Language Policy and Linguistic Culture in Tamilnadu.

As we have seen in the foregoing chapter [on India], South Asia is a area of tremendous linguistic diversity, and one that is plagued with perplexing language-policy issues. One example of a regional linguistic subculture within South Asia that is perhaps quintessentially problematical, in whatever polity it is spoken, is that of the Tamils of the Dravidian south and Sri Lanka. [In addition to approximately 60 million speakers in India, Tamil is, of course, spoken also in Sri Lanka by approximately four million speakers, and in Malaysia and Singapore by more than a million. Tamils have emigrated to Fiji, South Africa and other British and French colonial possessions during the nineteenth century, and many now live in North America and in Europe, where they have not been able to maintain their language beyond the first generation.] My transliteration of Tamil follows that of Burrow and Emeneau; some sources I quote use other transliterations, which I have followed only when directly quoting them. In general, the word Tamil will appear in its western spelling (with a final [l]), even though the final frictionless continuant (symbolized [] in Tamil orthography) would be (and ought to be) transliterated by Burrow and Emeneau (1984) as [R]. This continues a tradition begun by Pope (1900:xcvii). It is one that sees itself as separate and different from Indo-Aryan culture, and it has asserted that sense of differentness in many ways that have challenged the hegemony of the dominant culture in both India and Sri Lanka. In what follows, I would like to show what Tamil linguistic culture consists of, what cultural notions underlie and inform it, and how different it in fact is from the dominant cultures it is in contact with.

It is a challenge to describe the historical development of Tamil culture and its linguistic culture without immediately plunging into a morass of imprecision, historical inexactitude, and outright mythology. This is perhaps par for the course, since Tamil linguistic culture in fact thrives on myth, as does Indian linguistic culture. [As we have seen in previous chapters, so do many others in South and Southeast Asia, France, Japan, etc. in general. It would be convenient if we could filter out the myth for later and separate treatment, but in what follows this will not be consistently possible.] As we will see, Tamils do not only rely on ancient myths in their linguistic belief system, they actively construct and continually embellish new versions of old myths as it suits their purposes. Thus attempts to separate out myth as if it were some kind of apriori element is necessarily fruitless.

As we have seen in the previous chapter [on India], it seems to be agreed that the earliest record of Tamil is a grammar, the Tolkappiyam, composed around the beginning of the Common Era, give or take a few centuries. [Establishing the exact dates for anything in ancient India is notoriously difficult. Some scholars declare Tolkappiyam to be contemporary with, or even later than Sangam literature (see below) rather than earlier than it; arguments can be adduced to support both claims.] Hart (1975:10), citing epigraphical and paleographic evidence, shows that parts of the Tolkappiyam may be later than the Sangam period. Marr (1985:2) has attempted to deal with the difficult historiography of the period, confronting such vexatious questions as chronology, absolute dating, authorship, order of original works, editorship of anthologies, all embedded in traditional accounts (some of it mythologized), and, as if this isn't enough, there is also the question of the `divine' origin of the poems themselves. As an example of the difficulties facing such analysis, Marr gives the following:

Strong tradition in the Tamil country says that the poets who `contributed' fo the eight anthologies, and the authors of Pattupattu and Tolkappiyam lived in an age of one or more literary academies, centred latterly on Maturai, the capital of the Pantiya kingdom. The main sources for the tradition of the cankam are the Tiruvilaiyatarpuranam of Parancotimunivar and the commentary on Iraiyanar Akapporul. It may be convenient to consider the latter first. ...The author of Akapporul, Iraiyanar, is traditionally the god Siva, .... The tradition regarding the authorship seems to rest on little but the name of the author, Iraiyanar. ...It may be suggested that a poet of the name Iraiyanar did exist and write the verse in Kuruntokai and perhaps the Iraiyanarakapporul also, and that in medieval times the legend of the divine authorship of both developed. ...(Marr op.cit.)

Tolkappiyam is a grammar of a language for which we have no texts except the grammar itself. The name of its author, Tolkappiyanaar, means no more than `the author of Tolkappiyam'. The theory of grammar underlying it shows unmistakable and irrefutable influences of the `northern' grammatical tradition, i.e., of the tradition of analyzing Sanskrit. For example, the number of nominal cases is exactly seven, just as in Sanskrit, despite Tolkappiyanar's discomfort with such a system, since it does not do justice to the Tamil case system, which requires a different analysis. This seven-case analysis was also eventually applied to the other Dravidian languages, with the same unfortunate effects. When confronted with this evidence that the grammatical tradition is borrowed from Sanskrit, Tamil apologists usually reply that Sanskrit borrowed it from Tolkappiyam. This of course fails to explain why it does not fit the Dravidian languages as well as it fits Sanskrit.

A perhaps later body of literature, now referred to as Sangam Tamil ( cankat tamiR), consisting of a large amount of poetry in two genres, love and war poetry, and showing an original style with little influence from Sanskrit, was `lost' for many centuries, only to be `rediscovered' in the second-last decade of the nineteenth century in a manner that itself had interesting repercussions for Tamil culture. But before even this amateur archeologist's dream could come true, a number of other factors must be taken into account.

One of the most fundamental myths pervasive in the Tamil area is one concerning the origins of the language. As Shulman describes it

[t]he Tamil myths themselves often emphasize the importance of the Tamil language, and in this connection they mention the Vedic sage Agastya, who is believed to have come from the north to reside on the Potiyil Mountain near the southern tip of the subcontinent. The Agastya legend is in essence an origin myth explaining the beginnings of Tamil culture: according to a widespread tradition first found in the commentary ascribed to Nakkirar on an early work of rhetoric, the Iraiyanar akapporul, Agastya was the author of the first Tamil grammar (Shulman 1980:6-7).

Shulman then goes on to quote another later myth that explores Agastya's involvement with both Tamil and Sanskrit; in the myth, the sages are faced with the dilemma of knowing which of two avatars were greater, Agastya, a form of Shiva, or Vyasa, a form of Visnu. Agastya leaves the assembled sages to worship Shiva, who appears and teaches him a mantra, saying

This is sweet Tamil. Murukan [the son of Shiva] will teach it all to you without leaving anything out. ...Murukan instructed him in the Tamil syllabary and the other parts of grammar, then disappeared in his shrine.

When Agastya returned to the sages, he was welcomed by Vyasa and the rest: ``You have brought mountains here so that the south will flourish, and you have enabled all to taste the divine drink of Tamil." Agastya put Tamil grammar in the form of aphorisms for the benefit of the land between Vatavenkatam and Tenkumari, and he expounded his book to his twelve disciples (Shulman 1980:7)

In this myth, it is clear that Tamil is placed on an equal plane with Sanskrit; to my knowledge, no other language in India has such a myth, nor does any other language claim this kind of equal status with Sanskrit. In it, the lineage of Tamil is associated with one of the two most powerful gods of the Hindu pantheon (Shiva), who showed the sage Agastya the beauty and sweetness of Tamil, and then had his son Murukan instruct him in it. Tamil is shown to have a divine origin, as lofty as that of Sanskrit, and certainly (therefore) more divine than any other contemporary language. Why then should Tamil take second place to any other language in India, one might ask.

In an article published almost twenty years ago (Schiffman 1973:127) I characterized the situation in the following way, which seems to me in little need of change still today:I would only change the word `know' to `believe' in what I wrote then.

The study of the language issue in Tamilnadu should begin in approximately 1000 B.C., or even earlier, for one of the cornerstones of this problem is the argument of the antiquity of Tamil culture. Tamilians know, and they are constantly being supplied with new evidence to support it, that the Dravidians antedated the Indo-Aryans on the Indian subcontinent. The Dravidian languages have not been proven to be related to any other family, and they are spread across India in a configuration that suggests that speakers of Dravidian once occupied a much larger area. The isolation of the Brahui in the northwest, the coterritoriality of many of the central Dravidian languages with non-Dravidian and with Munda languages, with the contiguous languages in the south of India having the largest numbers and the oldest literary traditions, all suggest that Dravidians once occupied the whole of the subcontinent, but that their culture was ``destroyed" in the north by the coming of the Aryans. The Aryans then intermarried with Dravidians or somehow imposed their language on them, not without, however, the infiltration of the Dravidian substratum into Sanskrit through the conditioning of retroflex consonants, Dravidian patterns of syntax, and so on.

Not only do Tamilians know that their language has the oldest literary tradition among the Dravidian languages (dating from the early centuries of the Christian era by the most conservative estimates), but Tamilians know that the oldest of the Tamil literature of the ``Sangam" period is also the most prestigious of all Tamil literature. I think things might be different if not the oldest of the Tamil literature, but, say, the literature of the tenth century A.D. happened to be the ``best" of Tamil literature. That the oldest literature is the most original suggests to Tamilians that there was an even older literature, documents from which are no longer available; upon the fact of an ancient culture, Tamilians are wont to build an elaborate myth, some of whose aspects might someday be provable, but others of which are nothing but flights of the imagination. One of the first jumps that is always made is that the Indus Valley civilization, known through the escavations at Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa, was a Tamil civilization. It is highly probable that the Indus Valley civilization was Dravidian, but certain advocates have assumed the probability to be fact, and have already ``translated" some of the seals into Old Tamil. From there they extend Tamil influence to Mesopotamia, specifically to the Sumerians. Next the Tamils are found to be trading with the Egyptians, and so on.For example, see Srinivas Iyengar 1929. Other well-meaning philologists, on the basis of skimpy linguistic evidence (one or two lexical items) have tried to set up phonological correspondences between Sumerian and Dravidian (Sadasivam 1968). What is important here is not whether such an early Dravidian civilization might have existed. Rather, that it might have is taken as tantamount to an assumption that it did and vague hypotheses are interpreted as if proven.

