The curtains came down on June 27 on the historic first World Classical Tamil Conference (WCTC) at Coimbatore, that will remain a feather in the cap of Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Kalaignar M.Karunanidhi. The five-day literary festival came to a close with Kalaignar’s valedictory address in which he hailed it as a ‘grand success’. The conference was inaugurated on June 23 by President Tmt. Pratibha Devisingh Patil while the valedictory function was attended by Union Finance Minister Thiru Pranab Mukherjee and Home Minister Thiru P.Chidambaram.
The conference in the textile city of Coimbatore, got up to hail the Classical language status to Tamil, provided new insights into Classical Tamil, one of the oldest languages on the Earth. Speaker after speaker, cutting across all sections, rolled out historical records to prove the antiquity of Tamil, justifying Classical language status, conferred belatedly.
On the opening day, ‘Iniyavai Naarpathu’, an impressive pageantry procession, with 40 tableaux, depicting resplendent scenes from the ancient Sangam classics, the richness of Tamil language and culture and its adaptability in the modern IT era, was witnessed by lakhs of people besides the President, Governor Thiru Surjit Singh Barnala, the Chief Minister and dignitaries.
After the Chief Minister inaugurated the Academic sessions, more than 1,000 Tamil scholars, who came from about 50 foreign countries, presented papers under 55 different titles. Renowned Finnish Indologist Asko Parpola, who was awarded the Kalaignar Classical Tamil Research Award on the opening day for his contribution to cracking the Indus script, explained the basic features of the Indus script, especially about the fish symbol. He stunned the audience with his theory that Lord Muruga was worshipped by people of Indus Valley Civilisation and that the language of the Dravidians existed during that period. Referring to the six vertical strokes followed by a fish on the Harappan seals, Parpola said, as fish was a symbol to depict a star too (the Tamil word ‘Meen’ is common to both fish and star), the ‘6 strokes plus fish’ could refer to ‘aru-meen’, a Tamil term for the constellation Pleiades). He also cited old Tamil texts that describe Murugan as ‘aru-Meen Kaatalan’ (beloved of Pleiades). Referring to another sign of ‘two intersecting circles’ on a Mohenjo-daro seal, Parpola said it was a reference to Murugan, whose name means ‘youth or young man’. It could be a potogram depicting ‘muruku’ (ring, earring or bangle) another name for Murugan. The Finnish scholar wanted more study to carry forward the research to crack the Indus script.
George Hart, a US scholar, speaking about the antiquity of Tamil, noted it was ancient to even Sanskrit. Sanskrit has borrowed many words from Tamil, he said. Hart, who spoke in chaste Tamil, said Tamil was the language of ordinary people. Ancient Tamil literature explained the lives of people, where as Sanskrit was the language of the elitists. Innumerous debates and poetry sessions gave opportunities to a large number of Tamil scholars from different parts of the state, country and even abroad make their presentations. Prof. K.Sivathamby from Jaffna University, Sri Lanka, Ulrike Niklas, Tamil Professor at the University of Cologne, Germany, Prof. Alexander Dubiansky, Tamil scholar from Moscow State University and many others presented their papers, debated and discussed in the 23 separate seminar halls equipped with hi-tech gadgets, screens and equipments for digital presentations on a wide range of subjects from pre-historic Sangam age and classics to modern ‘creative literature- its aims and tendencies.’ The discussions were lively, well-informed and productive and participants presented different and differing views in a perfectly academic atmosphere sans any acrimony or heated exchanges.
While Tamil scholars were engaged in serious academic sessions, the Ninth World Tamil Internet Conference – 2010 (TIC) was also held along with the WCTC, in which computer professionals, special invitees, speakers, delegates and experts from 15 countries participated. As many as 138 papers were presented at the TIC. Of these 75 were presented by overseas participants numbering about 150. Some of the subjects covered at the conference were e-governance, Wikipedia blogs, search engines, character recognition and Tamil domains. An Internet Exhibition with 124 stalls displaying different aspects of Tamil computing was also held. The State Information Technology department is implementing the Smart Classroom Project that envisages the use of IT in classrooms in village schools. The effort is to turn anyone who is able to read or write Tamil be able to use the language easily on the computer too. Now English enables the computer users to get more knowledge and opportunities. It is important to enable people to use Tamil on the computer the way they think rather than visually how it appears. The average users of computer in any language are those who just use it as long as it works.
IT is reaching new heights. It is going to all fields and is becoming multi-dimensional. It should go to villages too through Tamil. The government will support efforts taken for this. Through e-governance, it is now possible to get birth, death and nativity certificates by applying online. The effort is to make people avail all information and services of the government through online from their own places of residence.
