Reclaiming the Chola Legacy

WHEN PRIME MINISTER Narendra Modi arrived at Gangaikonda Cholapuram in Ariyalur district to worship at the Chola-era Shiva temple, he brought with him water from the Ganga, drawn from Kashi, in a deliberate act of symbolism. The water of the north was finally returning to the temple of a monarch who had claimed to have ‘brought the Ganga south’ after a victorious expedition a thou­sand years ago. Rajendra Chola’s capital, Gangaikonda Chola­puram, was likely chosen over more prominent destinations like Thanjavur, Rameswaram or Madurai because Modi wanted not just to make a religious pilgrimage, but a civilisational statement. The Cholas were being cast not as regional kings, but as one of the early architects of Bharat. And Gangaikonda Cholapuram’s history of conquest, exquisite sculptures and axial precision—an imperial geometry of sacred and political power—were being reappraised in the service of a nationalist re-narration.

For the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which has struggled to build a political foothold in Tamil Nadu, the Cholas offer a convenient idiom, one that combines administrative might, sacred architecture and maritime vision. Their rule is seen as Indic, monumental and palatable to modern political frames. It is a cultural bridge the party hopes to walk, linking Tamil pride with pan-Indian belonging. The invocation of Shaiva Siddhanta during the visit was no accident either. Shaiva Siddhanta—the dominant theological framework under the Cholas, with Shiva as the central deity—espouses a dualistic vision of God and soul, mediated by rigorous moral practice. It was once the religious underpinning of a far-reaching, temple-centred bureaucracy. In the present, it lends the aura of discipline and devotion without invoking the caste polarities that shaped its medieval transmis­sion. For a party that treads carefully in Dravidian terrain, this strand of Tamil spirituality is an ideological foothold.

During his visit to Tamil Nadu, Modi revisited the installa­tion of the Sengol in the new Parliament building—a moment, he said, that marked the continuity of Tamil spiritual tradition within the architecture of Indian democracy. The gold-plated silver sceptre, long housed in the Allahabad Museum, had been originally brought to north India by emissaries of the Thiru­vaduthurai Adheenam, a prominent Shaivite monastery in Tamil Nadu. For decades, it lay obscure, until 2023, when it was restored to national attention and placed beside the Lok Sabha Speaker’s chair during the Parliament’s inauguration. Modi was joined at the time by 20 Shaivite Adheenam heads from Tamil Nadu, who led the rituals. “During the inauguration of the new Parliament building, the saints of the Shaivite Adheenams led the ceremony spiritually,” Modi said. “The sacred Sengol, deeply rooted in Tamil culture, has now been installed with full reverence in the new Par­liament.” He invoked the Chola emperors as the original stew­ards of this tradition, linking their legacy to the enduring vital­ity of Tamil Nadu as a centre of spiritual and cultural continuity.

The Dravida Mun­netra Kazhagam (DMK), long suspi­cious of Sanskritisa­tion and Hindu ma­joritarian symbolism, has not been idle in its own reclamation project. In September 2023, Chief Minister MK Stalin unveiled a bronze statue of Rajen­dra Chola I outside the Tamil Nadu Assembly, as part of a larger effort to reposition the Cholas within a Dravidian cultural frame­work. The state has funded archaeological surveys, revised school curricula, and supported cinematic portrayals—most notably Mani Ratnam’s Ponniyin Selvan films, adapted from Kalki Krish­namurthy’s popular serialised novel. These adaptations, teeming with intrigue and psychological subtlety, brought the Cholas into multiplexes. Even as Dravidian forces argue that Cholas must be remembered as champions of Tamil language, art, and gover­nance, not as precursors to a north Indian civilisational model, this ideological tug-of-war—between Aryavarta and Tamilakam, between saffron and self-respect—has now taken physical form in the stones of a 1,000-year-old shrine.

