Time for balanced assessment

A rather queer political war is now going on in A P regarding who belongs to whom! The person around whom this funny dispute is going on is none other than the great legendary figure of Telugu film world, TDP founder-president and the first non-Congress Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, the late NT Rama Rao, popularly known as NTR, better called as NTR (Senior), since there is his grandson with the same name who is the present popular young hero on the silver screen. The NTR (Junior) is the son of NTR (Senior)'s son Harikrishna, a cine artiste as well as Rajya Sabha member of TDP. It all started during the "Padayatra" of Sharmila, the daughter of Y S Rajasekhar Reddy (YSR), perhaps the most popular and cherished leader of the Congress party, the former Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh. The sudden death of YSR soon after he was returned to power for the second successive term in 2009 had thrown not only the Congress party, but also the Government out of gear. Both have not been settled so far. The pictures of both the former chief ministers, NTR and YSR, appeared side by side on the 'flexes' displayed by the cadre of YSR Congress Party, a new political outfit floated by YS Jagan Mohan Reddy, son of YSR, after he was forced to quit the Congress party by its high command. YSRCP incidentally is being projected, by various survey agencies, as a party that can trounce both the ruling Congress and the Opposition TDP if the election were to be held now. This kind of projections naturally irked the leaders of TDP like Balakrishna, another son of Mr NTR (Senior) and himself a popular actor and Chandrababu Naidu, TDP chief, who accuse the YSRCP of resorting to heinous political crime and stooping to confuse the people (voters). They claim that the late NTR is the sole property of the TDP and as such no other organisation or party has any rights over NTR (Senior). Displaying NTR's photo along with the picture of YSR is, therefore, unacceptable to the TDP leaders.

To their utter dismay, Hari Krishna and Purandheswari, a daughter of NTR and a cabinet minister of the Central Government, categorically pronounced in different statements that NTR (Sr) was such a towering personality adored by millions of Telugu people irrespective of their political affiliations that, he could not be confined to the TDP alone and that any person could display his picture. Adding fuel to the fire, another MLA Kodali Nani of Gudivada, supposed to be a close associate of NTR (Jr) said that any person in Andhra Pradesh could display the picture of NTR (Sr) except the present leadership of TDP and its president Chandababu Naidu, since they stabbed (politically) NTR in the back and usurped power. As though this is not enough, Laxmi Parvathi, the second wife of NTR (Sr) entered the scene claiming that Nani is correct and also that NTR (Sr) belongs to the NTR Telugu Desam, which was floated after the death of NTR (Sr) of which she has been the president. She warned that she may have to settle the issue legally.A Though not directly related to the above issue in general, it is pertinent to recall that the name of late NTR was dropped while naming the International Airport at Hyderabad and it was named after Rajiv Gandhi by the Congress government. There has been no particular reference to NTR who was instrumental in making Telugu language and Telugu people known all over the world. While NTR was insulted by the TDP, the Congress government has insulted both NTR and PV Narasimha Rao, the only Telugu to work as Prime Minister, at the recently concluded International Telugu conference at Tirupati. Are we not seeing the effort to confine the great leader Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar to the Schedule Castes either knowingly or unknowingly, whereas he is one of the greatest sons of our motherland? Still worse, another Dalit leader Babu Jagjeevan Ram is sought to be pitted against Ambedkar to divide the SCs, and it is unfortunate that sometimes the SCs also fall prey to such mischievous tactics of ruling classes to serve their vote bank politics. BJP surprisingly proclaimed that its goal would be 'Gandhian socialism' when it changed its name to Bharatiya Janata Party from Jana Sangh in order to appear as a secular party by just transformation of its name. The BJP's allergy and hatred of Nehru, an undisputed secularist and a democrat, are well known. Anyway the so-called Gandhian Socialism has never been heard from the BJP leadership. Even the case with Communists, who are supposed to be progressive, is no better. The veteran Communist leader Makineni Basavapunnaih used to tell the truth, of course, in a lighter vein. There is a serious disease in our Communists. We hail a leader as a very great one and that there is no one in any other party comparable to him. He is rather a born Communist, as long as he is in our party. But no sooner does he resign or get expelled; forgetting the contribution made by him, we never hesitate to call him as renegade; and that too, a born renegade and go to the extent of involving his mother, saying that she consciously gave birth to him only to destroy one party. The fate of great leaders like Stalin, Khrushchev, Mao and others internationally bears testimony to it. We have our own leaders like Sundaraiah, Rajeshwara Rao, Nagi Reddy, Omkar etc being treated as enemies by the other factions. Of course, there is a perceptible welcome change seen recently in the situation here. All said and done, it is high time we realised this folly and rectified such lopsided, narrow-minded assessment of our leaders. Let us be objective about their contribution. In any case, let us not confine such tall figures in our pigmy cages to serve our political interests.