The TIC presented a charter of demands to the government which included setting up of an international committee to frame the syllabus for Tamil education through internet. In an effort to develop technology for reading and writing in all mobile phones sold in the state, the government should bring together the stakeholders. The government should also bring about changes in the operating systems and software to help differently-abled in Tamil computing. Competitions should be organized for students regularly to sustain their interest in Tamil computing. The State government should provide incentives to those who carry out projects in Tamil computing, and should declare a policy that in computers purchased for government departments, schools and colleges, the opening screen should be in Tamil when booted. In an effort to sustain the interest of children in Tamil computing, they should be encouraged to use computers for activity-based learning. For instance, the students could collect data and information related to the local economy, history and social issues and feed those in Tamil in computer and also sort the information in Tamil. The secretariat in Tamil computing should be located with that of classical Tamil.
At the Internet exhibition, a group of volunteers was actively engaged with the public, informing people how Tamil was being used on the Internet and how they could benefit and also contribute. Volunteers were teaching how to type in Tamil, how to use Tamil on mobile phones, projecting the Tamil content on the web among others. The group was also engaged in taking online encyclopedia Wikipedia to the public. The Tamil Nadu government has volunteered to share its archives, glossary and other information it has with the Tamil Wikionary, an online Tamil-English dictionary.
Although eight Tamil Internet Conferences were so far held in Chennai (1999, 2003), Cologne, Germany (2009), Singapore (1997, 2000, 2004), Kuala Lumpur (2001) and San Francisco, US (2002), in a moderate scale mostly on the initiative of small groups, this was the first time that the TIC was conducted with the WCTC sponsored by Tamil Nadu government on a large scale and computer and IT professionals had close interactions with Tamil scholars from all over the world and also reach people.
Thus, for the first time, subjects from Indus Valley Civilisation of the distant past to Information Technology of the future were discussed by scholars and experts and professionals at the same venue, making a milestone in the history of Tamil language and people.
The general public had the opportunity to relish various literary programmes and listen to presentations on classical and contemporary Tamil in the form of various events like literary speeches, poetry sessions, debates and seminars by renowned personalities. The public also evinced enormous interest in visiting the grand exhibition organized as part of the conference, depicting Tamil arts, culture, language, literature and the history of Tamils. The exhibition presented objects of pottery, figurines, bricks, seals and bathtubs which were excavated from the Indus valley, Chola period copperplates, sculptures, pillars etc. Lakhs of Tamils across the state and the world flocked to the sprawling venue of the conference for a Tamil treat combining oratory, feast and fair, the place wearing a festive look on all the five days. Not just the working people, even the upper middle class men, women and children of all groups thronged the venue to see the array of floats and art gallery and of course, the massive, ornate pandal of the conference venue. From the moment the exhibition was thrown open to the public, there was a steady stream of tens of thousands of visitors bent on viewing the exhibits, that they did not mind standing in winding queues fro three to four hours. They know very well that there were nothing glamorous or glittering to attract their fascination but were objects of Tamil culture, history and heritage. If they had evoked that much interest in our people to know of their proud past and heritage, it is a splendid success and great tribute to Mother Tamil. Kalaignar’s cup of joy was brimming over as he declared the conference a ‘huge success’ in his valedictory address.
Never before such a conference of this much magnitude in scale, extent of participation and depth and immensity of subjects dealt with was organised in any part of the world, and never before an event for the cause of a language had seen such a deluge of people. Two lakh people attended the inaugural session and the following days about 1.5 lakh people attended everyday in the symposia, poetry sessions and debates besides cultural programmes. Between 1.60 and 1.70 lakhs people visited Public exhibition and Internet exhibition during the first four days and people were seen in queues of about 3 kms long till June 30, after the close of the conference. 2,605 guests from all over the country and abroad were accommodated in 1642 rooms in 92 hotels and several thousand people in all community halls and wedding halls in the city. They were all brought to the conference venue by buses and cars. 840 delegates and observers from 50 foreign countries attended the conference and 152 of them submitted papers.
Food was provided all the three times a day for 5 days to nearly 30,000 persons including delegates, observers, guests, 700 mediapersons, government officials and staff, volunteers and about 11,000 police personnel on security and bandobust duty; but there was not even a single complaint of inconvenience or indisposition for any. So also there were no incidents of chaos, confusion, traffic snarls or inconvenience to public in spite of such huge gathering. All these show the meticulous planning of arrangements, division of work, total involvement of everyone from the Ministers to the last civic worker. But for some cynical observations made by an English daily of a pro-Jayalalitha bilingual newspaper group and a Tamil journal, both bent upon finding fault with the DMK government, lakhs of people who turned up at Coimbatore and millions who witnessed Live telecast of events on TV channel appreciated the absolutely apolitical manner in which the conference was conducted, a rarest of rare phenomenon in Tamil Nadu context. That the edition of the Tamil daily of the group was associated in one of the conference committees and also in a literary programme nailed their own lies.
