Our attention has been drawn to an article published in the April, June 1959 number of the Bombay quarterly, the “Quest”, in which a non-Dravidian has indulged in mischievous propaganda against the literary and cultural awakening in the South. Under the caption “Tamil Writing Today,” he has allowed his personal dislikes sway, and sought to mis-represent and preserve the culture of the South. He says:-
“The pedantic and academic trend in Tamil is more or less purist, and insists upon the rapid and almost immediate assimilation and use of the Tamil language for Governmental, educational and other public purposes. The movement against the so-called Aryan and other alien influences in the Tamil language, life and literature is at least as old as the century, if not older.”

The movement against Aryan domination in society, religion and language, which is many centuries older, is nothing but the assertion of cultural self –respect by the Dravidian people. No wonder, exploiters do not like the exploited to assert themselves. The writer of the “Quest” article traces the continuity of this self-respect movement from the pre-independence era to the post-Independence period. He says:-
“Since independence, the tendency among the purists and the Dravidians has been to keep the language traditionally pure and to overweight it with words not now in use, and to keep it at a jingoistic and often chauvinistic level of nostalgia, looking back upon a past which is by no means definitely proved……”

It is easy to see the motive of the writer of the article – he is against the purity of the Tamil language, and wants the corruption of Aryan influence to be kept untouched and intact. He goes on to say:-
“This harking back to a past, for cultural inspiration can be salutary within limits, but in large doses is likely to be harmful, as it is tending to become of recent years.”

Yes, it is harmful – but harmful to whom? The exploiters, of course. As for the exploited, the Dravidian cultural revival is having most beneficial effect on them. The writer then refers specifically to present-day Dravidian literature in the same strain. He says:-
“Apart from the purely Dravidian writing, there is a set of academic writings there is a set of academic writing that are also Dravidian-inspired, if not self-confessedly so. The so-called learned world in Tamil, the Universities and the Colleges, and the Educational Institutions are full of persons deep in this Dravidian inspiration.”

The writer is right in this understanding of the present situation, so far as the intellectual world is concerned. Referring to Tamil Professors and Lecturers, he speaks slightingly of them, and adds,
“Their vocabulary is almost always shorn of Sanskrit elements, although it is extremely difficult to think of Tamil language shorn of the elements of Sanskrit, even in the remotest antiquity available to us.”

This is not at all correct, for there have been great Tamilian scholars and savants who disliked the corrupting influence of Aryanism, and have used pure and chaste Tamil. Even if one assumes this to be correct, that only goes to show to what deep-seated extent corruption has corroded into the very basis and texture of the Tamil language. The time has come definitely when the baneful influences of an alien language and culture should be eschewed from the homeland of the Dravidian people. Non-Dravidians will of course resist this attempt. But time and the forces of time are with us. We will win.

(Editorial - 19-07-1959)