Mahatma Gandhi Honoured by UK With a Statue at Parliament Square

Mangalore Today News Network

London, Mar 14, 2015:  Mahatma Gandhi was not particularly welcome in Britain during India’s struggle for independence, but the former colonial power now has a statue of him right across their seat of government, alongside a statue of Winston Churchill, who once derided him for "posing as a (half-naked) fakir."

The nine-foot bronze statue was unveiled in London’s Parliament Square today by British Prime Minister David Cameron and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley.

"India and Britain have come a long way since parting at the midnight hour in 1947... This is a coming together of world’s oldest democracy and world’s largest democracy," said Mr Jaitley moments before unveiling the statue.

 

Actor Amitabh Bachchan, who was also present for the unveiling, read out an excerpt from Mahatma Gandhi’s "The World Of Tomorrow". "If there is to be a great change in society, how will that change be brought, different men have different answers to this question."

Mr Cameron said the statue celebrates the universal power of Gandhi’s message.

"Gandhi said, we must not lose faith in humanity, humanity is like an ocean. If a few drops of ocean are dirty, it doesn’t make the entire ocean dirty," the British PM said.

Mahatma Gandhi is the first Indian and the only person never to have been in public office to be honoured with a statue in the square. The statue has been funded by donations of over a million pounds to the Gandhi Statue Memorial Trust, headed by Labour Party peer Meghnad Desai and his wife Kishwar Desai.

Exactly a hundred years ago, Mahatma Gandhi came back to India from South Africa to begin his non-violent struggle for India’s independence from British rule. "Mahatma Gandhi is not just an inspiration to Indians or British-Indians but an inspiration to the whole world," British Finance Minister George Osbourne told NDTV last July, when announcing the decision to install the statue.

That sentiment is certainly a far cry from the emotions Gandhi invoked in Winston Churchill, Britain’s World War II Prime Minister. Not many people feel like Churchill did any more. "The British empire did need taking on," said a bystander in Parliament Square. "It couldn’t have remained the way it was in the early 20th century and something had to be done. And the way the Mahatma did it was really inspiring as far as I am concerned."

 

Courtesy: NDTV