In 2022, the government of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu unveiled a monument of Col. John Pennycuick in his English hometown of Camberley. The inscription described him in characteristically Indian English flourish as “a noble man of sacrifice,” which sounds extravagant until one considers that, even today, families in the region hang his portrait in their homes and worship him as a god.

Pennycuick, a British Indian Army engineer, achieved deification for building the Mullaperiyar Dam, which since its completion in 1895 has provided much-needed water to several parched districts in Tamil Nadu and, according to locals, ended the famines there. Local tradition holds that Pennycuick sold his family property to help finance the project, though there’s no evidence for it.