Thus we have the assumptions that Dravidian culture once extended beyond the subcontinent and was represented in its highest development by ancient Tamil culture, but was attacked and destroyed by invading Indo-Aryans, so that Dravidians are now second-class citizens in their own homeland, at least compared to the descendents of the Indo-Aryans, the Hindi speakers. Since Tamil is assumed to be more ancient than Sanskrit, and Sanskrit far more ancient than Hindi, why should Hindi be honored by being enshrined as the official language? Since almost any other language--Bengali, Telugu, or Urdu, for example--has older literary traditions than Hindi, why choose Hindi?

An evaluation of the claims of the Tamils to a separate, independent, more ancient culture must include the implications of the [rather] late political incorporation into India of the ancient kingdoms of Tamilnadu, the Chola (CoRa), Ceera (Cêra), and Pandya dynasties. The Tamil kingdoms were independent of any political control from North India until the Vijayanagar period...[P]olitically, the present Tamil and Malayalam speaking areas were not united with the north until the British period.Even then the Madras Presidency was separated physically from large parts of British India by intervening princely states. The only word for `India' in Tamil, for instance, is indiyaa, borrowed from English.

Thus both an ancient culture and former political independence give Tamilians great pride in their language and traditions. There is a third factor, which has only recently gained some attention, but is of particular interest to linguists. It is the idea that ``Tamil" has never changed.

The idea that ``Tamil has never changed" is an example of a fairly recent myth about Tamil, since it would not have been possible before the rediscovery of Old Tamil and the archaic linguistic forms it displays. In this myth, as with all others, there is a kernel of truth. Modern literary Tamil is open to borrowing from its earlier stages, and writers who use Old Tamil material in their writing are admired for their erudition. But it is only because of the severely diglossic nature of the language that this is possible. The literary dialect of Tamil (the (H) variety) exhibits few if any changes that have occurred since about the time of its thirteenth century codification by the grammarian Pavanandi.It is true, of course, that some pandits do not apply all of Pavanandi's rules, so in fact nobody really writes thirteenth-century Tamil. But post-Pavanandi innovations, if covertly tolerated, would not be overtly allowed. Furthermore, ``borrowings'' from older Tamil sources are permissible in literary Tamil (especially the variety known by some as ``Pandit" Tamil) so that no words are excluded from the lexicon on the grounds of archaicity. Thus, the definition of what constitutes Tamil is open-ended in one direction only: into the past. It is not open to modern colloquial forms, which would of course show changes. Since in diglossic linguistic cultures the L-variety (spoken Tamil, which has changed radically since the thirteenth century) is usually treated as if it did not exist, the lack of change in the H-variety is taken as proof that Tamil has never changed. This is because L-variety Tamil is dismissed by such people as not real Tamil,Some Tamils would say that it is corrupt and debased, and spoken only by illiterates, children, women, etc., and therefore not worthy of any attention. so they are able to add another argument to their arsenal, that of the immutability of Tamil. In diglossic linguistic cultures, the fact that an illiterate person who knows only the L-variety might not understand the H-variety is not a fault of the H-variety, but of the ignorance of the speaker. That is, one cannot advance arguments that archaicized Tamil is not real Tamil, because the culture bearers would argue the contrary. In their view, the pure Tamil of the past has only changed by the addition to it of foreign elements; remove those foreign elements, and the language remains unchanged.This calls to mind an anecdote about the purity of the Ganges. A student of bacteriology from a western country wished to do a study of water pollution in the Ganges River. Her Indian superviser informed her that this was not a useful topic, because the water of the Ganges was pure. The student persisted, and brought back samples of water to show the pollution. The superviser continued to refuse to accept the evidence. Finally the student returned with a report that the Ganges water was indeed pure, but that impurities had been introduced into it by human agency. The superviser accepted the report.

Such arguments are of course difficult to refute, since they permit no recourse to factual argumentation, and much is based on myth or mythologizing. Arguments from the methodology of historical and comparative linguistics are given only as much weight as is useful, and any counterevidence is dismissed as not relevant.There is a myth currently being propounded by a Japanese scholar that Tamil and Japanese are directly related; when I argued in a letter to the editor of the Newsletter of the International Journal of Dravidian Linguistics that this had not been proven, counterarguments were raised that claimed that Indo-European languages changed at a different rate than did other languages, and that my arguments had little or no bearing on the subject. And as anyone who has tried to deal with the history of the subcontinent has discovered, the culture has little use for what westerners think of as historical methodology, since the Indian view is rooted in the cyclicity of time and events, not in its linear progression.

Early European explorers seem to have followed the maritime trade routes that were already established by Arab and other traders of the area, and because of the monsoon winds, the spice trade and other conditions, they came into contact with the Dravidian southern coastal areas earlier than with much of the Indo-Aryan north. Thus the Tamil area in particular was an early theater for European contact. Tamil seems to be the first Indian language to have had type fonts cast for it and works printed in it; and the Malabar and Coromandel coasts were sites of early trade and missionizing by Portuguese and later missionaries, some of them using tracts and missals etc. printed by the Portuguese presses. A number of missionaries, especially the Italian Jesuits Robert de Nobili and Constantine J. Beschi learned Tamil and distinguished themselves by their knowledge, erudition, and oratorical skills.Beschi wrote (1728) the first grammar of Tamil in a western language (Latin). These missionary/scholars, followed by others, began to propagandize for Tamil better than the Tamils could have ever done for themselves, extolling the virtues, the beauty, and the antiquity of the language. Eventually the British missionary/scholar Robert Caldwell published his Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian or South-Indian Family of Languages (1856, repr. 1961), establishing that the Dravidians were a family of languages and linguistic culture separate from the Indo-Aryans; this was done at a time when comparative linguistics was still in its formative state, and comparable work for many other language families had still not been attempted. Nevertheless, the notion that Dravidian culture, exemplified by its most pristine and unSanskritized member, Tamil, was separate and independent from Sanskrit and Indo-Aryan was legitimized by having been propounded by a member of the English conquering race, and the stage was now set for the dramatic rediscovery of the most ancient sources, which would occur on Oct. 21, 1880.

It is perhaps not surprising that the rediscovery of an ancient past coupled with the flattery of Europeans should stimulate the Tamils to embark upon a linguistic renaissance. This revival reached the point of ebullience in the last decades of the nineteenth century, when the glories of the Sangam literature began to be apparent, when the challenge of English education had backed some Tamils against the linguistic wall, but had led others to vow to fight tooth and nail against all `foreign' languages, which, depending on different reformers, could mean English, Sanskrit, Hindi, or all three.

Such challenges have led many linguistic cultures to opt for purism or linguistic `purification', i.e. movements to cleanse themselves of elements that sap their strength and weaken their linguistic moral fiber. What often begins as a language maintenance tactic then often becomes a corpus planning strategy, i.e. an endeavor to control the vocabulary and structure of the language.

Linguistic purism has been defined (Annamalai 1979b) as the closure of the language to modern sources and the opening of it to more ancient (classical, indigenous) sources. That is, as far as sources for new vocabulary in the language are concerned, the linguistic culture opts for indigenous roots and word-formation processes, and develops a policy of not borrowing terminology of any sort from `non-indigenous' sources. Of course it is not always easy for a linguistic culture to decide what is or are its own sources, and the literature on purism is rife with descriptions of inaccurate and often downright silly interpretations of what is indigenous and what is foreign. But the point is that it doesn't really matter so much what the details are, as long as there is a perception in the culture that linguistic purism is a necessity for the survival of the language, the culture, or whatever, and that speakers are mobilized to participate in a movement to reconnect the language with its roots. Given the myth of divine origin of the Tamil, however, it is clear what the motivating factor ought to be--ridding Tamil of admixtures from other languages, whether Sanskrit or others, to return to the sweetness of Tamil as it was first taught by Murukan.

The movement for linguistic purism [Known generally in Tamil as the tanit tamiR iyakkam though the proponents who used this term represent only part of the picture] began, then, when a number of factors coalesced to spark new thinking about language in the subcontinent. One of these was the attention paid to Tamil by the afore-mentioned Caldwell, who was the first to use the term `Dravidian' for the languages of South India, and who declared them to be unrelated to Sanskrit (i.e. not genetically descended from it), with Tamil as its most ancient manifestation. A few decades later, there was the `discovery' by U. Ve. Caminataiyar of some ancient Tamil texts, and with their publication the antiquity of Tamil was pushed many centuries further back in time. Thirdly the influence of English education and the confrontation between English and Indian languages in many cases stimulated indigenous linguistic cultures to stand up and assert themselves. As many researchers have noted, the spread of a language of prestige and power often engenders a counterreaction in the areas it affects, and this seems to have been the effect of the introduction of English into India. But even before the famous Macaulay minute (establishing English as the language of education in British India, in 1835) became policy, English was in demand in the areas the British had established early beachheads in, and Madras in the Tamil area was one of these.

The movement for purism in Tamil has been described in its general outlines by Annamalai (1979); I will summarize the details as follows:

1.

