Sri Sri Ravi Shankar's Art of Living event gets stay order from Madras High Court

Guwahati: The two-day event of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar's Art of Living that was scheduled to be held at Brihadisvara temple in Tamil Nadu's Thanjavur district is being provided with a stay order by the Madurai bench of the Madras High Court on Friday. As scheduled, the event was to kickstart from today but is withheld now.

The reason for the stay order passed by the high court is that the event was about to be held in Brihadisvara temple and the temple is a UNESCO World Heritage site where private functions are prohibited. When despite being a prohibited place for private functions, the art of living event was scheduled for the venue, it triggered quite a row over as how can the Archeological Survey of India granted the event to be held in the temple premises.

The event, named as 'Unveiling Infinity', was expected to be attended by around 2,000 followers and for accommodating such a huge crown, a makeshift pandal made of iron rods was made in the temple lawn.

It is not the first event of such kind that was scheduled to be held on the temple premises. Before this, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar's three-day event called the 'World Cultural Festival' was also held in March 2016 which has irked the environmentalists and the National Green Tribunal. They held the festival "responsible" for "causing damage and environmental degradation" to the Yamuna floodplains.

A judgment had then noted that World Cultural Festival had caused "serious pollution on the floodplain of the river." This event was attended by nearly 35 lakh followers.

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar is an Indian spiritual leader and is the founder of Art of Living Foundation in 1981. His foundation is a volunteer-based NGO in nature that provides social support to people. He has another organization named the International Association for Human Values that he established in 1997. This NGO engages in relief work and rural development and aims at spreading global values.

Also read: Dialogue Best Solution to Ayodhya Issue: Sri Sri Ravi Shankar