Following months of controversies, the 12-foot-tall stone statue of Tamil poet-saint Thiruvalluvar was inaugurated at Haridwar’s Mela Bhawan premises on Monday evening. Former Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP from Uttarakhand Tarun Vijay had initiated the process of introducing Thiruvalluvar in Uttarakhand and the statue was made for installation on the banks of the Ganga in Haridwar.
The inauguration was to take place this June. However, after protests by priests and saints, who had raised objections to placing Thiruvalluvar’s statue on either bank of the Ganga at Har ki Pauri, or near the statue of the Adi Sankara in Haridwar’s Shankaracharya Chowk, plans for installing it had to be deferred till a new place could be found.
After The Hindu’ s coverage of the issue, and the then Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa writing to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on it, Uttarakhand Chief Minister Harish Rawat gave instructions for the statue to be installed in the premises of Haridwar’s Mela Bhawan. The inauguration came six months after controversies first erupted around its installation.