The discovery of uniqueness by European missionaries; coinage of the term `Dravidian' (from Sanskrit dravida `south Indian, Tamilian').

2.

Rediscovery of ancient Tamil by U. Ve. Caminataiyar and publication of texts by printing press.

3.

Maraimalai Adigal takes a vow to speak only pure Tamil (1915-6).

4.

Non-Brahman political movement; E.V. Ramasami Naickar, the Justice Party, the DK and the DMK.

Dating the clear beginning point of the movement for linguistic purism, sometimes referred to as tanit tamiR iyakkam, is problematical. Caldwell's Comparative Grammar was published in 1856, and this marked the beginning of a new look at the Dravidian languages; the date of October 21, 1880 is also one that can stand as a clear milestone, since it was on that day (as he has recorded in his journal) that Caminataiyar first saw the ancient texts.

But first let us review the state that Tamil was in--the lowest ebb, as it were--when it began its renaissance. As Annamalai has pointed out, Tamil had become highly Sanskritized with the establishment of the Vijayanagar Empire in South India.This was a dynasty of Telugu-speaking kings who were highly Indo-Aryanized. From the twelfth century onward the flood-gates opened and Sanskrit and Indo-Aryan loan words poured into the language.Historical linguists are usually very careful to cite the source for loan words, but in the Tamil case it is extremely difficult to determine whether the donor language here was actually Sanskrit or some other form of Indo-Aryan such as Prakrits, Pali, or even another Dravidian language acting as the intermediary. As Tamil orthography does not represent voicing or aspiration contrasts, it is frequently impossible to tell what the source of a loan was. I shall use the term Indo-Aryan to cover for all sources such as Sanskrit, Prakrits, and even modern Hindi, Marathi, etc. By the time of the arrival of European colonial powers and missionaries, Tamil and the other Dravidian languages were so replete with Indo-Aryan vocabulary that they seemed to be no different from other north Indian languages. But as we have seen, as the European missionaries (Beschi, de Nobili, Fabricius, Caldwell, etc.) began to study Tamil and the other Dravidian languages, some of them began to realize that here was something different. With the development of the new discipline of historical linguistics (itself stimulated by the European `discovery' of Sanskrit) in the nineteenth century, a picture of Dravidian separateness began to take shape, formed as we have seen by missionary-grammarians such as Caldwell.All of the missionary-grammarians built on the work of their predecessors, so that a modern grammar of Tamil such as Arden (1942) is an accretion of the work of many others; so, too, the dictionary of Fabricius, begun in 1779 by that German missionary but added to and carried on by many others.

However, the dominance of Brahman castes, through their monopoly over education, their heritary status as priests, and their control of language in general meant that the attitude toward language was Sanskritophilic. Sanskrit represented the highest ideal, and the notion that Tamil was perhaps on an equal footing with it (as we have seen present in the myths and elsewhere in the culture) was hardly part of what Brahmans were taught, nor did they impart these ideas to their students. So it was something of a surprise to U. Ve. Caminataiyar, a Brahman scholar,Ramanujan (1970:68) calls him `the most influential and probably the most thoroughgoing of nineteenth and early twentieth century Tamil scholars', but this is partly an example of an attempt to counter anti-Brahman bias; there were other reformers, such as C. W. Dhamodaram Pillai who played as important a role in the rediscovery, editing, and publication of the Old Tamil manuscripts (Ramaswamy 1992:138). when his attention was called to the existence of manuscripts that he knew nothing of, and written in a kind of Tamil that he could not readily decipher.

He was entirely unaware even of the existence of the twin epics and the breathtaking poetic anthologies of Tamil literature, till he met a liberal-minded munsif named Ramacuvami Mutaliyar. [...] The munsif had just been transferred to Kumpakonam. Cami- nataiyar says that his own merit and the good fortune of his past lives took him there, and opened up a new life for him. Mutaliyar asked Caminataiyar under whom he studied and what. When Aiyar gave him a list of all the puranas and religious poems and grammars he had slogged at--Mutaliyar said `That's all? What use is all that? Have you studied any of the old texts? Civaka Cintamani, Cilappatikaram, have you read them?' Aiyar [...] was aghast that he had not even heard of them. Mutaliyar gave him a hand-written manuscript to take home and read. Caminataiyar devoted the rest of his life to unearthing, editing and printing the greatest of Tamil literary texts, the Cankam works. (Ramanujan 1970:68.)

The extent to which the palm leaf manuscripts were intimately tied up with the caste-system is not always realized. Teachers were specialists in certain texts, and a scholar roamed from teacher to teacher. Some teachers did not take students of religious persuasions other than their own, though there were startling exceptions. ...Or if they were liberal enough to do so, the young scholar had often to change his name at least. ...Thus the channel or the medium of the palm leaf carried with it a whole oligo-literate caste-enforcing class.

Though Tamil in its modern written form is remarkably (and blessedly) free of caste connotations, and modern Tamil speakers of any sectarian (Saivite, Vaishnavite) or religious (Hindu, Muslim, Christian) background can unite around their love of Tamil, this was not true at the beginning of the Tamil renaissance, as Ramanujan has pointed out. And unfortunately for the Tamil movement, caste-oligarchical attitudes persisted for decades, hobbling the movement and sapping its strength with caste-hatred. This kind of squabbling was nothing new, however; Appadurai (1981) has chronicled the conflict that arose even between Brahman sub-castes, a conflict over whether Sri Vaishnavism should be expounded in Sanskrit (the Sanskrit school, or vaDagaLai's `northerners') or in Tamil (the Prabandic school, or tengaLai's `southerners'). In point of fact what began as a doctrinal dispute bore with it the seeds of a language-policy dispute.

The overall issue ...was the question of whether the Sanskrit tradition, represented at its peak in Ramanuja's Sri Bhasya, or the Tamil Prabandam devotional poetry of the alvar poet-saints was to be the focus of religious study, exposition, and sectarian missionary activity. This issue, in part, had tremendous significance as a linguistic question, because the choice of Tamil over Sanskrit as a religious language automatically ensured a wider audience in South India, greater popularity for its proponent acariyas, and most important, the accessibility of the greatest religious truths to all four varnas of society. Emphasis on Sanskrit, on the contrary, implied a socially and historically conservative position, retaining a relatively Brahmin-exclusive mode of religious discourse, which was certainly closed to Sudra participation and closely linked to the varna [caste] scheme as a system of mutually exclusive roles and duties. The question of which language (and therefore which set of texts) was to be the preferred center of dogmatic attention, Sanskrit or Tamil, was, in fact, the linguistic expression of a considerably wider set of issues that divided the followers of Ramanuja. (Appadurai 1981:78).

It would be an oversimplification, however, to treat the Tamil Revival as a project with one goal, with actors who were totally in agreement with each other, at all times and under all circumstances. In fact the revivalist iyakkam `movement' had many strands, and often differing goals. Sometimes the main actors worked in concert, giving credit to others where credit was due, and at other times they worked at cross-purposes, and condemned each others' efforts. In a recent dissertation, Sumathi Ramaswamy has teased out and disentangled these different strands, and identified their main actors (Ramaswamy 1992).

The periodic shifting of registers or styles of speaking and writing, in response to shifting demands and imperatives, is one other reason that I propose that Tamil revivalism is a melange of shifting consensual and contestatory positions that change through time. It is important to emphasize both ...On the one hand, revivalist texts were generated within a shared interpretive community that was itself embedded within the changing social and institutional matrices of late colonial and post-colonial Tamilnadu. ... Certain shared notions about Tamil and its place in the community do emerge and abide within each idiom, and even across the various idioms. ...On the other hand, the obverse side to the consensual aspects of revivalist activity is the highly contestatory nature of revivalist pronouncements ... I have identified a ``revivalist" text as one which proposes that language held the key to the Tamil past, present and future. (Ramaswamy 1992:36-7)

Ramaswamy identifies the following `idioms' (her term for the various revivalist submovements or projects) as follows:

• The Religious idiom. Religious reform; Neo-Shaivism; countering the disparagement of Dravidian religion in colonial texts, and the recasting of Hinduism as Aryan, Sanskritic, Brahmanical religion. Oppositional identity of non-Brahmans;

• Counter-Orientalist Classicism: two groups, Compensatory vs. Contestatory, with different goals and agendas.

  • Compensatory classicists were distressed at the way `metropolitan' Orientalism (essentially a North-Indian, Sanskritophile enterprise) vilified the Dravidians in general and the Tamils in particular. They attempted to elevate Tamil civilization, literature and culture to be on a par with the Sanskritic.
  • The Contestatory classicists, on the other hand, were convinced that Tamil was not only equal with Sanskrit, it was purer, richer, more ancient, and more beautiful. Sanskrit had debauched the pure Tamil, and must be driven out. Pure Tamil must be revived. Tamil was also alive and modern, the only Indian language to have both a classical and modern form. But modern Tamil must be rooted in classical form and draw strength from it.

• The Nationalist idiom. Sees the British and the English language as the main protagonists; willing to participate in nationalist (Pan-Indian) renewal; participatory and consensual with regard to `India'. Anti-Neo-Shaivite; anti contestatory classicist; anti-ethnic revivalist. Opposed to use of term `Dravidian'; paradoxical, because under attack from these former, and because some of best eulogies of Tamil were by nationalist Tamil poets. Tended to defend Brahmans; were opposed to archaizing and classicizing/punditizing Tamil; anti-pure Tamil, but wanted a tanittamiR free of foreign words, both Sanskrit and English. Populist approach: give the language back to the people.

