BJP has no idea of encouraging Jallikattu

Speaking at the inaugural of the world class Jallikattu Colosseum, constructed at Alanganallur in Madurai district at a cost of Rs 62.78 crore, Stalin said that Jallikattu was revived only because the Dravidian Model government waged a legal battle at the Supreme Court by averring that it was not just a sporting entertainment but was intertwined with the lives and culture of the farmers.

Tracing the history of the series of impediments that came in the way of conducting the sport, he said that it was the DMK government that gave an assurance to the Madras High Court that the events were being conducted by adhering to safety norms when Jallikattu and Rekla faces were banned in 2006.

Subsequently, in 2007 when the Supreme Court banned Jallikattu, too, it was the DMK regime that fought against it legally and won the case. Then after the AIADMK came to power, when the Supreme Court again banned Jallikattu, the youth of Tamil Nadu organized the historic ‘Marina Uprising’ in 2017 and faced severe oppression by the police, who even burnt down auto rickshaws, he said.

It was then, when the case was heard in the Supreme Court that the BJP government said that it did not recognize the games that were the cultural symbol and a continuum of the cultural traditions of the Tamil race, while the DMK government fought for their organization by dispelling the fears over safety that were raised in the case, he recalled.

Only after the favourable order was obtained in May, 2023, could Jallikattu be organized in the State in a grand manner and in continuation of the historic victory, the ‘Kalignar Centenary Eruthazhuval Arangam’ (jallikattu colosseum) at Keelakarai village in Alanganallur was built, he said.

Constructed on a 66.80 acre plot of land, the 77,683 square feet stadium has a statue of a M Karunanidhi, who had organized Jallikattu events in Chennai in 1974, and also has a statue of a bull tamer in action in the premises, It has an attached library and a museum on Jallikattu housing centuries old rare books, paintings and photographs.

After declaring open the colosseum, constructed with the purpose of popularizing the quintessentially Tamil sport all over the world, Stalin called upon the people of the State to not give room for caste differences and religious schisms with the realization that they were introduced in later times to divide Tamil society and conduct the cultural event with unity.

‘Let the brave bulls enter the arena and the tamers embrace them valiantly for the Tamil people to sit and watch it together with a sense of unity,’ he said, explaining the antiquity of the sport dating back to the Indus Valley civilization as symbols found on the those times have a bull with a hump.

In fact, even in Keeladi, a skeleton of a bull with a hump, prominent lower jaws and curved horns was excavated, he pointed out and said that Jallikattu was a sport of the people living in the Mullai regions (a Tamil classification of the land denoting the forest and associated regions) .

Ever since the DMK government came to power, it had constructed three major monuments in Madurai – the jallikattu colosseum, the Kalaignar Centenary Library and the Keeladi museum – in three years’ time unlike a promise of the Union Government (he was indirectly referring to the AIIMS) that should have come in the heart of Madurai but never came, he said.