Saturday, January 28, 2012

Statues sans message






Symbolism is an important aspect in India's culture, it is evident in our great classics and in drama. While symbolism conveys its subtle message in lietrature and drama it is misused in politics and public life.

One of the symbolic aspects in our public life is statues of all and sundry at road junctions. There are so many of them they are an irritation and obstruction to traffic. This type of symbolism that should be used to convey a message has been abused. A statue of a great personality should convey a subtle message of what he/she stood for, for Ex Gandhi for non-violence, Ambedkar - uplifting the poor/downtrodden etc. Statue should stir your emotions, they should not make you disregard that personality, there are so many Gandhi statues no one cares for their maintenance, forget about his message.

Today we have statues of murderers, caste laeders, leaders who practice identity politics etc. They are all over the country landscape, those who have achieved little and had no universal message.

There should be a law to restict this menace. Ironically there are roads in the country named after tyrants, one of them is in Hyderabad in Banajara Hills - Ayotollah Khomenie road (former Iranian leader), does he stand for freedom of expression ? Is it not silly to have a road named after an Iranian leader who stood for what ?

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