Tirukkural can’t be understood without spirituality, says Governor RN Ravi

Governor RN Ravi said that restricting Tirukkural to a work on mere ethics and morality is a great injustice. “The couplets were pith and pregnant with deep meanings, which cannot be understood without spirituality. Unfortunately, due to compulsions and ideology, Tirukkural has been reduced to a book of ethics and morality,” the Governor said at the inauguration of ‘International Tirukkural Conference’ – 2022 in Coimbatore on Friday.

Further, the Governor said that Tirukkural is deeply rooted in dharma, but, “due to perverse politics,” the spiritual and dharmic quotients of the book were being ignored.

“In the thousand years or so since Tiruvalluvar authored Tirukkural, several ideologies have changed. Therefore, political correctness or the present ideology should not limit what the book has to offer. Only then, Tirukkural’s glory would continue,” he added.

Ravi said, “Though the work started with ‘Agara mudhala...’ and had couplets extolling bhakti (devotion), the translations I had received of the work had the spiritual quotient missing. Tirukkural not only talked about devotion, but it also had couplets on renunciation and the cycle of birth and death.”

At the conference, organised by ‘Kural Malai Sangam,’ the Governor released a book titled ‘Kalvettil Tirukkural’. The event also recognised 10 school and college students, besides five eminent Tamil persons for working towards development of Tirukkural.

The conference passed resolutions to recommend the state government towards creation of ‘Tirukkural Malai’ with the inscription of 1,330 couplets to make it as an international cultural research centre. It was also resolved to urge the centre to recognise Tirukkural as a national book of literature and also recommend UNESCO to accord it with recognition as world book of literature.