Kanyakumari

Kanyakumari
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Kanyakumari ; கன்னியாகுமரி
State :	India
State :	Tamil Nadu
District :	Kanyakumari
Sub-district :	Agastheeswaram
Location :	8 ° 5 ' N , 77 ° 32' E Coordinates: 8 ° 5 ' N , 77 ° 32' E
Height :	6 m
Residents :	22,453 (2011)
	View over Kanyakumari, dominated by the pilgrimage church Our Lady of Ransom

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Kanyakumari (also: Kanniyakumari ; Tamil : கன்னியாகுமரி Kaṉṉiyākumari [ ˈkanːijaːˌkuməɾi ]) is a city in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu . It is located on Cape Comorin , the southernmost point of the Indian subcontinent .

The population is around 22,000 (2011 census). Kanyakumari is eponymous for the Kanyakumari district . However, the administrative seat of the district is the Nagercoil located 20 kilometers to the north . The closest major city is Thiruvananthapuram , the capital of the neighboring state of Kerala , 86 kilometers away.

Due to its location on the southern tip of India, Kanyakumari is an important Hindu pilgrimage destination, the place is also visited to a lesser extent by foreign tourists. In 2011, Kanyakumari had a total of 7.3 million visitors. The main attraction for the pilgrims is the temple of the virgin goddess Kumari Amman , located directly on Cape Komorin . The name Kanyakumari , which means "[place of] the virgin princess" , also refers to the goddess . At the ghats located directly at the temple, the faithful take a ritual bath in the sea.

It was the visit to this temple in 1955 that inspired Maharishi Mahesh Yogi to teach his "simple technique of deep meditation" (later " transcendental meditation ").

A few hundred meters from the coast of the cape there are two small rocks. On the larger of the two is the Vivekananda rock memorial, a memorial built in 1970 for the Hindu philosopher Vivekananda , who spent three days meditating here in 1892. On the other rock, the 40.5 meter high Tiruvalluvar statue was erected in 2000 as a memorial to the Tamil poet Tiruvalluvar , the author of the Tirukkural . The islands can be reached by boat.

Some of the ashes of Mahatma Gandhi were scattered in the sea off Kanyakumari after his death in 1948. At the place where Gandhi's ashes were kept in an urn, there is a monument to him in the style of an Orissan temple.

Kanyakumari is the end point of National Highway 7 . The longest Indian highway leads from the north Indian Varanasi to the southern tip of the subcontinent. The city also has its own train station at the end of a branch line coming from Nagercoil. There are express connections to Chennai and through Kerala to Mumbai .

The city is also a Marian pilgrimage site with the Church of Our Lady of Ransom , which is very famous in India and which is visible from afar. The Christian community is said to go back to the apostle Thomas , who proselytized here in the 1st century, and in the 16th century the Asia missionary St. Francis Xavier worked in Kanyakumari .

The place was badly affected by the tsunami after the seaquake on December 26, 2004 . Large parts of the shore area and the old town by the sea were destroyed.

The majority of Kanniyakumari's inhabitants are Christians : 61 percent of the population profess Christianity, 33 percent are Hindus and 6 percent Muslim . As in all of Tamil Nadu, the main language is Tamil, which is spoken by 96 percent of the population as their mother tongue.