VELLORE: VIT University, on Monday, received a rare gift in the form of a giant Tirukural from the V G P family. The six-foot by three-foot book, worth Rs 5 lakh, weighs 1.25 ton and has pictures of chief minister Karunanidhi and VGP brothers. It was exhibited at the World Classical Tamil Meet held recently.
The book was formally inaugurated by district collector C Rajendran who received the gift from Dr V G Santhosham, a member of the VGP family, who is also president of the (WTS) World Tamil Sangam.
Chancellor G Viswanathan said the book would make VIT proud and efforts would be made to ensure that the multi-cultural student community at the university could make use of it. ‘We are planning to distribute free copies of Tirukural to all the students both in Tamil and English and to the visiting professors from other states and countries, with the association of WTS, said Viswanathan.
VIT would also work out a plan with the WTS and the state government to send teachers to teach and promote Tamil to Tamil communities and students in other countries. From next year, VIT will also introduce a certificate course for non-Tamil-speaking students to learn Tamil, he added.
Collector Rajendran while hailing the initiative by the VIT and VGP to install the Tirukural for the benefit of the student community, pointed out that Tamil community has derived pride out of the whole exercise.
He said that Kural has been translated into over 80 languages that was next only to holy books Bible and Quran. The first kural starts with the first Tamil alphabet and the last verse ends with the last alphabet, he noted.
Santhosham described the VIT library as a temple of learning and knowledge and said that the donation had come to the right place. In order to spread the message of Kural, he had installed statues of Tiruvalluvar in nine countries so far and said that Kural was the biggest teacher of real life applications.