ThiruKural on Agriculture

Wish you all a very happy Pongal; Hope this month of Thai brings us all lot of hope and brightness in all our lives.

Since the Tamil month “Thai” falls in January, January is always special for me. The birth of “Thai” month has been celebrated as pongal festival throughout TamilNadu and as Makara-Sankranthi in Northern India.

While celebrating farmers and the thanksgiving to farmers and the nature, let’s focus on what Thiruvalluvar had told us about Agriculture. 

The agriculture related couplets are from the chapter “Kudiyiyal” (குடியியல்)

உழுதுண்டு வாழ்வாரே வாழ்வர்மற்

றெல்லாம் தொழுதுண்டு பின்செல் பவர்

Translation:

Who plough eat their food and give food to others are the ones who are living; rest of the people are dependent to the people who are ploughing.

Explanation:

They alone live who live by agriculture; all others lead a cringing, dependent life.

உழவார் உலகத்தார்க்கு ஆணிஅக் தாற்றாது                         

எழவாரை எல்லாம் பொறுத்து

Explanation:

The farmers are the linch-pin of the world; since they bear the responsibility of providing food for the people who cannot plough and doing other work.

The Pongal festival is all about thanks giving to the nature, especially the sun god for helping the farmers to produce food. As we all know the kids these days think the food they eat comes from the shop.

It’s our responsibility to teach them there are farmers who are working hard to produce the food we eat, whether it is grains or vegetables. It’s high time we need to pay close attention to agriculture since the increasing urban areas eating away all the agriculture land.

The global warming, increase in vehicles, increase in concrete jungle, decrease in trees are slowly disturbing the nature and the monsoon setting is not like how it used to be.

As Thiruvalluvur said, farmers are the linch-pin of this world, reducing agriculture land and farmers leaving the agriculture profession in large numbers are a wake up call to all of us.

Let’s protect farmers and agriculture, so that our children will have food in their plate.

Thank you Farmers! We salute you for your service to the nation!

Hail Tamil! Hail ThiruKural!

வாழ்க தமிழ்! வாழ்க திருக்குறள்! வாழ்க அய்யன் வள்ளுவனின் புகழ்!