• The Ethnic idiom. Ethnic resistance and political religion. Anti-Shaivite, anti-religious for most of its history; anti-nationalist and anti-Hindi; more populist and `lower' caste than any other group. Political mobilization through Justice Party, DK, and DMK; takes power from Congress in 1967.

I have attempted to summarize the tenets and goals of each idiom in the chart in figure 7.1.

Figure: Summary of tenets and goals of Tamil revivalist subgroups.

1#1

Let us examine each of these paradigms (idioms, discourses, projects, enterprises, etc.) one by one, since it is instructive to see in what ways they acted in concert to achieve some of the goals of the Tamil revivalist project, and, on the other hand, worked to counter each other and sometimes bring about stalement and stagnation. We need to see why there was failure to achieve the goals, because from the viewpoint of the last decade of the twentieth century, the attempt to reclaim a unique cultural space for Tamil seems to have been less than successful.

Its main goal is religious reform, under the umbrella of Neo-Shaivism, and the countering of the disparagement of Dravidian religion in colonial texts, which recast Hinduism as an Aryan, Sanskritic, Brahmanical religion. It tried to establish the oppositional identity of non-Brahmans, part of the radical polarization between Tamil and Sanskrit as approprite ritual languages for two formations: non-Brahman , Dravidian/Shaiva vs. Brahman/Aryan/Hindu. They saw Tamil as the sole appropriate divine language for all true Tamilians. Attempts to institutionalize this took place in the early 1920's. Its proponents call for a return to imagined pristine religious fundamentals as a means for rejuvenating society. Language is the medium of expression and also means through which religious revitalization was enabled in colonial Tamilnadu. Attempts to put Tamil in ``the same space in the life-world of devoted Tamilians that has been inhabited by their traditional deities, and until recently, by their sovereigns." (Ramaswamy 1992:53) As Ramaswamy reminds us, there is a long tradition of praise poetry dating back to the oldest period of Tamil literature, the Sangam period. Most praised kings, deities, and spiritual masters, but in the seventeenth century we see Tamil cast as a `divine messenger'; this emphasis increases in the early twentieth century, and attempts to convey to devotees the ``salvific powers of the divinized language." (Ramaswamy 1992:53)I think we dare not underestimate the power of any movement in the subcontinent in which any goal (or indeed even the means toward that goal) is seen as salvific or redemptive. Too much latter-day scholarship fails to understand religious movements in India (or elsewhere) because we are products of a secular culture where religious motivations are seen as nefarious, or at best politically incorrect.

With this idiom there is a need archaize Tamil; it uses pre-modern genres and linguistic styles (archaic grammar, vocabulary, etc.) and venerates the primordiality munmai and antiquity tonmai of Tamiltaay. Its advocates tried to both archaize the modern and simultaneously scientize the legend by pseudo-philologizing, making Tamil the oldest of languages, the mother of all Dravidian languages, of all Indian languages, etc.) There are parallels with the pan-Hindu Saraswati (goddess of knowledge and learning) but also with goddesses of polities, which we see emergent in nineteenth century language nationalism, such as Mariane in France, Britannia in Britain, etc. According to this group, Tamil is empowered by mobilizing the sakti `divine power' that is associated with deities.One way to mobilize this power is to turn to literary resources, what S. Ramaswamy calls the `Poetics of praise'. The outlines of this are: Tamil-taay is incomparable, higher than all other deities; most glorious, most compassionate; the language she embodies is the most excellent in the world. A new religion emerges: anti-colonial, anti-Brahman, anti-Aryan, but monotheistic, pro-Shiva, Tamil-Dravidian. Maraimalai Adigal and K. Subramania Pillai call for break with "Hinduism"; abolition of caste, betterment of women, vegetarianism/teetotalism, reestablish Tamil forms of worship based on Tamil scriptures, performed by Tamil priests (non-Brahman) with Tamil as liturgical medium. These developments occurred in contrast to two other formulations of Indian culture: colonial and neo-Hindu nationalist. Colonial: orientalism, spiritual, fudamentally religious: other-worldly fanatical, ritualistic. Meanwhile Neo-Hinduism/nationalism sought to equate the decline of Hindu society with the aboriginal dasyus, who were equated with Dravidians (and Muslims). Thus Aryan civilization was pristine and glorious but had become corrupted by contact with Dravidians. South Indians therefore saw neo-Hindu nationalism as anti-southern, and the saw possibility that Brahmans would hijack the nation and turn it into a Sanskritic, Hindu, Aryan Brahman domain. Non-Brahman Tamilians would be denegrated. The British, meanwhile, divided and conquered.

The colonial authorities, for better or for worse, recognized some of these pre-Aryan elements, and praised the egalitarian nature of non-Brahman Dravidian society. Here British orientalism joined forces with neo-Shaivism: George Pope, a missionary/grammarian who died in 1907, translated and commented on a medieval Shaiva text, the Tiruvacakam, saying that

The Çaiva Siddhanta system is the most elaborate, influential, and undoubtedly the most intrinsically valuable of all religions of India. ...Çaivism is the old pre-historic religion of South India ...(Classical Tamil is very little studied, yet this key alone can unlock the hearts of probably ten millions of the most intelligent and progressive of the Hindu races.) (Pope 1900:lxxiv.)

Another nucleus of cultural revitalizers was the group that we may refer to as the Classicists. Sumathi Ramaswamy divides them into two groups, because of their different goals and agendas, though individuals often `crossed the line' and preached from other pulpits, such as the Neo-Shaivite. She refers to the two subgroups of classicists as `Compensatory' and `Contestatory'.To save space, I will sometimes refer to these as CmC and CnC, respectively. In her analysis, this group shares much with the religious revivalists (neo-Shaivites) but they have different emphases.

The Compensatory Classicists (CmC) were distressed at the way `metropolitan' Orientalism (essentially a North-Indian, Sanskritophile operation) treated the Dravidians in general and the Tamils in particular. This `metropolitan' Orientalism had the colonial regime as its sponsor, and could rest on the plaudits of Sir William (`Oriental') Jones, Monier-Williams, and others who were intent on showing the purity and elevation of Sanskritic and Indo-Aryan culture, and distancing it from the low, corrupt, debased Dravidian elements of modern Indian reality. Relying on their own orientalists such as Caldwell and Pope, the CmC's attempted to elevate Tamil civilization, literature and culture to a par with the Sanskritic. This branch drew support from various communal backgrounds, whether Brahmans, non-Brahmans, or even Christian Tamils, and sought to harmonize the various elements of Indian civilization as part of a project to revitalize India and expel the British. (Their efforts fed naturally into the goals of the Nationalists, whose `idiom' is slightly different.) CmC's are still to be found within academic circles in South Indian universities, though they are often eclipsed by CnC's and Ethnicists in present-day parlance.

The Contestatory Classicists (CnC), on the other hand, were convinced that Tamil was not only equal with Sanskrit, it was purer, richer, more ancient, and more beautiful. Sanskrit had debauched the pure Tamil, which had existed in a state of perfect harmony before the arrival of the Aryans. Life then had been beautiful, a linguistic garden of Eden, corrupted only by the arrival of the perfidious Sanskrit. Sanskrit must be exponged from all domains in the Tamil lands, according to this line of thinking. The CnC's blamed Brahmans for bringing Sanskrit to the south and would have no commerce with Brahman Tamils, even those responsible for reviving the Sangam classics such as U. Ve. Caminataiyar. Given the hostility of the CnC's, the Brahmans naturally gravitated to the compensatory camp. Among the CnC's, therefore, there are often gaps in the historiography--they can't bring themselves to give credit to Brahmans who helped revive the classics, and the tendency to mythologize wildly about the Tamil past is therefore most highly developed among this sector. In their view, Tamil civilization was once dominant in all of India, and had been only displaced by the invading Aryans. Tamils had once traded with all of the known world, theirs was the civilization of Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa, and of an ancient continent known as Limuria, now sunk beneath the Indian ocean. In linguistics and some other disciplines, this kind of theory would be known as a `strong theory", because it is totally unconstrained. The methodology available to compensatory classicism, such as the comparative method of historical linguistics, which would mute unverifiable claims, seems not to have been found useful for the goals of the contestatory classicist paradigm, and no wonder. Still today, this paradigm is uncomfortable with challenges to its epistemology.

Both worked, however, along with the religious revivalists, to unseat Sanskrit from university study as a `classical' language, and among this group there was much adulatory poetry and prose about the wonders of classical Tamil.

The nationalist idiom was one that was in tune with the goals of the Indian nationalist movement, Gandhism, and the Congress Party. It sought to enshrine, not the goddess tamiRtaay, but a pan-Indian Mother-India figure, Bharata Mata. The pan-Indian strategy on language was to dethrone English and introduce Indian languages, and Tamil would take its place along other Indian languages, flowing together as waters of tributary rivers flow into the Ganges. Its poets, e.g. Subramania Bharati, are recognized as being the epitomy of praise and devotion to Tamil, but they often found themselves between a rock and a hard place. As Sumathi Ramaswamy points out,

[t]he widely-acknowledged poet-laurate of the Dravidian movement, Bharatidasan, proclaimed himself (as his pen-name indicates) a `devotee' of Subramania Bharati, the paradigmatic nationalist Tamil. ...In other words, the nationalist Tamil Self is paradigmatically a divided Self, or to borrow a contemporary metaphor, it is a Self which is caught between devotion to Bharata Mata and Tamilttay. (Ramaswamy 1992:200.)

