Thursday, October 12, 2017

Ozymandias and the Yogi of Uttar Pradesh


Those of you who have read of a 100 metre tall statue of Lord Ram proposed in Ayodhya may like to remember the Shelly poem on Ozymandias, reproduced below. 

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away
"

The revered Yogi who heads the state of Uttar Pradesh has no doubt many things to occupy his mind besides the commissioning of statues. The hospital at Gorakhpur and its sad record of child deaths is only one of the problems that plague the land. One politician commented on the Yogi's visit to Kerala for the Jan Raksha Yatra, asking him to study the educational systems and the public  health systems of Kerala rather than the penchant for political violence more often than not seeded by a virulent Hindutva trying to spread its malevolence among a polity noted for its secularism. 

Development the Chief has said to be the essence of his creed. And development it shall be, what if the development is of a skewed and fundamental nature. So we will develop the gigantic statue in reverence of a worshiped ancestor on the banks of a sacred river and the mighty shall look upon these works and despair. 

We ordinary mortals look upon the proposal and despair.


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