A five-feet-tall statue of saint-poet Thiruvalluvar will be installed very soon on the banks of Ganges in Hardwar, according to Tarun Vijay, Bharatiya Janata Party Member of Parliament hailing from Uttarakhand.
Mr Vijay, who is here on a private visit, told The Hindu that the statue, made in Mamallapuram near Chennai, was ready and it had even been handed over to him. "We are preparing pedestal for the statue."
His intention was to popularise Thiruvalluvar and his work, ‘Tirukkural,’ a treatise on ethics, all over India. That the poet and his work had “such a vast influence over huge sections of a society for more than one millennium was no ordinary feature,” he said.
For the statue project, he explained how three parties had come together. Pointing out that he was from the BJP, Mr Vijay said the permission from the governments of the two States – Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand – was required for the project and the Samajwadi Party and the Congress were in power in these States.
Recalling his meeting with Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir Mufti Mohammed Sayeed in which he had explained the greatness of the poet, the BJP MP said the Chief Minister was now keeping a portrait of Thiruvalluvar in his drawing room. During his current trip to Sri Lanka, he would go around the country to propagate the “universality of the message” of Thiruvalluvar. He declined to answer questions on politics.
