The Russian edition presented during the BRICS Summit carried a history of its own — from early European translations and Tolstoy’s encounter with the Kural to more than six decades of Russian scholarship.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s gift of a Russian translation of the Thirukkural to Vladimir Putin during the BRICS Summit carried a history far older than the diplomatic moment. From Tolstoy’s 1908 engagement with the Kural to decades of Russian translations, Adarsh Kumar traces how a 2,000-year-old Tamil classic became part of India-Russia cultural diplomacy.
New Delhi : Diplomatic gifts are rarely incidental. They can represent history, identity, craftsmanship or a political relationship. On September 11 in New Delhi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi chose a book. During his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the 18th BRICS Summit, Modi presented him with a Russian translation of the Thirukkural, the classical Tamil work attributed to Thiruvalluvar and dating back roughly two millennia. The Prime Minister’s Office subsequently recorded the gift, with Modi describing the Thirukkural as carrying Thiruvalluvar’s wisdom “across languages and borders”. During the meeting, the two leaders also discussed trade, energy, defence, space, skill mobility and wider geopolitical issues.
Against that larger strategic agenda, the choice of an ancient Tamil text stood out. There is no official explanation setting out why the Thirukkural, rather than another Indian classic, was selected. But the character of the text, its long history of translation and its lesser-known Russian journey allow the gesture to be read on three levels: as cultural diplomacy, as a civilisational reference and as an attempt to make an Indian classical work accessible to a Russian readership.
The Book That Travelled
Traditionally associated with Thiruvalluvar, the Thirukkural consists of 1,330 couplets arranged in 133 chapters. Its three broad divisions — aram, porul and inbam — deal with virtue, wealth and governance, and love. Although deeply rooted in Tamil intellectual tradition, the work is notable for the breadth of its ethical concerns. Rather than requiring adherence to a specific religious doctrine, much of the text addresses conduct, governance, relationships, justice, restraint and everyday moral choices. That largely non-sectarian character has helped it travel across linguistic and cultural boundaries. Its European translation history stretches back nearly three centuries.
In 1730, Jesuit missionary Constantius Joseph Beschi translated the first two books, Aram and Porul, into Latin. Nathaniel Edward Kindersley published selected English extracts in 1794, followed by the work of Francis Whyte Ellis in the early nineteenth century. W. H. Drew produced another major partial English translation in 1840, while G. U. Pope’s 1886 edition became the first complete English translation of the work. A recent Harvard study of the text’s translation history also records the Ellis and Pope milestones. The Russian edition placed in Putin’s hands was therefore part of a much older history of movement across languages.
Why the Thirukkural?
India has many texts that could serve as symbols of its civilisational inheritance. The Bhagavad Gita, the Ramayana or works from the Buddhist and Sanskrit traditions would all carry immediately recognisable associations. The Thirukkural offers something somewhat different. Its concern with ethics, political conduct and human relationships allows it to function beyond a particular theological tradition. Its short couplets make it unusually portable across language and cultural context. And its Tamil origin also broadens the image of Indian civilisation projected abroad beyond a predominantly Sanskrit-centred frame. That is significant in cultural diplomacy. A country does not present only its state institutions to the outside world; it also chooses which parts of its intellectual and cultural inheritance it wants others to encounter.
Modi has used the Thirukkural in public diplomacy before. In Bangkok in November 2019, he released the first copy of a Thai translation of the Tamil classic at the “Sawasdee PM Modi” event. The Press Information Bureau recorded the release as part of his official programme in Thailand. He has also invoked Thiruvalluvar and the Thirukkural in domestic public addresses. What distinguished the Putin gift, however, was that the volume was presented in Russian. The Central Institute of Classical Tamil’s catalogue identifies the 2026 Russian edition as a translation by Naira Mkrtchyan. A classical text presented only in its original language can remain a cultural object. Translation gives the recipient the possibility of becoming a reader.
