E-Paper
Tamil poet's statue to be installed
EFFORTS ARE being made to install the statue of great Tamil poet and scholar Thiruvalluvar in Allahabad on the birth anniversary of Pt Jawahar Lal Nehru on November 14.
EFFORTS ARE being made to install the statue of great Tamil poet and scholar Thiruvalluvar in Allahabad on the birth anniversary of Pt Jawahar Lal Nehru on November 14.
It is a novel attempt to cross the barriers created by language as Thiruvalluvar was a great Tamil poet, whose statue is being installed in the district, popularly known to have produced great Hindi litterateurs, said Dr KC Gaur, general secretary of Bhasha Sangam, the organisation, which has undertaken the initiative of the installation work. The statue is being sculpted in South.
The attempt of installation was made in the year 1992 with the support of the Pondicherry Government.
"At that time we were vying to get it installed at Jamuna Bank road and to also name the road after the great poet. But the entire project had to be stopped on account of a political upheaval," he said.
"I wrote a letter to the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu about three months back, asking him to help us in this regard but he didn't reply. Fortunately, Dr N Sundaram, president of Bhasha Sangam in Tamil Nadu met VG Santhosam, director of Tamil World Sangam and the latter agreed to the proposal," said Dr Gaur. VG Santhosam issued an order to carve the statue on July 27. It is being sculpted by Sivathanu Pillai at Mayiladi in Kanyakumari.
On the occasion of installation on November 14, a delegation of 100 Tamil scholars will attend the function. Pamphlets and souvenirs will be distributed on the occasion.
The statues of Thiruvalluvar have already been installed in South Africa, America, Malaysia and Rishikesh in India. Now, there are plans to install them all over the world.
"Denizens will be surprised to know that Hindi language is very much appreciated in South India and the people there take interest in learning the language. But here in North, very few have the knowledge of Tamil," he remarked.
Bhasha Sangam has been promoting Hindi in South India and Tamil in the North by celebrating the anniversaries of great scholars. "We celebrated the centenary of Maithili Sharan Gupta in Chennai and centenary of the great poet Namakkal Ramlingam Pillai in Kashmir," said Dr Gaur.
"Right now, we are waiting for the district administration to fix the exact spot for the installation of the statue of Thiruvalluvar. However, the most preferred spot is still Jamuna Bank Road," said Dr Gaur.
