A badly-framed sentence has eclipsed Tarun Vijay’s brilliant legacy in promoting the works of Tamil icon Thiruvallur, whose famous work is Thirukurral.
Vijay, the president of the India-Africa Parliamentary Friendship Group, was on a panel-discussion on Al Jazeera English, connected via Skype. The topic of debate was the recent race-related attacks on Africans in India.
The 56-year old had said: “If we were racist, why would (we) have the entire south (India) which is completely… you know Tamil(s), you (know people from) Kerala, you know Karnataka and people from Andhra. Why do we live with them? We have black people around us. You are denying your own nation, your own history, your ancestory. You are denying your culture…”
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But if you use the person's past works to judge him, Tarun Vijay would come across as a hardcore Dravidian not as a former MP from Uttarakhand. His love for Thirukkural earned him the nickname Tarun ‘Tamil’ Vijay.
In 2015, as Parliament was upended by the opposition, he stood outside Parliament entrance with a placard carrying the photo of Thiruvalluvar to drive sense into MPs to let the house function. The placard said: “Let Thiruvalluvar guide our path in the Parliament.”
He has not even shied away ridiculing his fellow MPs who were trying to drive a wedge in South by hardselling Hindi.
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In March, Vijay was felicitated by students of the Sri Sivasubramaniya Nadar Engineering College with a Thiruvallavur award. He is the first North-Indian and Hindi-speaking member of the RSS to be given the honour.
"It's not just enough to project Asoka and Vikramaditya and the Mughals while completely ignoring the mightiest empires of Cholas, Chera, Pandyas and Krshnadev Rayas," he said while receiving the award.
Tarun Vijay later tweeted an apology and tried to clarify what he actually meant.
“Think before you misinterpret my badly framed sentence,” he said on Twitter.
Vijay has since taken to social-media to clarify what he actually meant to say.
“We have fought racism (courtesy the British) and we have people with different colour and culture still never had any racism,” he clarified. He says that he was just against terming Indians as ‘racist’.
“We have all people of all colour, and (a) person condemning India was being addressed. Never said what is being interpreted,” he added.
Vijay's statement could probably be a case of him not being able to articulate his thoughts on the issue accurately. He probably has done more to popularise the work of Thiruvallur than any other North-Indian.
