Who was Raja Raja Chola? What's the raging row revolving around him?
A controversy is revolving around the religious identity of Raja Raja Chola, the iconic king who wielded power and reigned supreme across South India. Read the story to know who he was and what the raging row is.
When the thin line between history and fiction blurs and the past gets raked up, quite often, it stokes a row. This time, it revolves around the religious identity of Raja Raja Chola, the iconic king who wielded power and reigned supreme across South India.
Rewind to 985 CE -1014 CE. Raja Raja Chola fights wars with an expansionist mindset and captures vast expanses of the Pandya and the Chera country. He invades northern parts of Sri Lanka, Lakshadweep, Thiladhunmadulu atoll, and some tracts of Maldives. He also triumphs at Kandalur Salai (Kerala), thanks to his strong navy and army fleet. Raja Raja decimates everyone who comes in his way. He captures the regions of Gangapadi, Nolambapadi and Tadigaipadi (Karnataka) too.
The great emperor rolls out a project of a land survey, reorganizing his kingdom into units known as valanadus. The local self-government gets revamped as he puts into place a foolproof audit system. The village assemblies and other public bodies are given autonomy.
The colossal Brihadeeshwara Temple in Thanjavur, dedicated to Lord Shiva which is a glowing example of Dravidian architecture, comes up under his direction. It becomes a hub of religious activities (It got the Unesco heritage site tag sometime back).
2022: Ace filmmaker Mani Ratnam’s Ponniyin Selvan I, a film based on a novel by Kalki Krishnamurthy that portrays the era during the Chola dynasty, is released. On October 1, noted film director Vetrimaran fuels a controversy by saying that there are efforts to project Raja Raja as “a Hindu king” and lend him a Hindu religious identity. “Our identities are constantly being snatched from us,” he asserts.
Telangana governor Tamilisai Soundararajan jumps into the debate. She says that attempts are being made to conceal the Hindu cultural identity of key personalities in Tamil Nadu. “There’s a crying need to raise voice against such attempts.”
Soundararajan goes a step further and claims she was brought up in the vicinity of the Brihadeeshwara Temple in Thanjavur.
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The divide is drawn further when Vetrimaaran gets support from popular actor Kamal Haasan. He avers there was no Hindu religion during Raja Raja Chola’s reign. “There was Vainavam, Shivam, and Samanam, and it was the British who coined the term Hindu since they didn't know how to refer to it collectively.”
BJP's H Raja also gets into the raging debate. “I am not well versed with history like Vetrimaran, but let him point out two churches and mosques built by Raja Raja Chola. He called himself Sivapadha Sekaran. Wasn’t he a Hindu then?”
PERTINENT POSERS
The raging controversy fails to answer pertinent posers: Should we paint Raja Raja Chola with a religious paint? How much of history does one believe while reading or watching a fiction?
The concept of worship is ingrained in Tamils, and Shaivism and Vaishnavism are both identities of Hindus, Soundararajan says. There’s no gainsaying what Soundarajan claims. However, at the same time, we can’t blank out the fact that during Raja Raja Chola’s reign, there was no religion called Hindu of course, there was Sanatan Dharam, which is largely recognized as a way of life.
And as far as the question on how to distinguish history from fiction or vice versa goes, it doesn’t have any straight, emphatic answer. You can’t isolate the two. Both overlap and will continue doing so!