Call for Tamil cultural centres in foreign countries

Former Vice-Chancellor of Manonmaniam Sundaranar University and Chairman of the Seminar on ‘Kadal Kadantha Tamil, Tamilar' organised as part of the World Classical Tamil Conference K.P. Aravanan on Saturday appealed to the State government to seek the Centre's support for establishing Tamil cultural centres in countries with Tamil population.

Mr. Aravanan made this as a concluding remark of the seminar and pointed out that only 15 per cent of overseas Tamils seemed to lead a happy life, while 35 per cent were in average state and the remaining 50 per cent facing some problem or the other and sought measures to ensure a decent living for those people. Mr. Aravanan said that very few linguistic communities had crossed the shore and Tamil was primary among them.

The migration of linguistic communities was either for survival or for position. There are no archaeological traces for the presence of Tamil in Egypt, Greece, Rome or China. Classifying the presence of the language among the Tamilians, Mr. Aravanan named four models: Reunion, where the language no longer exists among the generations, Euro Union where the language exists only with the first generation migrants, South African-Mauritius where the language had merged with the local dialects thus becoming a new language and Singapore and Malaysia model still had Tamils transcending generations.

N. Andiappan of Writers Association from Singapore called for a World Classical Tamil secretariat branch at Singapore and suggested that for the headquarters there could be representatives from each country. He pointed out that Tamils occupied major positions in the country. P. Rajendran of the Malaysian Writers Association and a journalist said that the crisis for Tamil was over in Malaysia and the government was responding to the requirements of the Tamil people positively now. He also called for a World Classical Tamil conference branch secretariat at Malaysia for the benefit of the people living in southeast Asian countries.

Pal Pandian of the U.S sought for institution of a Chair for Tamil or a department in the universities there and suggested that as in the lines of the Union government, the State should also come forward to have a department or a ministry for Tamils living overseas.