HYDERABAD: As Mahatma Gandhi spoke, 17-year-old Vunnam Venkaiah who managed to get as close as possible to him, was overawed by the man leading the freedom struggle.
Gandhi was on his way in a train from the Madras (now Chennai) to Wardha in Maharashtra and made a stop over at Khammam. Aware of this in advance, Venkaiah who was already by then taking part in the freedom movement, was among those who went in 100 bullock-carts to attend the meeting.
“We will settle for nothing less than complete freedom,” Mahatma Gandhi had said addressing the crowd. “Gandhi spoke in Hindi and some of those who heard him from right in front and understood, passed on the translation to people standing behind. The crowd was stirred up,” Vunnam Venkaiah told TOI.
The 92-year-old Vunnam Venkaiah who lives in Nelakondapalli mandal in Khammam district recalled that it pained him when they got news of Gandhi’s assassination on January 30, 1948. Within nine days, he got a life-size statue of Gandhi and installed in Mujjugudem village, the place where Venkaiah was born. Venkaiah said that the installation of the statue was possible despite the Nizam’s police due to an atmosphere of communal amity.
A situation had arisen when during the armed struggle, four people who were passing on information to the Nizam’s police were identified. “They would have met a violent end had not my family and other people intervened. We lived in complete communal harmony with Muslims in the village, even referring to them as our own relatives. So when Gandhi’s statue was installed, no information was passed on to the Nizam’s police,” Vunnam Venkaiah recalled.
Venkaiah’s main activity was to educate people on the freedom movement and keep them abreast of what was happening elsewhere in the country. One of his relatives was killed in firing by the forces that tried to prevent the activity.
“I will not describe the freedom struggle as something dangerous that I got involved it. Participating in the freedom movement was the ultimate gift anyone could have asked for,” Venkaiah said.
