The jam-packed AMCOSA Auditorium here suddenly fell silent on Sunday as Chief Justice of India N.V. Ramana said he was pained to see the hoardings welcoming him all over the city.
“You should have put up hoardings of the great writer, lawyer and humanist Raavi Sastri, whose birth centenary is being celebrated today. I think it is wrong to put my hoardings. You must have done it out of your love for me,” said Justice Ramana, who participated as the chief guest at the valedictory of the centenary celebrations of Raavi Sastri, organised by the Visakha Rasagna Vedika.
“I suggest you to put up some permanent hoardings of Raavi Sastri and his messages, particularly in the court, and at major junctions, so that they serve a constant reminder to the legal fraternity and the privileged sections of their duty towards the common people, apart from perpetuating the memory of the great lawyer and humanist,” Justice Ramana advised.
The CJI said he always suggested to the common people to read Raavi Sastri’s ‘Aaru Saara Kadhalu’ to know about the legal profession.
“I have published a few hundreds of copies of the book and distributed them to the public as an admirer of Raavi Sastri,” he said.
‘Obsolete laws’
Referring to the recent interim order he had given on Section 124A, Justice Ramana recalled that Raavi Sastri had boldly written in his stories, about 50 years ago, on the need to change the obsolete laws passed during the British rule.
“I want Raavi Sastri’s works to be translated into English and Hindi so that a large number of people could benefit from them. If anyone, well-versed with translation is ready to do it, I am ready to bear the entire cost,” he said.
“Raavi Sastri had profound love for Visakhapatnam and he used to describe the beauty of the waves to trees in the backyard. He compared the Yarada Hill to the Tirupati Konda, as the former, which acts as a natural protection to the port and the shipyard, has provided employment to thousands of people of the city,” Justice Ramana recalled.
The common people and their travails were the central theme of his stories and novels. He also wrote on the role of advocates and judges in defending the poor, he said.
The CJI was all praise for Raavi Sastri for upholding the North Andhra dialect and Telugu language through his literature just as Gurajada Appa Rao and Sri Sri, the great novelist and poet who hailed from the Visakhapatnam region.
Justice Ramana recalled visiting Visakhapatnam as a student of B.Sc. to meet some student leaders, who had told him that Raavi Sastri was a great lawyer, who always fought on behalf of the common people.
It was unfortunate that because he was a Telugu man, Raavi Sastri could not get the recognition he deserved, Justice Ramana observed.
Justice U. Durga Prasada Rao of the A.P. High Court described Raavi Sastri as one who had made his mark in the literary field despite the presence of stalwarts such as ‘Mahakavi’ Gurajada Appa Rao and ‘Mahakavi’ Sri Sri from the Visakhapatnam region.
