POLITICAL (IM)
MORALITY
Mandadi Krishna Reddy
“Oh, my! The Gandhi statue has come down!”
“ I saw it there while returning from the second show of the cinema in perfect shape. By this morning this calamity occurred” “Look, though it has fallen down from that height, nothing has happened to the statue itself. Only the base is all craceked up. Surprising, isn’t it?”
“What is the great surprise? He was a Mahatma. Though he is in the shape of a statue, where does his greatness go?”
The people gathered around the fallen statue of Gandhiji in the town square, commented freely. The mob increased gradually.
“The question is not how the statue has fallen – but, how to re-erect is the point”
The crowd turned their heads towards the direction of the voice.
“Our leader, Sri Vinayak Rao”, they murmured.
“Gandhiji was a Mahatma, who did a lot of good for us and the country. Due to his grace, we got the freedom and are living today happily. It is a great crime to keep looking and doing nothing when that great Man’s statue has fallen. It’s a disgrace to our town itself!”, He paused, observed the crowd from the corner of his eye and resumed his peroration.
“It is not going to be a big job, if all of us lend a helping hand to have it reerected, Let’s all contribute what we can. For my part I am donating rupees one hundred and sixteen. I wish that someone capable to take up this work comes forward and gets it back in place”. He was surprised at his own oration and smiled condescendingly on his followers gathered around.
“Oh, you are the only one capable of this great task, who else? You must take up this responsibility”. His followers shouted as loud as they could. There were some echoes from the crowd around also.
The work of collecting donations started immediately under the able guidance of the Hon’ble Leader. The enthusiastic young and those that had respect for Gandhiji went round every house and collected donations and laid the amount before Sri Vinayak Rao.
A week later, Gandhiji’s old statue was given a fresh coat of paint, the base was plastered a little and the statue of the toothless and smiling Bapu duly installed and the centre of the square blossomed forth once again.
That very evening, a beaming bronze statue of Sri Vinayak Rao was unveiled by an Hon’ble Minister at another important junction in the town. But not many people in the town knew that Gandhiji’s statue was brought down only to have the bronze one of Vinayak Rao installed there?
(Translated from the Original Telugu by Vemaraju Narasimha Rao.)