Tolstoy and the ‘Hindu Kural’
The Russian connection did not begin in 2026. One of its most striking chapters involves Leo Tolstoy. In his 1908 Letter to a Hindu, written in response to Indian revolutionary Tarak Nath Das, Tolstoy reproduced a group of sayings under the heading “THE HINDU KURAL”. The passages dealt with wrongdoing, retaliation, kindness and moral responsibility. The surviving text confirms the presence of these Kural passages in Tolstoy’s argument against violence. The letter subsequently entered another important intellectual exchange. Mahatma Gandhi obtained a copy while in South Africa and sought Tolstoy’s permission to publish it. Tolstoy’s collected correspondence records Gandhi’s involvement in translating and circulating the work, while published editions of the letter carry Gandhi’s introduction. The connection is worth treating carefully. It is not necessary to claim that the Thirukkural alone shaped Tolstoy’s philosophy or that Tolstoy introduced Gandhi to the Tamil work. The documented fact is already significant: a Russian literary figure was citing Kural teachings in a political and moral argument addressed to an Indian reader more than a century before the New Delhi gift.
The Russian Translation Tradition
Russian scholarly engagement with the Thirukkural later became more systematic. The Higher School of Economics’ account of Dravidian literary studies in Russia records the work of linguist and Dravidologist Yuri Glazov, who translated the Thirukkural with A. Krishnamurthi. Their Moscow edition appeared in 1963 and became an important Russian scholarly treatment of classical Tamil literature. Other Russian renderings followed. Alif Ibragimov published selections from the work in 1974, while later editions were associated with Vitaly Furnika and Russian Indologist Dmitry Burba. The 2026 translation by Naira Mkrtchyan therefore did not introduce the Thirukkural to Russia for the first time. It renewed an existing history of translation and readership. That difference matters. The diplomatic gift was not simply India exporting an unfamiliar cultural object. It placed a new Russian-language edition within a literary relationship that had developed over generations.
Before Tolstoy: Gerasim Lebedev
India-Russia intellectual encounters predate even the Kural’s Russian story. Gerasim Lebedev, an eighteenth-century Russian musician and scholar, spent years in India and became deeply involved in Bengali language, theatre and Indian studies. Cambridge scholarship records his arrival in India in 1785 and his role in establishing a Bengali theatre company in Calcutta, while later Russian scholarship has regarded him as an early figure in the development of Indology in Russia. After returning to Russia, Lebedev continued his work on India. In 1805, his An Impartial Contemplation of the Systems of East Indian Brahmins, Their Sacred Rites and Popular Customs was published in St Petersburg. The National Electronic Library of Russia preserves the bibliographic record of that edition. Lebedev had nothing to do with Modi’s gift, of course. His relevance lies elsewhere: he demonstrates that Russian curiosity about Indian languages and intellectual traditions is considerably older than the modern diplomatic relationship between New Delhi and Moscow. The Thirukkural sits within that longer history.
Culture Alongside Strategy
None of this means that a book alters geopolitical realities. India-Russia relations today are built around strategic interests that include defence, energy, trade, technology and multilateral cooperation. At their September 11 meeting, Modi and Putin reviewed precisely such areas, while also discussing regional and global conflicts. Cultural diplomacy operates on another plane. It does not settle disputes, determine energy flows or erase differences in national interest. Its function is more modest: to create symbols of continuity and familiarity around relationships that are otherwise negotiated through hard interests.
A diplomatic gift can, of course, remain merely protocol. There is no way of knowing whether the particular copy presented in New Delhi will be closely read, placed in a presidential library or remembered primarily through the photograph of the exchange. But that uncertainty does not diminish the history carried by the object itself. The Russian and Tamil scripts appearing together on the volume’s cover brought into a single frame several different stories: classical Tamil thought, European translation, Tolstoy’s engagement with Kural sayings, Soviet and post-Soviet scholarship, and the contemporary strategic relationship between India and Russia.
A Book Beyond the Summit
BRICS summits produce declarations, negotiations and political outcomes that belong to the immediate demands of international affairs. The Thirukkural belongs to a different timescale. It survived the political worlds in which it was composed, crossed linguistic and religious boundaries, entered Latin and European languages, appeared in Tolstoy’s political writing and eventually acquired multiple Russian translations. The September 2026 exchange added another episode to that history. Seen in this context, the importance of Modi’s gift lies less in attempting to read a hidden political message into it than in recognising what cultural diplomacy can do. It can place an old text inside a modern relationship and give people on the other side of that relationship the means to encounter it in their own language. The summit ended. The diplomatic agenda moved on. The book remained.
