“Painting on rocks is against an order of the Supreme Court”

Yanaimalai, an imposing three-kilometre-long and ninety-metre-tall hillock in the shape of an elephant here, is in news once again after five years.

Then, it faced the threat in the form of creation of a sculpture park.

And this time, the ‘Thiruman’ painted atop the hillock has created quite a stir among a section of lawyers in the Madras High Court Bench here.

Advocate T. Lajapathi Roy said that he was contemplating to file a public interest litigation petition against painting of a religious symbol on the hillock since it had been declared a protected monument under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act, 1958.

“This amounts to defacing a protected monument and it cannot be left unchecked,” he said.

Recalling the constitution of a committee by the State government on December 30, 2009 to consider the possibility of creating a sculpture park by carving out the hillock, a solid block of gneiss resembling the Ayers Rock of Australia, he said that the attempt was thwarted by the High Court in 2010 which ordered that not even rock samples should be collected without the court’s permission.

Two temples, one for Narasinga Perumal and another for Lord Murugan, were situated in the foothills of Yanaimalai, and the ancient hillock with a recorded history of over 2,000 years houses Jain caverns with Bas Relief of Mahavira, Parsuvanath and others.

“But some people are slowly converting all these places of archaeological importance into Hindu temples.

“During my last visit atop the hillock, I was surprised to see a man having converted one such location into a place of worship. Now, the ‘Thiruman’ has been painted exactly on a rock that resembles the forehead of an elephant. If we do not insist on erasing it, it would become a free for all with people professing other faiths and even advertisers wanting to paint the rocks,” he added.

Another advocate, G. Prabhu Rajadurai, had raked up the issue through his Facebook post on Sunday and it evoked quite a response from many lawyers, including senior counsel K.M. Vijayan, who detested the practice.

“Painting on rocks is against an order of the Supreme Court in 2002 when it fined cola companies for defacing the Himalayas by their advertisements,” the advocate claimed.

A priest associated with the Narasingam temple clarified that they did not paint the ‘Thiruman’ and was not aware of who painted the new one.

The ‘Thiruman’ was in existence for some years now, signifying the presence of Jothishkudi village below the hillock, where the ‘utsavar’ of Ranganathaswamy Temple in Srirangam was kept by Pillai Lokachariar after it was taken away from the temple for protection from invaders. The priest was not aware of who painted the new one.