The Velanai Pradeshiya Sabha has voted to install a statue of Nainativu Sri Nagapooshani Amman at the roundabout near the renovated Kurikattuvan Jetty in Jaffna, over the objections of National People's Power (NPP) councillors, in a dispute that comes weeks after an 88-foot Buddha statue was erected on the island of Nainativu.
The resolution was approved at the council's monthly meeting on Wednesday, presided over by its chairman, Sivalingam Ashokkumar. The proposal, submitted by Councillor Sivakumaran, called for the installation of the statue of Nagapooshani Amman, describing the deity as a symbol of the island, and was supported by a majority of councillors.
NPP members opposed the move, arguing that it was inappropriate to display the symbol of a single religion at the site. They said Nainativu was a destination visited by people of several faiths, and proposed that either symbols representing all of them, or a common symbol representing the islands, be installed instead. The exchange grew heated between the NPP councillors and members of other parties during the session.
Despite the objections, the proposal passed with majority support, and Ashokkumar announced that arrangements would be made to proceed with the project.
Nainativu is home to the historic Nagapooshani Amman Temple, one of the most revered Hindu temples in the North-East and counted among the 64 Shakti Peethams, among the holiest sites in the Shaktham tradition of Hinduism. The temple, mentioned in ancient Tamil literature and rebuilt in the eighteenth century after the Portuguese destroyed the original, draws more than 100,000 pilgrims during its annual Mahotsavam festival.
The island also houses the Nagadeepa Purana Viharaya, a Buddhist site whose tradition holds that the Buddha visited to settle a dispute between two Naga kings, a claim historians have questioned. The unveiling of the 88-foot Buddha statue weeks ago drew large numbers of Sinhala Buddhist pilgrims from the south, and was condemned by Tamil residents and activists as part of a deliberate pattern of expanding Buddhist symbols in historically Tamil and Hindu areas of the North-East. Similar concerns were raised over the state's renovation of the Kurikattuvan Jetty, which Tamil politicians said foregrounded Buddhist landmarks while overlooking the area's older and deeper Hindu significance.
The demand for multi-religious representation is one rarely made of the Buddhist statues and viharas erected across the Tamil homeland, including the towering Buddha figure that now overlooks Nainativu. Calls for shared or neutral symbolism, critics note, tend to surface only when Hindu sites and symbols are at issue, and the opposition to the Nagapooshani Amman statue at Kurikattuvan is seen by many as another step in the steady dilution of the Hindu identity of an island long defined by its temple.