21st Century Tamil and Power Politics

Abstract

Language has undergone many changes over time. At the same time, it can be seen that language has adapted to the geographical environment. Language was formed by human labor, and after the discovery of agriculture, it became settled and moved around for trade and industry, and language mixing became inevitable.

During the Sangam period, the Sangam hymns have recorded the situation where trade goods from many countries like Egypt, Greece, Rome, and China entered the Tamil territory. Similarly, Tamil scholars have pointed out that language mixing has also occurred. The mixing of these languages ​​with the Tamil language is not complicated. However, what is debatable is the authority that a language is sacred. Sanskrit identified itself as the language of the gods and declared Tamil as a vulgar language. From here, the discourse of language purity becomes politics.

With this, it is inevitable that the ideology that written literature is superior and folk literature is inferior has been established. That is, those who learned to write and wrote and sang were intelligent. The trend of dismissing songs sung by illiterate people as lay songs began to take hold. Tolkappiyam emphasizes speech and promotes writing as a consequence. But it is painful that most Tamil scholars continue to approach Tolkappiyam from the source.