‘Incredible’, ‘gigantic’, ‘colossal’, ‘tremendous’, ‘extremely impressive and orderly’ were some of the epithets used by the people who witnessed and the media that reported the conference. It was indeed fruitful, flawless and
historic!
The conference in the textile city of Coimbatore, got up to hail the Classical language status to Tamil, provided new insights into Classical Tamil, one of the oldest languages on the Earth. Speaker after speaker, cutting across all sections, rolled out historical records to prove the antiquity of Tamil, justifying Classical language status, conferred belatedly.
On the opening day, ‘Iniyavai Naarpathu’, an impressive pageantry procession, with 40 tableaux, depicting resplendent scenes from the ancient Sangam classics, the richness of Tamil language and culture and its adaptability in the modern IT era, was witnessed by lakhs of people besides the President, Governor Thiru Surjit Singh Barnala, the Chief Minister and dignitaries.
After the Chief Minister inaugurated the Academic sessions, more than 1,000 Tamil scholars, who came from about 50 foreign countries, presented papers under 55 different titles. Renowned Finnish Indologist Asko Parpola, who was awarded the Kalaignar Classical Tamil Research Award on the opening day for his contribution to cracking the Indus script, explained the basic features of the Indus script, especially about the fish symbol. He stunned the audience with his theory that Lord Muruga was worshipped by people of Indus Valley Civilisation and that the language of the Dravidians existed during that period. Referring to the six vertical strokes followed by a fish on the Harappan seals, Parpola said, as fish was a symbol to depict a star too (the Tamil word ‘Meen’ is common to both fish and star), the ‘6 strokes plus fish’ could refer to ‘aru-meen’, a Tamil term for the constellation Pleiades). He also cited old Tamil texts that describe Murugan as ‘aru-Meen Kaatalan’ (beloved of Pleiades). Referring to another sign of ‘two intersecting circles’ on a Mohenjo-daro seal, Parpola said it was a reference to Murugan, whose name means ‘youth or young man’. It could be a potogram depicting ‘muruku’ (ring, earring or bangle) another name for Murugan. The Finnish scholar wanted more study to carry forward the research to crack the Indus script.
George Hart, a US scholar, speaking about the antiquity of Tamil, noted it was ancient to even Sanskrit. Sanskrit has borrowed many words from Tamil, he said. Hart, who spoke in chaste Tamil, said Tamil was the language of ordinary people. Ancient Tamil literature explained the lives of people, where as Sanskrit was the language of the elitists. Innumerous debates and poetry sessions gave opportunities to a large number of Tamil scholars from different parts of the state, country and even abroad make their presentations. Prof. K.Sivathamby from Jaffna University, Sri Lanka, Ulrike Niklas, Tamil Professor at the University of Cologne, Germany, Prof. Alexander Dubiansky, Tamil scholar from Moscow State University and many others presented their papers, debated and discussed in the 23 separate seminar halls equipped with hi-tech gadgets, screens and equipments for digital presentations on a wide range of subjects from pre-historic Sangam age and classics to modern ‘creative literature- its aims and tendencies.’ The discussions were lively, well-informed and productive and participants presented different and differing views in a perfectly academic atmosphere sans any acrimony or heated exchanges.
While Tamil scholars were engaged in serious academic sessions, the Ninth World Tamil Internet Conference – 2010 (TIC) was also held along with the WCTC, in which computer professionals, special invitees, speakers, delegates and experts from 15 countries participated. As many as 138 papers were presented at the TIC. Of these 75 were presented by overseas participants numbering about 150. Some of the subjects covered at the conference were e-governance, Wikipedia blogs, search engines, character recognition and Tamil domains. An Internet Exhibition with 124 stalls displaying different aspects of Tamil computing was also held. The State Information Technology department is implementing the Smart Classroom Project that envisages the use of IT in classrooms in village schools. The effort is to turn anyone who is able to read or write Tamil be able to use the language easily on the computer too. Now English enables the computer users to get more knowledge and opportunities. It is important to enable people to use Tamil on the computer the way they think rather than visually how it appears. The average users of computer in any language are those who just use it as long as it works.
IT is reaching new heights. It is going to all fields and is becoming multi-dimensional. It should go to villages too through Tamil. The government will support efforts taken for this. Through e-governance, it is now possible to get birth, death and nativity certificates by applying online. The effort is to make people avail all information and services of the government through online from their own places of residence.
