Statue unveiling: Face-off continues

EIGHTEEN years after the installation of the statue of Tamil saint-poet Thiruvalluvar here,the BJP government in Karnataka has decided to finally unveil it on August 9. But Kannada outfits,who have been opposing it,have called for a Bangalore bandh on that day.

The chief ministers of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu,B S Yeddyurappa and M Karunanidhi,will over the next 10 days initiate a statue diplomacy exercise to assuage old wounds of conflict between the two states,specifically dating back to the violence over the sharing of the Cauvery river water in the early 1990s. On August 9,the Karnataka CM will unveil a statue of Thiruvalluvar in the heart of Bangalore 18 years after its installation and the Tamil Nadu CM will reciprocate by unveiling a statue of Kannada poet-saint Sarvagna in Chennai.

Kannada activists,however,continue to threaten to spoil the effort at amity. Pro-Kannada activists from several organisations walked out of an all party meeting called by Yeddyurappa in Bangalore on Monday in protest against the installation of the Thiruvalluvar statue. They have declared a bandh on August 9. The move by the BJP government comes ahead of the announcement of polls to the Bangalore City Corporation where a large number of wards have a sizable Tamil speaking population that can swing equations.

While the unveiling of the Thiruvalluvar statue has been in the making since 1991,when pro-Kannada activists opposed it,the idea of a Sarvagna statue was mooted in the late 1990s as an effort to end frequent disputes over the Thiruvalluvar statue.