Nagapattinam: Tension prevailed since Friday night at the sleepy village of Therkku Poigainallur, a suburb of Nagapattinam, following the removal of a statue of LTTE’s slain chief Velupillai Prabhakaran from an Ayyanar temple in the village. Police said the ‘Sesharaya Ayyanar temple’, built recently, belongs to 80 families of that village. The temple’s consecration took place on Thursday. While the villagers are befuddled that the police swiftly dismantled the statue, police say people themselves had removed it.
In front of the temple, the villagers had also erected statues of an elephant and two horses. A soldier stands guard near one of the horses, while a statue of Prabhakaran is depicted as reining in the other horse. The symbolism is further loaded with the former LTTE Chief’ shown as holding a rifle in his left hand and a tack in his right. Some of the villagers said there was nothing wrong in worshipping ‘valiant leaders’ like Prabhakaran. It is not new for them either to offer such worship. They have already been worshipping the statue of slain forest brigand Veerappan, erected there few years ago, they said.
Justifying the deification of Prabhakaran, the villagers said he had “fought for the cause of the Tamils of the Island-nation (Sri Lanka) and considered him a ‘Tamil leader’. Hence his statue was erected. Asked if there was any political motive behind their act, the villagers replied in the negative, adding, the statue was meant to only impart courage to future generations.
Funds for erecting the statue was mobilised from nearby villages and some foreign countries including Malaysia. Their action was only to impart courage for the future generation, they added.
But if there was any objection from the Police as it involved the statue of a leader whose organisation has been banned in India, they villagers said they “will obey the law”. With tension gripping the village, security has been tightened.