The TIC presented a charter of demands to the government which included setting up of an international committee to frame the syllabus for Tamil education through internet. In an effort to develop technology for reading and writing in all mobile phones sold in the state, the government should bring together the stakeholders. The government should also bring about changes in the operating systems and software to help differently-abled in Tamil computing. Competitions should be organized for students regularly to sustain their interest in Tamil computing. The State government should provide incentives to those who carry out projects in Tamil computing, and should declare a policy that in computers purchased for government departments, schools and colleges, the opening screen should be in Tamil when booted. In an effort to sustain the interest of children in Tamil computing, they should be encouraged to use computers for activity-based learning. For instance, the students could collect data and information related to the local economy, history and social issues and feed those in Tamil in computer and also sort the information in Tamil. The secretariat in Tamil computing should be located with that of classical Tamil.
At the Internet exhibition, a group of volunteers was actively engaged with the public, informing people how Tamil was being used on the Internet and how they could benefit and also contribute. Volunteers were teaching how to type in Tamil, how to use Tamil on mobile phones, projecting the Tamil content on the web among others. The group was also engaged in taking online encyclopedia Wikipedia to the public. The Tamil Nadu government has volunteered to share its archives, glossary and other information it has with the Tamil Wikionary, an online Tamil-English dictionary.
Although eight Tamil Internet Conferences were so far held in Chennai (1999, 2003), Cologne, Germany (2009), Singapore (1997, 2000, 2004), Kuala Lumpur (2001) and San Francisco, US (2002), in a moderate scale mostly on the initiative of small groups, this was the first time that the TIC was conducted with the WCTC sponsored by Tamil Nadu government on a large scale and computer and IT professionals had close interactions with Tamil scholars from all over the world and also reach people.
Thus, for the first time, subjects from Indus Valley Civilisation of the distant past to Information Technology of the future were discussed by scholars and experts and professionals at the same venue, making a milestone in the history of Tamil language and people.
The general public had the opportunity to relish various literary programmes and listen to presentations on classical and contemporary Tamil in the form of various events like literary speeches, poetry sessions, debates and seminars by renowned personalities. The public also evinced enormous interest in visiting the grand exhibition organized as part of the conference, depicting Tamil arts, culture, language, literature and the history of Tamils. The exhibition presented objects of pottery, figurines, bricks, seals and bathtubs which were excavated from the Indus valley, Chola period copperplates, sculptures, pillars etc. Lakhs of Tamils across the state and the world flocked to the sprawling venue of the conference for a Tamil treat combining oratory, feast and fair, the place wearing a festive look on all the five days. Not just the working people, even the upper middle class men, women and children of all groups thronged the venue to see the array of floats and art gallery and of course, the massive, ornate pandal of the conference venue. From the moment the exhibition was thrown open to the public, there was a steady stream of tens of thousands of visitors bent on viewing the exhibits, that they did not mind standing in winding queues fro three to four hours. They know very well that there were nothing glamorous or glittering to attract their fascination but were objects of Tamil culture, history and heritage. If they had evoked that much interest in our people to know of their proud past and heritage, it is a splendid success and great tribute to Mother Tamil. Kalaignar’s cup of joy was brimming over as he declared the conference a ‘huge success’ in his valedictory address.
Never before such a conference of this much magnitude in scale, extent of participation and depth and immensity of subjects dealt with was organised in any part of the world, and never before an event for the cause of a language had seen such a deluge of people. Two lakh people attended the inaugural session and the following days about 1.5 lakh people attended everyday in the symposia, poetry sessions and debates besides cultural programmes. Between 1.60 and 1.70 lakhs people visited Public exhibition and Internet exhibition during the first four days and people were seen in queues of about 3 kms long till June 30, after the close of the conference. 2,605 guests from all over the country and abroad were accommodated in 1642 rooms in 92 hotels and several thousand people in all community halls and wedding halls in the city. They were all brought to the conference venue by buses and cars. 840 delegates and observers from 50 foreign countries attended the conference and 152 of them submitted papers.
Food was provided all the three times a day for 5 days to nearly 30,000 persons including delegates, observers, guests, 700 mediapersons, government officials and staff, volunteers and about 11,000 police personnel on security and bandobust duty; but there was not even a single complaint of inconvenience or indisposition for any. So also there were no incidents of chaos, confusion, traffic snarls or inconvenience to public in spite of such huge gathering. All these show the meticulous planning of arrangements, division of work, total involvement of everyone from the Ministers to the last civic worker. But for some cynical observations made by an English daily of a pro-Jayalalitha bilingual newspaper group and a Tamil journal, both bent upon finding fault with the DMK government, lakhs of people who turned up at Coimbatore and millions who witnessed Live telecast of events on TV channel appreciated the absolutely apolitical manner in which the conference was conducted, a rarest of rare phenomenon in Tamil Nadu context. That the edition of the Tamil daily of the group was associated in one of the conference committees and also in a literary programme nailed their own lies.
‘Incredible’, ‘gigantic’, ‘colossal’, ‘tremendous’, ‘extremely impressive and orderly’ were some of the epithets used by the people who witnessed and the media that reported the conference. It was indeed fruitful, flawless and
historic!
(04-07-10)
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