The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : Gandhi Ashram workers, volunteers take out cycle rally

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Saturday, Mar 22, 2008
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Tamil Nadu

Gandhi Ashram workers, volunteers take out cycle rally

Staff Reporter

To underscore the importance of communal harmony

— PHOTO: M. GOVARTHAN.

Remembering Mahatma: Gandhi Ashram - Tiruchengode workers, volunteers and students taking out a cycle rally on Friday.

TIRUCHENGODE: “Arrived on the evening of March 19, 1925 to visit and be acquainted with inmates. Stayed in a parnakuti [hut] specially erected and passed two happy days. M. K. Gandhi, Sabarmathi,” these words, as the writing suggests, were from Mahatma Gandhi, who spent two days at Gandhi Ashram-Tiruchengode.

He wrote the lines on March 21 before departing for Sankari Durg railway station to board the Nilagiri Express. On Friday, the short note was 83 years old. To commemorate the event, the Ashram workers, volunteers and school students took out a cycle rally to the railway station. The Ashram organised the 20-km-long rally to underscore the importance of communal harmony.

The Ashram got the timing right in more ways than one because March 21 also happened to be Good Friday, Milad-un-Nabi and Panguni Uthiram.

At the inauguration of the rally, Namakkal Collector G. Sundaramurthi said the sacrifice of leaders like Gandhi and Rajaji was for everybody to see and understand. He felt that visits to the Ashram would make one more humane and also question the ways in which the world was moving. Mr. Sundaramurthi said the district administration would initiate efforts to make the Ashram a tourist spot. The Ashram was a very important historic place and that the students should visit the place to know and appreciate it, he added.

Ashram’s president K. Lakshmikanthan Barathi regretted that youth of today did not know the history and sacrifices leaders made to attain Independence. He urged the students to pay respect to such leaders, particularly Gandhiji, by wearing Khadi. He said for Gandhiji Khadi was the instrument to fight the British.

Ashram secretary S. Aravamudhan and others participated.

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