Here's a video from the year 2000 about the Walking Buddha statue being "planted":
"Sangharakshita has come to understand Buddhism as implying a radical political programme, involving an almost unimaginable change in the way society functions throughout the globe....It was his contact with Dr Ambedkar, the great leader of the ex-Untouchables, and the movement of conversion he initiated, that opened Sangharakshita's eyes to the social dimension of the Dharma....Since the 1950s, Buddhism has begun to work a social revolution in the lives of several million Indians...
The phenomenon of mass change brought about by almost purely spiritual means is an example Sangharakshita offers to his disciples of what they can do, individually and collectively.
'If you were sufficiently alert, active, inspired, and dedicated, and if there were a number of you working together, perhaps you could exert a substantial influence on whole societies in different parts of the world - especially where those societies were in a state of flux and looking for some kind of general stability, and some kind of vision or blueprint for the future'"
(Subhuti, "Sangharakshita - a new voice in the Buddhist tradition, 1994, p219-220)
