The Language of Humanity

When PM Narendra Modi delivered his speech at the UN General Assembly on September 27, he recited a Tamil couplet by poet Kaniyan Pungundranar that meant, “We belong to all places and to everyone”. Earlier, in Houston, Texas, addressing the Indian diaspora along with the US President Donald Trump, he announced “Everything is Fine” in many Indian languages, including Tamil.

The language debate in India rears its head every few years, but PM Modi’s attempt to soft pedal his way into Tamil Nadu is bound to resonate with 6.9 crore people who call Tamil their mother tongue (The Government of India, Census 2011). Tamil is the language of more than 5.7 per cent of the Indian population, ranked 5, next to Hindi (spoken by over 52 crore people), Bengali (spoken by over 9 crore), Marathi (spoken by 8.3 crore) and Telugu (8.11 crore speakers). Tamil speakers have been more or less steady at rank 5 since the 1961 Census.  

“If one looks at the growth of Tamil language and the demographic growth from 1961 till 2011, it has remained more or less steady. Tamil unlike, Sanskrit, is a living language, going back to Sangam-literature and Tholkappiyam, the oldest Tamil textbook, containing philosophical-linguistic sophistication and language distribution in those days, dating back to the second century BC. The Tamil language has survived for more than 2000 years due to its inner flexibility to adapt though ages, while other languages have collapsed,” says Professor G N Devy, who has been the chief editor of the People’s Linguistic Survey of India (PLSI), running into 50 volumes, (including a comprehensive-one for Tamil), 91 books, comprising 35,000 printed pages, with the collective efforts of more than 3,000 individuals and over 100 government and voluntary organisations.

While the Tamil sentiment against the imposition of Hindi has often taken strong political colours, language-analysts and linguistic experts feel it may be good idea to take stock of the challenges languages face, especially for the next generation of Tamil speakers. 

“This, Dravidian Vs Indo-Aryan languages is an unnecessary issue. There is no conflict between the Indo-Aryan and Dravidian languages. It is only politicisation of anthropological logic of languages. Differences do not mean being anti-unity. In a region, if I speak a language, gaining knowledge in school and college through my own language is bound to be better. You chose to speak a language, it is your democratic right”, elaborates, Prof K Rangan, Tamil scholar, who worked on the Tamil languages volume of the PLSI.  “With a language like Tamil, with continuity going back over 2,000 years, the Tamil people have every reason to be proud about it. This identity pride of Tamil got galvanised into a movement by Periyar, the father of the Dravidian movement, through his belief in civilizational thesis”, adds Devy.

Dr G Gnansundaram, a Tamil scholar, and Vice Chairman of Central Institute of Classic Tamil (CICL), says, “As far as the comparison with Sanskrit goes, it is difficult to say which one is older. Many Sanskrit works came from South India. Sanskrit grammar is rigid and it is not easy to learn or speak in Sanskrit. Tamil and Sanskrit have seen intermingling at various points in time, including in the Manipranalam, (Ruby-Coral) style of medieval liturgical text, where they used an a mixture of Tamil (Ruby) and Sanskrit (Coral). Even in Sangam era literature, there is evidence of 1-2 per cent Sanskrit. It is only towards the beginning of the 20th century that a chaste Tamil language movement was started by Marimalai Adigal.” Known as the father of “Tamil Linguistic Purism” movement, Maraimalai Adigal was not only a Tamil scholar, but had equal command over Sanskrit and English. A writer and orator, he wrote more than 100 books, including original poems and dramas, with most famous being his books on Tamil literature.

At present, challenges facing the Tamil language are the strong influence of communication technologies that require primary use of English, huge increase in people’s aspirations for English language, and the non-availability of Tamil-based commercial tools for billing and other computational business software platforms.  “Language related technology has changed, impacting humans all over the world in all languages”, adds Devy.

“Functional Tamil should be engaged by government in their transactions, banking and commercial functions. All electronic communications should be in Tamil. Right now, people have no option but to use English. With the functional role of Tamil language being reduced, it will be endangered in the future,” says Deiva Sundaram, former Head of Department, Tamil Languages & Linguistic Studies, University of Madras, and now Managing Director of MDS Lingsoft Solutions, that developed India’s first Tamil-based word-processor in 2011, called MenTamizh.

Deiva Sundaram’s observations point towards newer challenges to the Tamil language. “While the children in Tamil Nadu in lower classes can speak Tamil well but find it difficult to learn writing, in contrast, Tamil children in Singapore are facing difficulty in speaking Tamil, as they are third or fourth generation there, with English or Malay Chinese being spoken at home or in their socio-economic context. The ministry of Education in Singapore, as part of their bilingual policy, wants children there to speak in Tamil, but the educational material available with them is in written Tamil that is not current and contemporary,” says 

Deiva Sundaram.

He has been invited by the Singapore’s Ministry of Education to develop a corpus lexigraphy, which could help children to speak Tamil. He is working on a modern Tamil-English pocket dictionary that uses the modern contemporary language closer to spoken Tamil. “None of the private schools in the State teach in Tamil medium, with teachers pro-actively encouraging students to speak in English. The same threat is being faced by the Hindi-speaking population as well,” adds Deiva Sundaram.