Into this political theatre stepped a surprisingly technical artefact of history: the Kudavo­lai system. During his speech at the temple, Modi referenced it by name, calling it older than the Magna Carta. The Kudavolai, named for the pot (kudam) used in the process, was a method of local self-governance record­ed in stone inscriptions at Uthiramerur, a village in present-day Kanchipuram dis­trict. In the 10th century, under the reign of Parantaka Chola I, committees were elected by drawing palm-leaf slips bear­ing names from a pot, in the presence of priests. The eligibility requirements were exacting: candidates had to be landown­ers of at least one-fourth veli (roughly 1.5 acres), aged between 35 and 70, literate in sacred texts, without criminal blemish or familial debts, and not related to cur­rent office-holders. Tenure was fixed at 360 days. Offenders were punished with donkey-back parades and multi-gener­ational disqualification. Two inscrip­tions from circa 919 and 921 CE record the existence of committees for gardens (Totta-Variyam), tanks (Eri-Variyam), and annual matters (Samvatsara-Variyam)— a complex and layered apparatus of village rule.

Modi attempted to reframe the system as a proto-democratic institution, one that proves India’s ancient commitment to orderly, moral self-rule. But scholars re­main cautious. The Magna Carta, signed in 1215, was an adversarial compact aimed at limiting royal overreach; the Kudavolai was a regulatory mechanism within a tightly stratified polity. One was born of rebel­lion, the other of qualification. And yet, Modi’s framing is not with­out resonance. In an era of global suspicion about Western liberal democracy, to root India’s political instincts in palm-leaf ballots and temple courtyards is to offer a civilisational counter-narrative: that democracy, like yoga or Ayurveda, has local origins.

If Kudavolai suggests internal rigour, the Cholas’ maritime prowess suggests outward ambition. Rajendra I’s naval expedi­tions, recorded in Tamil and Sanskrit inscriptions, reached Srivi­jaya (modern Indonesia), Cambodia, and perhaps even China’s trade routes. The conquest of Kadaram is described with both poetic grandeur and bureaucratic detail—cattle taken, ships moored, tribute exacted. Under the Cholas, Tamil merchant guilds such as the Ainnurruvar operated across Southeast Asia, wielding both cultural and economic influence. For the BJP, these ancient sea lanes offer yet another appeal: an example of Indian power projecting outward without apology.

In Tamil Nadu, where memory is already thick with lan­guage wars, anti-Hindi agitations and Dravidian identity, the entry of Rajendra Chola into national myth is not benign. A 1,000-year-old city, once drowned in vegetation and neglect, now reappears in political speech and televi­sion coverage. While the temple itself is not considered among the most sacred temples to Shiva—those would be the paadal petra sthalangal, or the sites where the Nayanmar saints composed poetry, mentioned in an important Shaivite text, Panniru Thirumurai, says Indic scholar Pradeep Chakravarthy, who is working on a history of the Cholas for children. “What PM Modi seems to be doing here is restarting the old tradition of rulers using temples to bring people together. This visit is a good message because it ticks many boxes: Shaivism, diplomacy in the south Asian region, and the Tamil connection,” he says. Chakravarthy adds that the variety and the quality of sculp­tures at the Gangaikonda Cholapuram temple are better than those in some of the larger temples. “What is also remark­able is that Rajendra’s bronze images are intact, whereas in the Big Temple at Thanjavur, only a couple of idols have survived.” There are a couple of other curiosities at the temple, the Navagraha peetham which is one of the earliest composite Navagraha sculptures in Tamil Nadu, and the puzzling lack of inscriptions. “The temple was probably unfinished,” Chakravarthy says. “Everything you expect the gov­ernment to do today, the Cholas got the local temples to deliver all that. As icons of administrative excellence, they are unparal­leled,” he adds.

