My Views

Sunday, October 19, 2014

Delhi needs a "Memorial Building"

Government has put its foot down and has stopped converting Bungalows in New Delhi into memorial for one expired leader or the other.  This is a welcome move. Suppose if we had continued in our old ways, in a century New Delhi would have become a ghost city full of memorials only. Each of these memorials would have had visitors only twice in a year. What a colossal waste of precious space it would have been.

Let us ask are memorials not really required.  Memorials serve an important means of educating our youngsters and general public. A practical and useful way will be to create a 20 storied Memorial Building housing memorials for 2 or 3 leaders of the society on each floor.  These need not be only political leaders. All Bharat Ratnas should find a place. Vishvesharaia Mother Teresa should have a place in this building.  There is need for a memorial for Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose. When I go to Kolkata,  I see so many things bearing Netaji's name.  In Delhi,  hardly very few things. In my view Netaji is not a Bengali hero, he is an Indian hero.

In fact not only New Delhi,  but each state capital should have a memorial building remembering Regional leaders of the society.

Memorial Building should not be only physical space, it should have an electronic presence. It will be an authentic source for children to prepare their projects, speeches on Independence Day and Republic Day etc.

There should be an auditorium in this building which shows documentaries on different leaders.

This building should be located within 100 meters of a Metro station.

Governing Board of this building should draw Professors of History and others from Universities. 

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