how A 1,000-Year-Old Symbol Of lord nataraja In A Sanctuary Got Supplanted By A Flex Board.....

how A 1,000-Year-Old Symbol Of lord nataraja In A Sanctuary Got Supplanted By A Flex Board.....

The sun is partly apparent, it is not dark yet, half of it is swallowed by the thick coconut trees in the west. Veerapandi, a 22-year-old boy, wearing a lungi, appears in front of an old temple’s gate, and starts searching for the keys, patting his waist. As he opens the gate, an old man arrives at the scene, riding his old Kawasaki bike. The man gets down from the bike and starts walking towards the temple, shirtless, bare-chested, in a lean and toned body. He was wearing the sacred thread across his chest. “Pussari (priest) is here,” murmurs Veerapandi and walks into the temple. Veerapandi knows the routine. It is his family’s duty to look over the 2000-year-old Chola temple.

A priest praying to Nataraja’s Flex Board...

On the same side, there once stood a five-feet-tall bronze idol of Lord Nataraja, depicting Shiva in his cosmic dance. The idol was placed in the Brihadeeshwar temple, in the Ariyallur district of Tamil Nadu, 900 years ago by the then Chola ruler.

Unfortunately, today we can only see a large flex board of Nataraja! The flex is pasted on the wall, the corners are already coming off from the corners, and a dark shade had spread over the flex due to the continuous smoke from the agarbathis (incense sticks) and vilakku (traditional brass lamp).

The priest enters into the temple, chanting the lord’s name, and pours little water over his head. It is dark inside, he tries to find the switch on the wall with his hands. Within seconds, a distinct, rusty yellow light rushes to every nook and corner of the giant old stone temple. When the light hits the old rock pillars, some bats fly over his head.

He inattentively stands because it is his daily custom. The priest starts to beat a brass drum, filling the temple with rhythmic beats. As he scurries towards the main deity by chanting the mantras, he lights a vilakku. Several bats fly towards him quickly from his right side, flying out from a small eight feet door. The door was the entrance to a stunning idol of Uma Maheswari (Goddess Parvathi). Unfortunately, the place is empty!

The priest comes near the flex board of Nataraja by incessantly chanting the mantras. By that time, some devotees – women, children, and a few elder men. The priest begins his pooja (prayer) and pours water from the bronze drum on the Flex Nataraja with his fingers, encircling the agarbatis. The devotees stand prostrate before the Nataraja.

Courtesy: The Week Why The Flex?

The answer lie in a series of temple loots that started from the 1960s and continue till present. This 2,000-year-old Chola temple (300 km from Chennai) is one of the victims of this theft.

The doors of the temple have been locked since the mid of the 1970s, when the local priest, fed up with his meagre salary, left the temple. The Tamil Nadu government took over the guardianship of the temple. Since then, the temple has begun counting its days. The walls, inscribed with chants of Lord Shiva, also glorify the great Chola Empire enwrapped by foliage. Today, it’s a refugee camp for hundreds of bats. Rumours have spread that there were killer bees inside the temple, thus, being the final nail in the coffin. Villagers abandoned the temple.

After 40 years of neglect and abandonment, The Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments (HR&CE) Department showed up in Sripuranthan. They wanted to shift the idols to ensure their security. Reluctant to handover their Gods, the village administration decided to fix an iron gate replacing the wooden door.

Nataraja idol in his cosmic wave pose..

The new iron gate arrived on 18th August 2008. At 3 PM, the crowd gathered with the police and HR&CE officials to break the old door, but the wooden door was already open! And there was nothing left inside the temple except some bats. The darkness inside the temple spread to the gathered villager’s eyes as well. The gods had been stolen!

Even though the devotees and government had neglected the temple for 40 years, there was a group of people who couldn’t pretermit the glory of the old Chola culture and its artefacts. They were neither historians nor artists, but a group of thieves headed by the ‘great idol thug’ Subhash Kapoor.

An Indian American, who was a celebrated art dealer based in New York, was arrested by Interpol in Germany in 2011 and extradited to India. He’s now imprisoned at the Tiruchirappalli Central Prison. When the US authorities raided his warehouse in New York, they discovered stolen Indian arts worth $100 million (more than 700 crores in today’s worth)!

The Sripuranthan temple, situated in an extremely remote village of Tamil Nadu, was unknown even to the ASI (Archaeological Survey of India), spotted by Subhash Kapoor and his Indian dealer Sanjeevani Ashokan, a Keralite. They both hired local thieves, who plundered the temple and looted idols of Nataraja and Uma Maheswari along with other idols. The astonishing cosmic dancing idol of Nataraja took a voyage of more than 9,000 kilometres by sea, and eventually landed in the National Art Gallery of Canberra, Australia.

Meanwhile, unaware of the journey their gods had taken, unaware of the theft of their gods, villagers were installing iron gates for an empty temple. Subhash Kapoor sold their idols to the Australian government-owned museum for an amount of $5.1 million (approximately 40 crore Indian rupees) in 2008.

As the auction of these looted artefacts continued across the world, ‘Chasing Aphrodite’, an investigative website, exposed that the Shiva idol acquired by the NGA was a stolen artwork from South India. The story was widely reported by the Australian and Indian news agencies. The Hindu wrote a series of articles exposing it. The NGA defended and refused all claims made by the media.

When the New York police recovered three photos of Sripuranthan Nataraja from Kapoor’s house that had been taken by the French Institute of Pondicherry in 1990, the NGA was forced to admit the claims. It concluded that the photo recovered and the idol displayed at the NGA were the same, showing seven similarities. The Australian media came down on the government calling it an “international embracement”. Finally, the NGA decided to send back the Nataraja to his home country under the UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import.

Nataraja Idol returns home

On 5th September 2014, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott on his visit to India handed over the Sripuranthan Nataraja along with another idol of Shiva to PM Narendra Modi in Delhi.

The atmosphere was exhilarating, chants and mantras with rhythmic drums filled the hearts of villagers with joy and pleasure. Their God had finally come back to them. The specially-decorated Nataraja was placed on the sapparam (chariot), with chants of hundreds of devotees. Both Nataraja and the people were happy.

The euphoric atmosphere and the sound of Nadhaswara were ephemeral. “Our Nataraja is in a museum now, we could only get his blessings once in a year. Police will bring our Nataraja during the Arudhra festival (annual festival),” said Senthil, a livestock farmer in the village. The HR&CE decided to keep the idol at the Government Museum at Kumbakonam to ensure safety. The Nataraja idol got detained in a mirror cage.

Finally, the villagers moved to the judicial magistrate court Jayakondam to get their idol back, but the court only granted them permission to take away their idol once in a year, during the Arudhra festival. Fed up by this, the villagers arrive at the idea of having a flex! Soon, in the month of January 2017, a 4×3-sized flex board of Lord Nataraja in his cosmic dance was pasted on the 2,000-year-old stone wall of the Sripuranthan temple.

“We are not happy…that is our Nataraja. We want it back, this is the land where he belongs, the idol should be given back to us and installed in the temple with proper safety”, 88-year-old Selvi said grievously. She recalled the old days when she used to visit the temple daily along with her mother and siblings. Now, she visits the temple once in a year during the Arudhra festival. “I want to get his blessings and want to see his face every day, not this plastic sheet!” She added that this is her only wish left in life.....

If you loved this article plz subscribe, leave your comment about this,  like ,share to your friends to know about kindness of our mother india...

I take a leave so bye friends..

jai bharat- jai mata di