Prime Minister Narendra Modi will on Saturday inaugurate the Statue of Equality, a gigantic statue of Ramanujacharya, on the outskirts of Hyderabad.
Ramanujacharya
Born in Tamil Nadu’s Sriperumbudur in 1017, Ramanujacharya is a revered Vedic philosopher and social reformer. Traveling across India, he advocated social justice and equality.
Ramanujacharya revived the Bhakti movement, inspiring other Bhakti schools of thought. He is considered to have inspired poets such as Bhakt Ramdas, Annamacharya, Kabir, Thyagaraja, and Meerabai.
From his time as a young philosopher, Ramanujacharya appealed for the protection of nature and resources such as water, soil, and air. He wrote nine scriptures — the Navaratnas — and composed several commentaries on Vedic scriptures.
Ramanujacharya also established the correct procedures for temple rituals in India, the most famous being Srirangam and Tirumala.
Statue of Equality
An advocate of social equality centuries ago, Ramanujacharya encouraged temples to be open to everyone, irrespective of caste, when people of many castes were forbidden from entering them.
He educated those who were deprived of it. But his greatest contribution remains the propagation of the ‘vasudhaiva kutumbakam’ — all the universe is one family — concept.
Travelling across India for decades, Ramanujacharya propagated social equality and universal brotherhood from temple podiums. He embraced the marginalised and condemned and asked royal courts for equal treatment for them. Ramanujacharya spoke of universal salvation through devotion, humility, compassion, equality, and mutual respect, now known as Sri Vaishnavam Sampradaya.
Chinna Jeeyar Swami, the Vaishnava seer behind the statue, said Ramanujacharya’s social philosophy was designed to break down barriers of the caste system and embrace humanity as a whole.
He told The Indian Express that Ramanujacharya liberated millions from cultural, social, gender, economic, and educational discrimination with the conviction that every human was equal. His 1,000th birth anniversary is being celebrated as the Festival of Equality, Chinna Jeeyar said.
The statue
The 216-foot statue, first proposed in 2018, is located at the 45-acre Jeeyar Integrated Vedic Academy at Muchintal on the outskirts of Hyderabad.
The statue was designed by Chinna Jeeyar. The rituals for the dedication of the statue began on Wednesday with 5,000 Vedic scholars performing a maha yajna, said to be the largest of its kind in modern times.