The government appears to have taken a cue from Congress president Sonia Gandhi while deciding to dissociate itself from organising the birth and death anniversaries of all prominent leaders except Mahatma Gandhi. Ms. Gandhi had in August 2012 suggested that commemoration of the anniversaries of Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi be scaled down.
On Saturday, the government announced that the birth and death anniversaries of all other national leaders would be organised by private societies or trusts of their supporters, parties or family members. That the government should reconsider its role in public commemorative functions was suggested by Ms. Gandhi on August 10, 2012, in a letter to the former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
Stating that she was “in a position to raise’’ the issue of scaling down such functions for the three former Prime Ministers from her family, Ms. Gandhi had said: “I wonder if the government should consider a similar simplification of functions pertaining to other national leaders in order to arrive at a more contemporary and meaningful way of commemorating them.”
Ms. Gandhi had cautioned that apart from causing high cost to the exchequer and creating inconvenience for the public owing to security arrangements and movement of VIPs, such memorial functions could be becoming empty rituals.
She had suggested several measures to scale them down while maintaining that the upkeep of the samadhi s (memorials) should remain the responsibility of the Central government.
