Jallianwala Bagh awaits authorities' attention

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Amritsar, Jan 30 (UNI) Jallianwala Bagh, one of the symbols of India's freedom struggle, is in a state of neglect, thanks to the apathy of the authorities.

The place which witnessed the 1919 massacre of nearly 200 innocent Indians, that transformed the course of the country's freedom struggle and led Mahatma Gandhi to his first nationwide Satyagraha, finds itself increasingly being sidelined.

The place seems unusually dreary and what one sees today is not the original ground where the massacre took place.

The park stands on a raised platform of stones and the last vestige of that fateful day can only be seen in the form of the well and a few bullet marks on the walls which have small wooden frames around them.

Various signs dot the park and unceremoniously inform ''People were fired at from here'' and ''Saturated with the blood of about two thousand Indian patriots''.

Time Magazine had quoted Prince Philip's remark on his visit to India in 1997 that the casualties of the 1919 massacre of Indians by British troops at Jallianwala Bagh had been ''vastly exaggerated''.

Even the narrow roads leading up to Jallianwala Bagh cry for a facelift and a dilapidated building next to the boundary walls makes it all the more shoddy.

A country, which is still waiting to have its own war memorial, seems to be failing miserably in maintaining a standard of the memorials it has.