Chennai: Governor R N Ravi has stirred the hornet’s nest once again by sending out invitations for a ‘Thiruvalluvar Thirunaal Vizha’ (Thiruvalluvar Day festival) to be held at the Raj Bhavan in Chennai on Friday with a photograph of the revered Tamil poet savant dressed in saffron attire.
While it is not clear as to why the Raj Bhavan is organizing a festival for Thiruvalluvar in May when the real ‘Thiruvalluvar Day’ comes as part of the Pongal Festival in January every year, the depiction of the poet in saffron robes and with religious marks on the forehead and upper arms has created a controversy.
Earlier, too, in January the Governor had used the image of the savant in saffron while paying tributes in Raj Bhavan and several political leaders had raised their objection to it. At that time, Ravi had, in a message on X, described Thiruvalluvar as the ‘brightest saint of Bharatiya Sanatan tradition.’
The ancient Tamil poet who gave the seminal work ‘Thirurukal’ that has been translated into 42 Indian languages with 57 renderings in English alone, is generally depicted wearing white robes and his work is considered by scholars as quintessentially secular.
So when the Governor called Thiruvalluvar a ‘saint of the Bharatiya Sanatana tradition’ and also accused G U Pope, who translated the work into the English for the first time, of robbing it of its spirituality, most political leaders were up on arms, saying that Thiruvalluvar belonged to no religion.
Among the 1,330 couplets he had written under 133 chapters divided into three parts there is none that praises God, Tamil scholars pointed out at that time. But Raj Bhavan has once again given rise to the controversy that first erupted in 2019 when the State BJP carried a picture in saffron robes in its social media account.
Later another Hindu Makkal Katchi leader draped a saffron shawl on a statue of Thiruvalluvar in Thanjavur in April 2022, triggering another debate.
Though all political parties in Tamil Nadu other than the BJP had been condemning what they describe as the ‘saffronisation’ of Thiruvallur in various forms, the Governor had done it again earning the ire of many people who immediately reacted angrily in social media.
