NEW DELHI: The BJP on Tuesday said it has decided to celebrate Tamil poet Thiruvalluvar’s birth anniversary across the country by holding seminars and symposiums to highlight the litterateur’s contribution.
This was decided in the BJP Parliamentary Party meeting, attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party chief Amit Shah.
Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Rajiv Pratap Rudy said the party would take the poet’s message across the country starting from Pongal next year.
Last week, Human Resource Development minister Smriti Irani had assured the Rajya Sabha that appropriate steps will be taken by the government to celebrate the poet’s anniversary in schools. The issue was first raised in Rajya Sabha by BJP MP Tarun Vijay last week, when he called for building bridges between different languages of the South and the North. He had said Tamil is one of the greatest classical languages having a global footprint and in the UNESCO’s ‘Register of Memory’, it was selected as first language from India.
During the BJP Parliamentary Party meeting, MPs were asked to celebrate Thiruvalluvar’s anniversary in their areas. By asking its MPs to embrace the Tamil poet, the BJP wants to a send a message that it was not merely focused on its own of icons, but was inclusive. This would also help the party to send a message in south India, where it was aiming to improve its performance.