They opposed the Neo-Shaivites, the Contestatory Classicists, and the Ethnic Revivalists, and were reviled by these in return. They wanted a kind of tanittamiR free of Sanskrit, archaic Tamil, and English, and would have worked to modernize the language for use in technology and science. After Independence they steadily lost ground and any sentiments still extant in favor of this idiom are rare; their proponents dare not publicly expound their views. They tended to defend Brahmans and to appear to not defend Tamil enough. Rampant Hindi nationalism and modern Indian language policy have made this position almost untenable in the present situation, as its critics warned early on.

Ethnic resistance and political religion.

[A]ny analysis of the ethnic idiom has to be carried out with the awareness of all these internal contestations and differences, ranging from EVR's iconoclastic critique to the passionate declarations of ardent Tamil devotees who claimed a readiness to give up their lives and souls for the sake of their language. (Ramaswamy 1992:295)

The picture of language nationalism in the Tamil area that we can now see the outlines of is thus a confused one, one in which different figures and forces sometimes work at cross-purposes with one another. Until recently there was no comprehensive view of this movement that could be gleaned from any one source (either in English or in Tamil), despite the widely-known oral folklore about its development, because different communities in the Tamil area emphasize only those aspects and personalities that they revere, and give no credit to those whose influence may have been important in the Tamil renaissance, but who are on the wrong side of the communal fence.The 1992 dissertation of Sumathi Ramaswamy is a notable exception; it is both a complete sourcebook of material both in English and in Tamil, as well as an incisive critique of the whole enterprise of Tamil revivalism. I have drawn on it for much of my own analysis.

What began as a renaissance of a language struggling to recapture the glories of its past, revealed to the culture both through the efforts of European missionaries and of scholars like U. Ve. Caminataiyar and C. W. Damodaram Pillai now turned into a political movement, with various agendas. Though the Tamil revival movement appears to outsiders to speak with one voiceTamils are perceived as fanatical and even demented on the issue of language. its origins are not, as we have seen, uniform and the directions it moved in were certainly never attuned to the same compass. Unfortunately for this movement, it failed to develop a supra-caste ethos, but continued the communal parochialism current in the late-medieval period, perpetually hobbled by issues of communal origin, specifically that of caste.I use the terms `communalism' and `cast(e)ism' to refer, in the former case, to differences between Hindus, Muslims and/or Sikhs, and in the latter case to intra-community disagreements (usually Hindu, since the other religious groups supposedly have no caste differences.)

In some ways Tamilnadu resembles a polity like Norway, where two distinct directions of language reform developed almost simultaneously. In the Norwegian case, a primarily urban community centering around Oslo and speaking a Norwegianized form of Danish pushed for its dialect as standard, while in the western and more rural parts of Norway, a norm that more closely resembled folk varieties of that region competed for ascendancy. In the Tamil area, the conflict was between Brahmans, the hereditary priestly caste in the Hindu hierarchical order, and those who saw themselves as more authentically Dravidian (non-Brahman), as well as victimized and oppressed by the Brahmans, who they saw as interlopers from North India. The Brahmans were of course the bearers of Aryan and Sanskrit culture, and spoke and wrote a more Sanskritized variety of Tamil than did non-Brahmans. As the non-Brahman movement gathered momentum, the contributions of language reformers like Caminataiyar and Bharadiyaar were shoved aside, and anti-Brahmanical crusaders began advocating a cleansing of Tamil of all foreign elements, in particular Sanskrit, Hindi, and English loan words.

The movement that came to be known as tanit tamiR iyakkam eventually succeeded in motivating a puristic movement in Tamil, and its energy can be felt to this day. Three political parties arose out of this same energy, first the Justice Party, then the Dravidian Party (draviDa kaRakam) and finally the DMK (draviDa munneerra kaRakam or Dravidian Progressive Party) which eventually won political power in the elections of 1967, changing the name of Madras State to Tamilnadu. [The rise of the DK and the DMK have been chronicled by Irschick 1969 and Hardgrave 1965.] One ought to also mention the breakaway AIDMK `All-India DMK' of Karunanidhi which developed in opposition to the dominance of the DMK by M.G. Ramachandran (MGR).

There is also a tendency in some sources to refer to the Tamil Renaissance/Revival as the tanit tamiR iyakkam, the picture one gets in current (non-Brahman) accounts. As mentioned above, if Tamil sources are consulted in this area, one only hears of the contributions of Maraimalai Adigal; no credit is given U. Ve. Caminataiyar or Brahmans of any sort, despite the monumental importance for this movement of the rediscovery of the Tamil classics in 1881. The received non-Brahman orthodoxy today gives credit to the Pure-Tamil movement person, since this suits the purposes of the currently dominant revivalist paradigm, that of the Ethnicists.

One Tamil history of the Pure Tamil Movement describes it as follows:

``Pure Tamil Movement" is a literary Tamil movement founded and propagated by Maraimalai Adigal in order to avoid the use of foreign words especially words from Sanskrit, and to write only indigenous words. Maraimalai Adigal argues that even if foreign words are found in proper names they should be eliminated and should be substituted with pure Tamil words. For this very reason he translated his own name from Suvami Vedaccalam to `Maraimalai Adigal' (Sivathambi 1979:1).

It would be difficult to imagine the development of Tamil pride and self-consciousness as it later grew in the tanit tamiR iyakkam without the knowledge of the existence of Sangam literature; indeed it is hard to imagine a linguistic culture not being affected by the sudden discovery of an ancient literature that rolled its origins and history another millenium into the past. It would be hard to imagine that the kind of mythologizing about language that Tamils do could ever have been possible without awareness of this early new material, and the Tamils were indeed quick to use this to feed the myth. I am tempted to say that it is precisely this discovery that makes the Tamils so avid in their filiopietism, and so avidly anti-Sanskrit and anti-Hindi. It is thus almost impossible to imagine that Maraimalai Adigal could have carried off his vow to write only pure Tamil had not the treasure-trove of ancient Tamil words been made available.Actually, the myth feeds not only on the rediscovery of the `lost' material but also on the reasons for its loss--the perfidy of `northerners.' Zvelebil (1992) reminds us of the real reason for the loss of so much of the early literature: simple neglect, ignorant neglect, (such as the sectarian habit of immersing old texts in water or consecrating it to fire, without also making new copies) and destroying or adulterating texts of heterodox writers. Some of this was the work of Brahmans, but some would have occurred when earliest Shaivism was eclipsed by Jainism and Buddhism, and again when Jain and Buddhist texts were rejected as `Hinduism' triumphed again in the medieval period. The myth also allows Tamil to claim whatever it wants as an ancient state--if philologists discover ancient borrowings from Sanskrit or wherever that seem to contradict the myth of ancient purity, one simply appropriates those words to ancient Tamil, claiming instead that Sanskrit (or whatever) borrowed them from Tamil. Thus the word aracan `king', found in ancient Tamil texts, is most probably derived from Skt. raj. To admit this would be an embarrassment, however, so one simply declares raj to be borrowed from Tamil aracan, and the problem is resolved. But when one consults the writings of Maraimalai Adigal and Bharati, one sees no mention of how it these works came to light.

This recognition gap is not a trivial point, I think, for much of the Tamil energy on this issue went into internecine attacks on Brahmans and their supposed degradation of the Tamil language (by the importation of Sanskrit vocabulary, etc.) instead of cooperating with those Brahmans whose erudition could have been of service in the development of Tamil language and literature. But as we have seen, Neo-Shaivite, Contestatory Classicist, and Ethnicist strategies required a visible enemy, a villain at whose feet all blame can be laid, and the Tamil Brahmans became the early scapegoat. The tendency to litigate over temple control was already well-established, as we have seen. Later, of course, Hindi speakers and north Indians (all cut from the same cloth, the non-Brahmans would claim) got the blame as the Ethnicist discourse attracted the most attention.

Two names come to mind as the best-known `fathers' of the revivalist movement, Subramania Bharatiyar and Maraimalai Adigal (who changed his original `Aryan' name from Suvami Vedaccalam to Maraimalai Adigal [Adigal `sage, seer'].

Maraimalai Adigal's daughter Nilambikai, who actively participated in the movement with her father, writes about their common vow to write only in Pure Tamil:

The first time I realized how Tamil loses its sweetness [inimai] and purity [tuymai] because of the influence of Sanskrit [vaDa moRi kalappu] (mixture of northern language) was when I was thirteen years old. One day I was enjoying being with my father in our garden. My father sang a song of Ramalinga Adigalar [perra taytanai maka marantalum] (`even if a child forgets his own mother ...). When he sang the second line of the song [urra tekattai uyir turantalum] (`even if life leaves its dwelling place, i.e. body'), he said

``My dear! Look how beautifully Ramalinga Adikalar has made this song. But it would have been far better if he had substitued the Sanskrit word teekam `body' with the pure Tamil word yaakkai. Use of Sanskrit words in Tamil causes the loss of sweetness [inimai] in it and many Tamil words become obsolete."

From this moment on my father I took a vow to use pure Tamil in our speech and in writing. (Nilambikai, Nakai 1925, quoted in Sivattambi 1979:51-55).

