Who was Thiruvalluvar, and why has the BJP invoked him in its election manifesto?

Who was Thiruvalluvar?

The historicity of Thiruvalluvar is uncertain. The period during which he lived is debated, as is his religious affiliation. Some accounts place him in the 3rd or 4th century CE; others date him to around 500 years later, in the 8th or 9th century.

He has been identified as both a Hindu and a Jain sage, while Dravidian groups consider him as a saint with no religious identifiers except his Dravidian roots. The ‘Thirukkural’ or ‘Sacred Couplets’, a collection of moral aphorisms in verse that is attributed to Thiruvalluvar, does not name him as its author; he is named first in a later collection of verses known as ‘Thiruvalluva Malai’.

In the book Tamil Wisdom: Traditions Concerning Hindu Sages and Selections from their Writings (1873), the Protestant missionary Edward Jewitt Robinson, who did one of the earliest translations of the ‘Thirukkural’, described Thiruvalluvar as a “Pariah”, with his mother belonging to “the low class”, while his father may have been a Brahmin.

He is said to have been found “in a grove…at Mayilapur near Madras”, next to a temple to Lord Shiva, by the “wife of a Velalan of high rank” who “carried the babe home”, but who ultimately gave him to the care of a “Pariah family”.

Why does Thiruvalluvar matter?

Thiruvalluvar, fondly referred to as Valluvar by Tamils, has long been regarded as a Tamil cultural and moral icon, who is revered by Tamils cutting across lines of caste and religion as an ancient saint, poet, and a philosopher.

The ‘Thirukkural’, a collection of 1,330 couplets (‘kurals’ in Tamil), are an essential part of every Tamil household — in the same way as, say, the Bhagavad Gita or the Ramayana/ Ramcharitmanas are in traditional North Indian Hindu households.

Traditional Saivite portrait of Thiruvalluvar. (Wikimedia Commons)

He is an essential anchor for Tamils in tracing their cultural roots; Tamils are taught to learn his couplets word-for-word, and to follow his teachings in their day-to-day living.

Even beyond Tamil Nadu, Thiruvalluvar is frequently invoked in the context of the rich philosophical traditions of ancient India, with an accent on morality and ethics. Successive Indian finance ministers have mentioned Thiruvalluvar in their annual Budget speeches.

How have competing claims to the legacy of Thiruvalluvar played out in the recent politics of TN?

In October-November 2019, there was controversy after the BJP’s Tamil Nadu unit tweeted a visual representation of Thiruvalluvar, in which the white robes traditionally seen on him were replaced by saffron ones. Subsequently, a leader of a radical Hindu fringe group was arrested after he tried to drape a saffron shawl around a statue of the saint.

The DMK and Left parties alleged that the BJP had betrayed the saint, whose values and teachings went beyond caste and religion. However, H Raja, who was then a national secretary of the BJP, had argued that Thiruvalluvar was in fact, a Hindu saint, and that Dravidian parties, who did not believe in God, had erased Hindu symbols around his personality over the years.

“The original Thiruvalluvar had vibhuti and all Hindu symbols. It was Dravida Kazhagam and DMK who changed his appearance to suit their political gains,” Raja had told The Indian Express at the time, and argued that the saint’s verses and life were similar to Sanatan Dharma.

Beyond the political claims on both sides, how should this tussle be understood?

S Swaminathan, a retired professor from IIT-Madras who specialised in ancient Tamil history, had told The Indian Express at the time: “From whatever little evidence is left on Thiruvalluvar’s life, several scholars have concluded that most likely he was a Jain, neither a Hindu nor a Dravidian. All that we can ascertain is Thirukkural, his extraordinary piece of literature, has no comparison in Indian history or ancient literature.”

Swaminathan said that political attempts to appropriate Thiruvalluvar have been ongoing for several years — by the Dravidian groups five decades ago, and by the Hindutva groups now. “The so-called picture of Thiruvalluvar in white robes itself was a recent imagination. No figure or picture of Thiruvalluvar existed [earlier]. We do not even know whether the Thirukkural was composed by one person or was an amalgamation of the work of many scholars over the years. Like Jesus, we created the figure of Thiruvalluvar several hundred years after his death,” Swaminathan said.

In the years after the RSS held its national council in March 2017 near Coimbatore, the Sangh Parivar has sought to use Tamil saints and icons in its political literature. Their comparatively thin presence at the grassroots has been a handicap for the RSS and BJP in Tamil Nadu, and attempts to appropriate or co-opt Tamil saints and icons have been part of the Parivar’s efforts to make up.

This story is based on two earlier explainers that were first published on November 4  and November 9, 2019.