NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday expressed confidence that people-to-people ties between India and Russia will grow further with the translation of the Thirukkural into Russian, as he gifted the Russian version of the classical Tamil scripture to Russian President Vladimir Putin during their bilateral talks in New Delhi.
PM Modi, while gifting the scripture to Putin, said that it includes the “entire gamut of human life”.
“Two thousand years ago, Thiruvalluvar wrote the Thirukkural. It includes the entire gamut of human life. It has been translated into the Russian language. I am confident that the people-to-people contact will increase with the translation of the Thirukkural into Russian, which will play a big role in strengthening our relations,” PM Modi told Putin.
In a subsequent post on X, PM Modi wrote, “Presented President Putin with a Russian translation of the Thirukkural, which carries the eternal wisdom of the great Thiruvalluvar across languages and borders.”
The Thirukkural is a classical Tamil text composed by the weaver-saint Thiruvalluvar. Consisting of 1,330 couplets (kurals), each just two lines long, the Kural is a manual for righteous living that makes no appeal to a specific god, caste, or creed. Instead, it rests on universal values: aram (virtue), porul (wealth and statecraft) and inbam (love).
The Thirukkural is revered by Tamils as a sacred scripture and is often called “the Tamil Veda”. It is also regarded by scholars worldwide as a masterpiece of aphoristic literature.
The exchange took place as Putin arrived in New Delhi ahead of the 18th BRICS Summit, being hosted by India on September 12 and 13. Putin was welcomed upon arrival by Union Minister of State for External Affairs Kirti Vardhan Singh.
According to sources, among the likely points for discussion is the achievement of an ambitious bilateral trade target, with India and Russia aiming to take bilateral trade to USD 100 billion by 2030.