As we have seen in an earlier section on origin myths, the Tamil puristic movement relies heavily on mythological elements to buttress and strengthen the notion of an original linguistic Garden of Eden, which has been sullied and corrupted, as it were, by a serpent named Sanskrit. There are a number of myths that have coalesced around the language, and both feed on and in turn nurture a mixture of fact and fiction.

One of the myths that appeals to Tamil linguistic culture, one that has been pushed most strongly by the Contestatory Classicists and the Ethnicists, is that Tamil is a distinct (tani) language unlike any other. [As we have already seen with Japanese and Arabic, similar notions are found in those linguistic cultures.] What is ironic about such Tamil ideas is that many of the features of Tamil they consider most distinctive, such as the retroflex frictionless continuant [R], the last sound of the name of the language ([tamiR]), are also found in Malayalam, Tamil's sister language to the west. [But then, to many Tamils, Malayalam is only a dialect of Tamil anyway.] Because of Tamil's distinctness, they believe, no foreigner can ever succeed in mastering it. To some extent this is a correct observation, but not, I would hold, for the reasons Tamils believe. [As one foreigner who has spent some thirty years trying to master the language, I would say that the main barriers to learning Tamil are sociolinguistic, not structural (i.e., internal linguistic) reasons.]

The aspiring student of Tamil who attempts to speak Tamil in the areas where it is spoken often experiences a rude shock the first time she attempts to speak the language she has spent so many arduous hours studying. Tamil speakers, after an initial moment of surprise, usually respond in some language other than Tamil. Even monolingual Tamils will often respond in some variety other than the spoken language, attempting Literary Tamil, Hindi, anything, it seems, but the common speech of sixty million Tamils. This tendency is exceedingly distressing to the Tamil learner, given her notion that the best way to really learn to speak a language is to try to speak it with mother tongue speakers on a day-to-day basis. The only Tamils who demonstrate proficiency in no other variety than their mother tongue are monolingual illiterates (or semi-literates) who genuinely seem to appreciate that foreignersBy foreigner is meant any non-native speaker of Tamil who does not look like a native of the subcontinent. The criterion is essentially based on appearances--skin color, clothing, body language. When this writer speaks Tamil on the telephone, for example, no one ever fails to understand, or attempts to use another languge. have taken the trouble to learn their language. The problem with this is that their variety of Tamil bears with it connotations of rusticity and lack of education, and if learned by a foreigner, results in other kinds of negative reactions from educated speakers, i.e., one's peers. The foreign learner is thus confronted with a dilemma--the people he most wishes to speak to and with, will not speak Tamil with him, but those Tamils who will speak to him speak a variety that will eventually prove to be a kind of sociolinguistic liability.

Refusal to speak when spoken to in ones mother tongue is a kind of linguistic behavior that has ramifications for a number of disciplines concerned with language use. One might view this as a variety of cross-cultural communicative disorder, or catalogue it as yet another impediment to language learning, but these kinds of negative evaluations do little to explain why this behavior exists, or what one might do to rectify it. In this section I will discuss it only briefly in terms of `language learning difficulties'; it is actually much more important a facet of language behavior having its roots in Indian linguistic culture, but has been buttressed by colonialism and persistent attitudes about language appropriateness that are then further reinforced by the diglossic condition of the language.

It is my strong contention that one or more aspects of Tamil myth-making rests on the existence of severe diglossia in Tamil. But before we can discuss the interaction of Tamil diglossia and mythologizing about Tamil, we must define some terms.There is an extensive literature both on diglossia in general (Ferguson 1959) and in Tamil in particular (for the latter, see Shanmugam Pillai 1960, 1965, Schiffman 1978, 1979, Britto 1986, etc.) Fishman (1980) has provided a taxonomy of diglossia that classifies Tamil diglossia as a type (a):

(a) H as classical, L as vernacular, the two being genetically related, e.g. classical and vernacular Arabic, classical or classicized Greek (Katarevusa) and demotiki, Latin and French among francophone scholars and clergy in earlier centuries, classical and vernacular Tamil, classical and vernacular Sinhalese, Sanscrit and Hindi, classical Mandarin and modern Pekinese, etc.

(b) H as classical, L as vernacular, the two not being genetically related, e.g. Loshn koydesh (textual Hebrew/Amaraic) and Yiddish (Fishman, 1976) (or any one of the several dozen other non-semitic Jewish L's, as lopng as the latter operate in vernacular functions rather than in traditional literacy related ones (Weinreich, 1980).

(c) H as written/formal-spoken and L as vernacular, the two being genetically unrelated to each other; e.g. Spanish and Guaraníin Paraguay (Rubin, 1968), English (or French) and various vernaculars in post-colonial areas throughout the world (Fishman, Cooper and Conrad, 1976).

(d) H as written/formal-spoken and L as vernacular, the two being genetically related to each other. Here only significantly discrepant written/formal-spoken and informal-spoken varieties will be admitted, such that without schooling the written/formal-spoken cannot even be understood (otherwise every dialect-standard situation in the world would qualify within this rubric), e.g. High German and Swiss German, standard spoken Pekinese (Putonghua) and Cantonese, Standard English and Caribbean Creole. (Fishman 1980:4).

In actuality, type (d) fits Tamil as well as type (a), since as some researchers have pointed out, there is a range of styles of Tamil that are in use in various domains, from the classical through modern literary to educated spoken, regional spoken dialects, and nonstandard colloquial dialects. Furthermore, English does occupy a space in the domains of language use in Tamil speaking territory, even though it is not controlled by a large segment of the population. For that matter, though, neither is Literary Tamil, yet it also has reserved domains that spoken Tamil cannot be used in. In some sense it could be argued that Tamil linguistic culture is a multiglossic linguistic culture, rather than `merely' a diglossic one, and that the range of styles mentioned above also makes place for English, i.e., some domains are reserved for English and no other language would never be used to discuss them.This is a matter of some debate among certain segments of the population; this writer attended a conference of Tamil studies recently where some people in attendance protested the use of English for a panel on computer applications; the paper presenters were forced on the spur of the moment to paraphrase their papers in Tamil rather than give them in English. This was not a `natural' situation, but rather forced upon them by politically more powerful elements of society. Once back in their computer labs, those same scientists continued their discussions in English, not in Tamil.

In an earlier chapter I have defined what I mean by `linguistic culture'. Diglossia is one aspect of Tamil linguistic culture that is deeply rooted in the culture, and that has ramifications for other aspects of the linguistic culture and for language policy (writ large) in Tamilnadu. That is to say, the fact that a Tamil is diglossic is actually a feature of the linguistic culture of Tamilnadu, rather than of Tamil per se.To speak of a particular language as diglossic or not is at best imprecise, since a language (e.g. English) as spoken in one part of the world may exhibit no diglossia, while the same language (again using English as an example) as used in a creole community (or Black English speech in the U.S.) would have to be considered diglossic. Speakers of a particular language can not be characterized as diglossic; only their behavior, or the behavior of the speech community can be considered diglossic. And, I think it can be shown, beliefs and attitudes about the language condition the maintenance of diglossia as a fact of linguistic culture. In the case of the Tamils, for example, it is the set of beliefs about the antiquity and purity of Tamil that unites all members of the linguistic culture in its resistance to any change in the corpus or status of Tamil, by which of course is meant H-variety Tamil. (Schiffman 1974:127). And it is the fact of diglossia that allows this purity to be observed--the corruption is all in the spoken language, while the purity is all in the written form. Diglossia is therefore necessary for these myths to exist.

In a society where literacy is not only not universal, but actually quite minimal, not all speakers control the use of multiple norms. [Some writers on the subject claim that the existence of diglossia depends on there being high percentages of illiteracy in the linguistic culture, but there are counter examples to this, such as German Switzerland (Schiffman 1991)]. Literacy is rising in Tamil every decade, but diglossia shows no signs of diminishing. The norm that illiterates lack control of is the H variety. This does not mean that they have the option of using the L variety in H-variety domains; rather, the expectation is that they will remain silentEspecially if it is a case of Fishman's type (d), where there is a written/formal-spoken norm. rather than exhibit inappropriate linguistic norms. Their linguistic behavior is in fact restricted to the L domains, and use of H domains is de facto the monopoly of the educated few. The same is true of domains restricted to English, but with some shifting in this area. That is, in the spirit of modern democratic India, it is recognized among elites that having domains restricted to English effectively disenfranchizes some speakers, and whenever challenged, concessions to Tamil will usually be made. But challenges to reserved domains for English remain ad hoc, and in the absence of them, speakers revert to English when discussing Linguistics or Computer Science of Medicine.

While diglossia may be a stable feature of linguistic culture, the distribution of domains reserved for one variety or other can vary; the dominance of a particular domain by a particular variety can shift, with one variety encroaching on domains previously restricted to another. In Tamil, the political speech was once restricted to the domain of the H variety, but nowadays political speeches only begin and end in H; in between, L variety predominates (probably as a mark of solidarity). In journalism, especially in political cartoons, movie magazines, etc. one also sees a shift from H to L in many linguistic cultures. In Alemannic Switzerland, the development of television has opened up a domain that has become almost exclusively that of the L variety, especially in `live' interviews, talk shows, game shows, etc. where use of Hochdeutsch would seem stilted and unnatural. In Tamilnadu, one of the domains that has become almost exclusive for spoken Tamil is that of the film, especially the so-called ``social" film.Even in America one sees a style shift in these same genres of broadcasting, for example when an anchorperson finishes reading a prepared news story and turns to someone in the field for an on-the-spot report, or at least a more relaxed discussion of something: ``We're gonna go now to Tom Brokaw, who's on the floor of the Convention...". But this does not mean that diglossia in Alemannic Switzerland or Tamilnadu are doomed; many Swiss and many Tamils, while welcoming the expansion of L-variety domains, Perhaps it is the case that L-varieties can more successfully colonize new domains (opened by new technology) than invade old ones. see a need to retain domains for their H-variety languages for a number of reasons.

