More than 70 people gathered at the Fresno State Peace Garden Wednesday night to celebrate the 144th birthday of Mahatma Gandhi, an influential Indian figure who helped his country gain its independence from Britain.

A bronze sculpture of Gandhi’s head rests in the center of the garden north of the Henry Madden Library. It was the garden’s first statue, built in 1990. Now, 23 years later, there are four sculptures — Gandhi, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Cesar Chavez and Jane Addams””portraying historical human rights leaders.

The garden, said Dr. Sudarshan Kapoor, a Fresno State professor emeritus, is missing one key ethnicity: a Native American presence.

“Hopefully, we’ll have a memorial for Native Americans also. Hopefully in my lifetime,” he told Wednesday’s crowd, who honored Gandhi in a candlelight vigil, holding hands in a circle and singing songs of peace in unison.

The Peace Garden, as it stands, Kapoor said, represents a diverse population.

Gandhi symbolizes the Indian community on campus; King represents African-Americans; Chavez, Hispanics; and Addams, women.

Adding a Native American presence to the garden “has been my dream,” said Kapoor, who will focus on reaching out to local American Indian tribes and campus administration for potential funding.

Student and faculty involvement has been a constant in all four of the garden’s memorial-building efforts.

“All these statues that have come up are the result of the students’ involvement, their motivation, their interest,” Kapoor said. “And the faculty works with them. We guide them, and they carry the ball further. This is what has happened in all this.”

The first statue, a 1,500-pound memorial dedicated to Gandhi, was an effort spearheaded by Fresno State students.

James Zerl Smith, a student in Kapoor’s peace and conflicts class, created a clay sculpture of the Indian figure that was used as the design for the centerpiece memorial. Associated Students Inc. allocated $15,000 to the initial effort. The rest of the $25,000 cost to build the memorial was fundraised from private donors.

At the dedication ceremony, Dr. Arun Gandhi, grandson of the peace figure, former Fresno Mayor Karen Humphrey and more than 1,000 people attended the anniversary of Gandhi’s birth on Oct. 2, 1990.

“To be honest, we were really flattered,” said Pranav Menon, an international graduate student and the event coordinator for Fresno State’s Indian Student Club. “Gandhi’s the father of our nation, and he’s a respected leader in our nation. To see a statue of Gandhi in the university I’m studying at is a big thing. … We were quite overwhelmed.”

Money has been a barrier breached in the past. The King and Chavez monuments — both of which cost $65,000 to complete — along with the Addams memorial ($95,000) were partially covered through fundraising efforts from students and faculty.

The Addams statue — the latest addition that was completed in 2006 — cost the most partly because of its intricate design, Kapoor said. The statue features Addams hoisting a child in midair as she holds up a globe of earth.

Kapoor said recent dialogue with students and faculty has centered on the idea of who and what the next potential memorial might include, though a consensus has not been reached”” one of the possible reasons being the diverse Native American history and lineages.

The next step, Kapoor said, is reinvigorating the spark that has “carried” the previous four efforts: students and faculty, namely of American Indian descent.

“I don’t want to work behind them,” he said, calling his role and efforts a “catalyst.”

“I want to keep them in the front so that they are the ones who later on carry the ball. That’s what my style has been. They should feel ownership. They should feel that they are the ones [carrying] it.”