcutta Municipal Corporation, which wants to install the statues in a sculpture park by the River Ganges. "I hope they'll be in place before the end of the year."
That the city's communist fathers should consider reinstalling men so driven by the ideals of empire is a measure of the changing times.
Decades ago, Calcutta's officials renamed its streets in accordance with the demands of Indian nationalism and revolutionary Communism (Harrington Street, location of the American consulate and British Deputy High Commission became Ho Chi Minh Street). Last year, they changed the name of the city from Calcutta to the more politically-correct Bengali version, Kolkata. Their decision to reinstate Britain's empire builders on their plinths is bound to set a few tongues wagging in the bar of the Bengal Club.