On the other hand, social forces within a particular linguistic culture can act to eliminate diglossia, as was the case when medieval Latin was displaced during the Renaissance by various European vernacular languages; diglossia seems to be giving way (to a certain extent) in present-day Greece, where it had held sway until a recent (1975) government decree ordained the shift from H (katharevousa) to L (demotiki) in many domains; this shift was not a slow and `natural' one but was ordered by the government in response to pressures from `democratic' sectors of the society; some elements of society continue to resist, many feeling they are being forced to choose between katharevousa and demotiki, whereas in fact what is evolving (or has already evolved) is a Modern Greek koiné (Babiniotis 1979). Diglossia was more extreme in pre-modern Bengali and Telugu than it is today, although there still are some reserves held by the older norms. Latin held on in German linguistic culture until the early 18th century in a number of restricted domains (scholarly writing, university lectures). When and if diglossia is more or less eliminated Some researchers would claim that all languages are diglossic to some extent, so that diglossia would in effect never be eliminated; perhaps at best we can speak of the perception (or to use Fishman's term, the consensus) that diglossia does not exist. we would have to, by rights, speak of a kind of language shift. To ignore shift when it takes place within a diglossic continuum would be to perpetuate the notion that the L-variety is not the real language, and/or that diglossia is in effect irrelevant.

If diglossia is an aspect of linguistic culture, it may result from and be maintained by the same forces that lead to the existence and maintenance of linguistic areas (Emeneau 1956); that is, diglossia may be an areal feature as well as a feature of a particular linguistic culture within the area. In South Asia, as we have seen in the foregoing, diglossia seems to be almost an inherent characteristic of the pan-Indian linguistic culture, since there is a tendency to develop diglossia even in languages that originally may have not exhibited a great degree of it. When Hindustani was chosen as the national language of independent India, supposedly because of its wide use as a lingua franca in the area, other forces became operative that resulted in the development of a more appropriate H variety, highly Sanskritized in vocabulary, since the vernaculars of Hindi then in existence seemed to be too `Low' for many citizens of the country. This was exacerbated, of course, by the desire of Hindi proponents to make a claim to complete separateness from Urdu, and led to a polarization of the two; the perception that Sanskritized Hindi was then the rightful heir to Sanskrit led Hindi proponents to make claims for it as a national language that could not be accepted by speakers of other languages. Of course diglossicization as a value may vary from sub-culture to sub-culture in the region, but it cannot be denied that the overall view in South Asia is pro-diglossic. That its existence is also a priori antithetical to rational decision-making about language is usually ignored.

One of the reasons that Tamilians give for their shift to English when confronted with a foreign-looking person, even one speaking Tamil, is that the notion of speaking Tamil with such persons makes them ill-at-ease, nonplussed, embarrassed; they experience a kind of cognitive dissonance, or contradictory emotional reactions--they cannot believe their eyes and their ears at the same time. Many report that they have never met a foreigner who spoke Tamil; many express their joy and delight (Tamil makircci) at hearing Tamil from the mouth of a foreigner. But they more often than not do this in English, rather than in Tamil.

Tamil culture is not alone in constructing barriers around its spoken language as a reserve for in-group members. Miller (1982) reports that the Japanese have a notion that Japanese as a language is not easily learned, or indeed, ought not properly to be learned by Gaijin (foreigners). When a foreigner begins to learn Japanese, he will be praised lavishly for his efforts, often with comments about how he `speaks Japanese better than we do ourselves'. But as he progresses, the learner encounters more and more resistance--the Japanese become increasingly disconcerted, even resorting to other languages or feigning incomprehension. Miller refers to this as the ``Law of Inverse Returns."

In most cultures, a foreigner who makes the attempt to learn the language of the society in question is thought, by the members of that society and by the native speakers of that language, to be providing a significant indication of the high esteem in which he or she holds both the society and the language. The gesture of learning a foreign language is consequently usually interpreted elsewhere in the world as one respecting, if not actually honoring, both the society and the language in question. Put more simply, the members of most societies are pleased when a foreigner tries to learn and use their language, and they reward such a foreigner with approval in direct proportion to the degree of success achieved with the same.

This, it always comes as a particularly rude awakening when the foreigner who is resident in Japan for any length of time finally realizes that Japanese society behaves in a fashion that is directly contrary to this general rule. Japanese society usually distrusts and dislikes any attempt by a foreigner to learn and use the Japanese language. The distrust and dislike grow stronger and show themselves more and more stridently, the more the foreigner gains fluency in understanding and using the language. (Miller 1982:154.)

Miller's analysis is that the Japanese language is the last vestige of the myth that the Japanese as a people (one might even say `race') are somehow special, so that when foreigners learn it, the Japanese feel in some way threatened. They feel `funny', invaded, stripped of identity. In effect, a foreigner who speaks Japanese (or Tamil) is performing an unnatural act, and one of the ways Japanese have in dealing with this (other than ostracism or the above-mentioned confusion, distrust and dislike) is to ridicule such behavior on television game shows, situation comedies, and variety shows; there is even a term for such foreigners: hen na gaijin, or `crack-brained' foreigner.

Another culture that was once more open to its language being learned by non-native speakers is that of the Aymará of Andean Bolivia. Heath and Laprade report (1982:134) that

[t]here is extensive bilingualism among native Aymara speakers in La Paz. Aymara can be heard among market women, masons, maids and security guards, but it is not uncommon that as soon as a native Spanish speaker comes on the scene, they switch to Spanish, often spoken imperfectly and with an accent, but Spanish nonetheless. ... Using Spanish with outsiders has become the norm with many Indians. ...Some upper- and middle-class ``Hispanic" women, who years back had the advantage of being bilingual--at least for practical purposes of bargaining in the marketplace--today lament the fact that they have little opportunity to use their Aymara.

One of the most useful things Miller says about this phenomenon is that ``any individual act, behavior pattern, or cultural trait actually has meaning or significance only when it is understood in terms of the part that it plays in the overall structure, in other words, in the larger cultural complex of which it is a part." (Miller 1982:161.) I would concur with this in the evaluation of this phenomenon in Tamil--it is part of a larger picture, the purism picture, the antiquity myth, and the myth of separateness, and these myths cannot live if contradicted by a living breathing foreigner who speaks Tamil.

It is perhaps instructive at this point to look at work done by Brown and Gilman (1960), who introduced the notion that the use of certain pronouns (epitomized as T and V) can be an expression of power and/or solidarity. Rubin (1972) extended the analogy of T and V pronouns to the use of L and H varieties in Paraguay, a (predominantly) bilingual linguistic culture in which the two languages, Spanish and Guaranì, are in an extended diglossic relationship.

In some of the linguistic cultures under consideration in this study, the use (or misuse) of L and H varieties can also perhaps be interpreted in terms of these same polarities. Certainly the use of L where H is expected (or vice versa), constitutes a violation of communicative competence rules. If an outsider speaks Spanish to a representative of the Immigration and Naturalization Service in Seattle, Hochdeutsch in Alemannic Switzerland, Hindi to a hotel clerk in Madras, or begins a conversation in Hochdeutsch (or even in dialect) in French Alsace, these are mistakes that stem from an inadequate understanding of the linguistic culture, and are threats to the linguistic balance of power in ways that may be very unclear to the outsider.

Brown and Gilman established the notion that use of T pronouns (the familiar, non-respect form) can have several social meanings. Reciprocal use of T by equals expresses solidarity, but between non-equals the giver of T is putting himself in a position of power, and the receiver is expected to respond with V. Similarly, reciprocal V usage implies mutual respect and social distance; any non-reciprocal use of these pronouns is an expression of a differential of power.

As Rubin demonstrated, in diglossic situations the use of H or L varieties in a given social exchange (as distinguished from societal patterned usage as a whole) may be seen as the same kind of T/V situation. The use of L may be an expression of solidarity and may not be offered to speakers whose social position is superior or at least distant. Similarly H may be the only variety appropriate in a given situation because the use of L would imply a solidarity that is only reserved for members of a particular in-group. The use of Black English by white speakers of American English in conversations with Blacks would probably be considered insulting unless individual allowances had already been worked out. The use of L-variety Tamil by non-Indians is considered inappropriate by many educated Tamilians; they may respond in H-variety Tamil or in English unless the use of L-variety has already been negotiated (with explanations about the goals of the speaker and disclaimers about intended slurs and put-downs.) The use of H-variety German in Alemannic Switzerland conversely may be seen as a power-trip designed to put the Swiss speaker at a disadvantage. The fact that the Hochdeutsch speaker may have no alternative linguistic vehicle may be irrelevant; it certainly explains the desire to switch to `neutral' English or French. In Luxembourg, L-variety and its use are expressions of Lëtzebuergesch nationality and ethnic solidarity, so while Luxembourg nationals expect L from all Luxembourgers, they switch readily to French or Hochdeutsch or English with foreigners, with no expectation that they will or should be able to speak L.In what appears to be the opposite sort of case, but is actually illustrative of the same phenomena, my distant German relatives, whose L-variety is an Alemannic dialect, begin to lapse into that dialect soon after I arrive for a visit, and seem to expect that I will understand it; when I remind them that I understand it only with difficulty, they reply that they expect me to understand it because I ``am one of them." This happens sooner and more frequently with one of the relatives with whom I exchange the T pronoun (Du) than with those with whom I am on a Sie basis.

