Hoping for Harvard Chair, writes Olivannan
Posted on: 05/Oct/2017 5:03:10 PM
Olivannan Gopalakrishnan, a social activist writes about the hope for Harvard Chair with the collective contributions from different corners. The TN government however is awaited to take its initiative. Digging in detail, here are excerpts from what he has to say about the issue
Tamil is undoubtedly one of the world’s ancient languages. It further is the only South Asian language evolved out of the ancient times and it still prevails as a contemporary language spoken by over 10 million people.
All the mind blowing works in poetry, epics, philosophical texts and more with reflexive grammar, logic and poetic senses make it a supreme language. Scholars are till date awed by its antiquity! What more reason is needed for the US to pitch with a permanent chair at the Harvard University than these concrete reasons?
Apart from livelihood, there are other reasons for the education which are to create an intelligent and civilized society that preaches all the cultural values and promote scholars to develop.
The total estimated cost of the chair is approximately 6 million USD for which a fundraising committee has collected half of it, near 3 million USD.
Foreigners are largely interested towards the language for its classical richness. In the recent times, we observe soar in interest towards exploring sangam and other literary works in Tamil. With this constant increase in demand, the language is promising to see many translations into other worldly languages.
As of now, there are over ten thousand school students studying Tamil as second language in the US, explains Vijay Janakiraman, the co-initiator at the Harvard Tamil Chair campaign. More students are promoted to take up the language.
It is not a child’s play to raise funds for the chair. The success story of Tamil Chair at the University of California in Berkeley is the fundamental factor boosting the success at the Harvard University. It was in 1996 that the chair was introduced following the collection of 425,000 USD in North America. Introduction of Tamil font encoding schemes, funding digitalization of ancient literary works, etc are some of the activities performed under the chair. Tamil scholars from different regions of the world are also invited for lectures.
For the chair, about a million is contributed by Sambandam and Jayasankar. This is of the major contributions from Tamil in Canada and Toronto from NRIs belonging to the other communities. Further, Tamil cinema personalities including Mysskin, GV Prakash, Suriya, etc have also made their valuable contributions. There is however a complaint that not enough support is received from the end of Tamil Nadu government, in spite of promises made by former CM Jayalalitha that 50 percent contribution shall be made for the chair proposed.
This funding should be received at the earliest. The deadline to collect the required funding is June 2018 failing which the proposal for the chair shall be dissolved.
Will the Tamil Nadu government make the necessary contribution as promised by Jayalalitha or dissolve the dreams of Tamil diaspora? This prevails as the big question!
