Principles of Adi Shankaracharya are still applicable today" 

Kedarnath : The Prime Minister Narendra Modi
unveiled a 12-foot statue of Adi Guru Shankaracharya on Friday, the 8th-century seer who had attained Moksha at Kedarnath.

After unveiling the statue, Mr Modi sat at the foot of the statue for a while.

Later sharing his feelings while addressing the gathering of the devotees, priests and officials including the chief minister of Uttarakhand, he said that " he was at a loss of words to describe what he felt while he was sitting before the statue of Adi Guru Shankaracharya at the seer’s reconstructed samadhi".

He said that there was a time when spirituality and religion were believed to be associated only with stereotypes. But, Indian philosophy talks about human welfare, sees life in a holistic manner. Adi Shankaracharya worked to make the society aware about this truth.

The ‘samadhi’ has been reconstructed after its destruction in the 2013 Uttarakhand floods. Work on the Shankaracharya statue, weighing around 35 tonnes, had begun in 2019.