The dynamics of H and L exchange, like the exchange of T and V, are specific to particular linguistic cultures,  and cannot of course be predicted without recourse to a knowledge of other aspects of the linguistic culture.

There are some ways to get around what foreigners in Tamilnadu perceive as a linguistic roadblock, and that entails what I call `negotiated language choice', a concept I do not claim to have invented, but one that is particularly apt in the Tamil context.The kind of behavior that is typically encountered, and my proposed ways to deal with it are:

1.

Selective Refusal/reluctance to Speak Target Language. The principal feature of the `roadblock' is the reluctance or outright refusal of the target language speaker (TLS) to carry on a conversation with the language learner in the target language. This can either take the form of outright refusal (by TLS) to speak any language if the learner has not attained some minimal level of competence in the TL, or simply the refusal of the TLS to speak the TL except with other native speakers, or other (usually socioeconomically lower) persons deemed to be appropriate interlocutors, resorting instead to some other lingua franca, or international high-prestige language. An example of the first case, refusal to speak unless minimal competency has been attained, has often been reported anecdotally for French, and can be verified by this writer, with some qualifications.

2.

Reasons for Outright Refusal.

(a)

Lack of a tradition of foreigners learning Tamil, especially light-skinned ones, or foreign looking ones.

(b)

Existence of Diglossia.

(c)

Prestige of English among educated Tamils.

(d)

Fact of Tamil as identity-marker among Tamils (solidarity, T vs. V)

(e)

Use of language to prevent communication in South Asia.

(f)

Inappropriateness of Tamil for a particular topic (part of diglossia?)

(g)

Code-switching of English-knowing elites is natural.

(h)

Xenophobia?

(i)

Myths of separateness and antiquity. Tamils will accept H-variety from foreigners they do not know; negotiation of the `right' to use H or L is negotiation to assign an ingroup place to the foreigner.

As we approach the end of the twentieth century, there are a number of milestones to observe in any attempt to ascertain what kind of overt and covert policies are in effect in Tamilnadu. India became independent in 1947, of course, and the Madras Presidency became part of the Indian Union, later the Republic of India, as Madras State. In the 1950's there was agitation for a Telugu-speaking state, and after much pressure and a fast until death by one Sriramulu, an act known as the [Linguistic] States Reorganization Act was passed, by which the boundaries between states were to be redrawn along linguistic lines. Parts of Madras Presidency then were carved off and areas with a majority of Telugu, Malayalam or Kannada speakers went to Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, and Mysore (later Karnataka) States, respectively. With the loss of these areas Madras State (later Tamilnadu) then became a state with a majority of Tamil speakers--89/according to the 1971 census.

1.

In 1956 it then became feasible to declare Tamil the official language of the State, though not much was done to implement this change.Ramaswamy (1993 describes the poetic rhapsodizing that went on on the floor of the Tamilnadu legislature during the debate over the official language.

2.

In 1967, the DMK party gained a majority in Tamilnadu for the first time, displacing Congress Party, and the name of the State was changed to Tamilnadu.In English orthography, Tamil Nadu or Tamilnadu.

3.

In 1970-71 there was an abortive attempt to make Tamil the liturgical language of Hindu temples; we have discussed unofficial attempts before this above.

Tamil creative writers also have expressed themselves with increasing exasperation at the stagnation of life in Tamilnadu, and the continued emphasis on puristic Tamil instead of the flexibility and creativity of the colloquial language. Though many writers now compromise by using Spoken Tamil in the dialogues of their novels and short-stories, the narrative portion is still in Literary Tamil, and writers who deviate from perceptions of pure language are still condemned. The difficulties of attaining literacy in a form of the language largely divorced from the modern spoken norm are ignored by the educational authorities. The poet C. Mani expresses his frustration in a poem entitled narakam `Hell':

...
Tamilnadu is
neither in the east
nor in the west.
After placing the pan
on the stove
she refuses to cook.
Hunger and loss
are the result.
She moves
neither forwards
nor backwards.
The present is
hanging in the middle.
The hardened tradition
and the door locked from inside
refuse to offer a hand
to cut the knot.
What is there to do?
...(Annamalai 1968:26-27)

`Tamil is a language. The Pure Tamil Movement is an endeavor. The tanit tamiR Movement all by itself is not the Tamil language. Just because I have this understanding does not mean that I hate the Pure Tamil Movement. Lacking this insight, the tanit tamiR separatists are themselves bringing Tamil into disrepute.'

One issue that cannot be ignored in any discussion of language policy in India or Tamilnadu is the fate of linguistic minorities in states dominated by Eighth-schedule languages. That is, much has been made of the attempts to officialize languages other than Hindi at the state level, but little exists in the way of constitutional guarantees for speakers of languages other than the majority language in any given state. Thus, if one is a speaker of Telugu, Kannada, Marathi, Hindi, or Malayalam (these being the main minorities in Tamilnadu), what kind of rights does one enjoy? As we have seen in the previous chapter, safeguards for minorities in various states are not dealt with in a very explicit way.

It should be clear that Tamil linguistic culture is one that, even within the context of Indian linguistic culture, is acutely concerned with language as the defining quality of Tamilness (Tamil tanmai). The re-discovery of Tamil antiquity and its intense connection with the Tamil language is a replay of the re-discovery of the roots of Indian culture and its close alliance with linguistic issues that began with the arrival of the British and the development of colonial Orientalism. To mix metaphors somewhat, a sleeping demon was awakened and aroused, and then a sleeping goddess awoke, too, and slew the demon.The western metaphor, of course would be David and Goliath, with Tamil as David and Sanskrit/Hindi as Goliath. Some would say the battle is not over; others would say that a stalemate has been reached (the demon didn't actually die), and with many regional Davids (Panjab, Bengal, Kashmir, Tamilnadu) attacking him, the giant is now weak and distracted. The Indian metaphor, of course, is a battle between a virtuous goddess (like Parvathi) and an evil demon (Ravana) and devotion to the goddess is salvific, both for the language and for the devotee.

In India in general a number of questions arise about Tamils and the language issue. One is why those Tamilians are so fanatical about their language. Another is whether they are perhaps exaggerating the whole language business out of proportion, for some other reason. Given the perception that the language issue is a no-win issue for India, counter-arguments are usually raised about the efficacy, the rationality, indeed the very sanity of Tamilians and their linguistic goals.

I think I have shown that when all is said and done regarding Tamil and language issues in India, and when all the irrationality and mythology are disregarded, most Tamils feel that their language and their linguistic culture really are different from most others in India, and that the language policy of the Center is seriously misguided. For them, Hindi did not inherit the mantel of Sanskrit, and in any event, devotion to neither of these two languages is salvific. As we have seen in the previous chapter, there is strong evidence that the choice of a Soviet-model policy was flawed, and was in violation of India's own history and linguistic-cultural values. It failed, and it deserved to fail. What type of policy would have pleased a majority of Indians is not clear to me--there may have been nothing that would satisfy proponents of Hindi, besotted as they are and were with the raging desire to squelch Urdu, and find a modern language that could a strong claim for the domains dominated by English. Some sort of face-saving device, to pay obeisance to some language like Sanskrit, while pragmatically retaining domains for English and regional languages, might have been beneficial for all. One is reminded of the de facto language policy in tiny Nagaland in northeast India. English was chosen as the `official' language, and it is the language that appears on paper. In the schools of the State, however, teaching is done unofficially in Nagamese, a pidgin containing elements of Naga languages and Assamese. Some variant of this policy actually is in effect in many offices and businesses in all parts of India. Would that it could be accepted as the status quo, since it is the status quo.

Within the Hindi-speaking areas of North India, it must be noted, the attempt to claim domains for standard Khari Boli and eradicate Urdu, Maithili, Rajasthani, Panjabi, etc. has been successful. The suddh Hindi campaign has been a success, for Hindi in the Hindi areas. Its very methods and emphases there, however, have doomed it to failure elsewhere. With the disintegration and failure of Soviet minority policy and the resurgence of regional ethnicism throughout the former Soviet Union and other areas where Soviet language policy was adopted (Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia etc.) , one cannot promise much for current language policies in India, which we have seen are clearly based on the Soviet model. And in Sri Lanka, Tamils have been resisting Sinhala-only policies for decades; it is difficult to know whether the Sri Lankan state still exists as it is imagined in Colombo, or has in effect lost out to Tamil separatism.

Perhaps the scene of conflict has shifted from the linguistic stage to the more overtly religious stage, as Hindi-Sikh conflicts erupt in Panjab, and Hindu-Muslim tensions explode in Bombay, Ayodhya, and elsewhere. The South was relatively quiet during the most recent disturbances, except of course for the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi by a Sri Lankan Tamil suicidal terrorist, who probably believed that she would achieve moksha in the process of delivering retribution to the enemies of Tamil. Tamiltaay seems to retain its salvific power.