As recorded in inscriptions, Rajendra I claimed the title ‘Gan­gaikonda (He who brought the Ganga)’ and designated the artifi­cial reservoir Chola Gangam as both commemorative monument and administrative hydrostructure with ritual and irrigational functions. This act was not religious piety but political theatre. Historian KA Nilakanta Sastri dismisses earlier romantic inter­pretations of Rajendra’s campaign as pilgrimage, arguing instead that it was tactical conquest. The Ganga water, he writes, became a “liquid pillar of victory” (Ganga-jalamayam jayastambham).

Ideally, Modi should have poured the Gangajal into the tank instead of in the temple, not only for its religious and civilisational symbolism but also as a nod to the Cholas’ water management prowess. Meanwhile, Stalin sanctioned `19.2 crore to restore Cholagangam, Rajendra’s colossal irrigation reservoir, desilting 38 km of inlet canal, strengthening bunds, renovating sluice gates, and creating walking tracks and parks for tourism. Simul­taneously, the government earmarked `22.1 crore to build a Chola museum in Thanjavur, intended to preserve excavation finds and reinterpret Chola art, architecture, and trade in Tamil-centric narrative frames. The BJP tried to counterbalance: Prime Minister Modi released a ` 1,000 commemorative coin featuring Rajendra Chola I and announced plans to erect grand statues of Rajaraja and Rajendra Chola at Gangaikonda Cholapuram. If DMK’s invest­ments in infrastructure, museums, and statues evoke rooted belonging—a heritage grounded in place and language—BJP’s speeches, coins and national-level exposure speak to projection, the forging of a Chola legacy that extends beyond region.

Says writer and playwright Gowri Ramnarayan, who trans­lated Kalki’s Ponniyin Selvan into English, “What stands out about the Cholas is that they were great administrators, traders and voyagers and enjoyed a high economic status, partly because they managed their abundant water resources well. The Kallanai dam, built by Karikala Chola (in 150 CE), is a living monument. Veeranam Lake was built by the later Chola kings.” The lake is described in detail by Kalki in the opening chapter of Ponniyin Selvan. The Vaishnavite philosopher Ramanuja is said to have drawn inspiration from the lake’s 74 sluices to create 74 spiritual seats—simhasanadhipatis—across his following.

That lake is not the only legacy. When Rajendra Chola fell ill, a Buddhist monastery in Nagapattinam composed prayers for his recovery. The poem survives. That a king of Srivijaya was al­lowed to build a monastery for his traders in a Chola port—and that Chola kings donated to it—is a historical vignette not easily absorbed into today’s binaries. The empire was ambitious, yes— but also porous, multilingual, and plural.

“The Cholas understood that in a vast empire they have to nourish everyone. They promoted the arts and culture and lan­guages, not only Tamil but Sanskrit too,” says Ramnarayan. “They didn’t just build Shaivite temples, they donated liberally to Vaish­nava temples, Buddhist monasteries and Jaina pallis—religions Hinduism was at loggerheads with at the time.”

Their ambition extended beyond the subcontinent. Historian Hermann Kulke notes that Rajendra’s naval expedition to Srivi­jaya around 1025 CE ranks as “the only large scale long distance naval attack launched from South Asia in recorded history.” Tamil merchant guilds—such as the Ayyavole—then expanded into Southeast Asia, transforming commerce and cultural networks.

Between 1019 and 1021 CE, Rajendra marched through Tamil Nadu, Andhra, Gujarat, Odisha, Bihar and Bengal, and reached the banks of the Ganga. He defeated the Kalinga king Indraratha, the Pala ruler Mahipala I, Govindachandra of the Chandra line, and local authorities across eastern India, before returning with vic­tory waters to his capital. BJP’s reanimation of the Chola past car­ries a risk of flattening. What is being celebrated is not necessarily what was but what can be instrumentalised—Kudavolai as early democracy, Shaivism as votebank currency, and maritime exploits as nationalist pride, not mercantile competition. The Ganga water brought by Modi to Gangaikonda Cholapuram becomes not hom­age but a sealing act: north blessing south, present sanctifying past.

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