GANDHI MEMORIAL IN AGRA CRIES FOR ATTENTION

Agra October 1 (IANS)

 

As the country prepares to launch a mass cleanliness drive Thursday morning, a memorial to Mahatma Gandhi in Agra, close to the Mughal monument Etmauddaula lies in a shambles. Its plight has prompted a barrage of critical comments on Facebook targeting the municipal corporation officials for neglecting such a priceless building.

 

Social activists associated with India Rising today announced they would clean up the place and look after it to ensure that the only memorial to the Father of the Nation on the Yamuna bank breathes free and becomes a vibrant centre of Gandhians. Once a hub of Gandhian and Sarvodaya activities, is today visited by petty criminals and vagabonds. We have never seen any Gandhian in its vicinity for a very long time, says a local Surendra Chandel.

 

This house where Mahatma Gandhi stayed for 11 days in 1929 while under treatmet of an ayurvedic doctor of Agra was later renovated by the local owner, an industrialist. It was renovated by a former municipal commissioner Shyam Singh Yadav in 2008, but again it fell into disuse and was reduced to a ghost house. People living in the neighbourhood use it as an open defecation site.

 

The memorial close to the tomb of Etimad ud daula "pillar of the state" the title given to Mirza Ghiyas Beg, father of Nur Jahan, wife of the Muhal Emperor Jahangir. Etimad ud daula was also the grand father of Mumtaz Mahal, the favourite wife of Shah Jahan who built the Taj Mahal in her memory. This monument served as a model for the Taj Mahal, being the first structures built of white marble and not the red sand stone.

 

The Gandhi memorial is obscured by the new bridge on Yamuna, named after Dr BR Ambedkar, says Suredra Sharma of the Braj Mandal Heritage Conservation Society. The building came into prominence after a reported theft of idols from the temple in it in 2008. Like the memorial on the Sabarmati this too can become a tourist attraction, he adds.

 

Records suggest Mahatma Gandhi visited Agra in 1918, 1919, 1921 and 1929, according to the Ela Joshi Gazetteer of 1965.