03-11-2011, 04:35 AM
Quote:17 statues of Andhra greats destroyed
Hyderabad, Mar 10 (PTI) They were towering symbols of Telugu glory and stood immortalised in the form of life-size bronze statues on the picturesque Tank Bund on Hussain Sagar in Hyderabad.
Statues they may be, but they had ''life'' in them.
Each one of them was a legend in his or her own right and contributed their might for enhancing and enriching the Telugu culture in varied forms over the ages.
But, this evening, 17 of the 33 statues adorning the Tank Bund, one of the most-famous tourist spots in the Andhra Pradesh capital city, were destroyed by Telangana supporters.
As many as 11 statues were, in fact, uprooted and dumped in Hussain Sagar lake by the protesters who stormed the Tank Bund road seeking statehood for Telangana.
The Tank Bund presents a gory sight now.
What should one say of Emperor Srikrishnadevaraya, who ruled the famous Vijayanagara empire 500 years ago? Annamacharya was the first Telugu ''vaaggeyakara'' who penned thousands of ''keertans'' glorifying Lord Venkateswara with deep devotion. Siddhendra Yogi was the founder of the world-famous Kuchipudi classical dance form more than 600 years ago.
While Kandukuri Veeresalingam Pantulu was a freedom fighter and social reformer, Gurazada Appa Rao was an acclaimed writer whose famous work Kanyasulkam itself was a legend in Telugu literature.
Yerrapragada was part of the triumvirate (Nannaya and Tikkana were the others) that translated the Mahabharata into Telugu.
Sir Arthur Cotton, a British national, was the darling of Telugu people''s hearts as he built barrages on rivers Godavari and Krishna that turned Andhra Pradesh into a rice bowl.
N T Rama Rao, himself a legend, conceived the idea and installed the 33 statues on Tank Bund when he was chief minister of Andhra Pradesh in his second term between 1984 and 1989. His main intention was to immortalise the lives of such legends and showcase them as an inspiration for future generations.
There were other luminaries like Palnati Brahma Naidu (a historic personality dated back to the Chola period), Raghupati Venkaiah (movies), Mutnuri Krishna Rao (journalist) and Tripuraneni Ramaswamy Choudary (reformer) whose statues too were destroyed today.
The statue of playwright and actor Ballari Raghava was also destroyed. Statues of Shalivahana, Nannaya, Yogi Vemana, Kshetraya, Sri Sri, Gurram Jashua and CR Reddy have been partly damaged and desecrated.
Incidentally, the statues of Suravaram Pratap Reddy, Rani Rudrama Devi, Molla, Maqdoom Moinuddin and a few others were not touched.
Expressing anguish over the vandalism, TDP president N Chandrababu Naidu held the Kiran Kumar Reddy government squarely responsible for it. Praja Rajyam Party president K Chiranjeevi also condemned the destruction of statues and said any protests should be organised in a peaceful manner.
http://news.in.msn.com/national/article....id=5018260
I never argued for one Telugu speaking state as that in itself is a subversive post British construct but this is rapidly taking on shades of Uddhav Thackeray's MNS, DMK and the Taliban.