http://diaryst.blogspot.com/2010/08/encounter-with-books.html

I do agree with you guys on most of the points except a few.

/* Today, it has acquired a racial character and the some tamil racists (particularly DK) are attempting to purify tamil.. they are proved wrong, simply by the numerous scriptures (kal vettu & pattayams) where the spoken tamil is used as it is, which contained sanskrit words also.. */

– This doesn’t seem to be true for me. The DK of Periyar revolutionized things, which are pivotal to what we see today. A small change then though, a large impact these days. Eg: forced entry of temple, eventual reservation system. The current DK is useless and it doesn’t look like having a proper agenda. The purification of tamil is something that has been taken by PMK, if I’m not wrong. Which we all would read back to know thats completely a political agenda.

/* While the DK are chauvinists, there point about Sanskrit’s influence on Tamil is entirely accurate. However, what they are forgetting is that we can’t turn the clock back on history. */

– Again, i don’t think DK focuses on lingual chauvinism. Sanskrit’s influence on Tamil is there,, and then, Tamil also would’ve influenced Sanskrit. DK’s agenda then, from 1930s or later,, have been mostly on atheistic and caste systems. Now people do believe in God, and still don’t believe too much superstitions. Which itself is a big change. Caste discrimination is not there at office at all. However I might not know about government offices. People misusing caste based reservation privileges are there,,, its happening around, which is an unwanted byproduct. But the impact it has created making millions of societies from lower middle class to middle class, mix with communities is because of DK’s stance then, by Periyaar. It fits perfectly for chaos theory proof.

The language roots and their sources are pretty important for any analysis. For instance, being a tamil guy, when I learnt malayalam and telugu, I learnt fastly. I was able to converse in those languages pretty fast. However, when I learnt Hindi, I was able to write fast, but unable to converse very fluently like a native speaker. When I learnt English, it was worse. I was able to write, but unable to converse fluently. Malayalam and Telugu native speakers couldn’t differentiate my accent as quickly as a north indian did. North Indian friends, who speak hindi were able to tell me my accent differences.

I had felt the same from Rajinikanth’s tamil accent from a kannadiga origin, and Jaggi Vadudev Swamiji’s tamil accent from a kannadiga origin, that these guys are from karnataka. But theirs were very close. However, there are many rajasthani friends who live in my place, whose tamil is very different.

Coz phonetically hindi and tamil are different. In fact, Indo aryan languages differ from Indo dravidian languages. This condition is worse if you notice my English. Anyone from the world, can find my accent and language different. I need to practice more spoken english to make speech fluent. So, for a tamil guy to speak fluent malayalam, all he needs is ONE subject, malayalam.

For a tamil guy to speak fluent english, he needs to be TAUGHT COMPLETELY in english or spend most of the time in an English spoken atmosphere. All the private schools do this only to improve fluency. Nothing else.

So mere comparison of two languages will be incomplete. Certain languages for a certain tribe will be difficult to learn, and hence needs more attention. English needs the attention to make us globally competitive.

Regards,
neo

You may have a logical point.. but i feel, the very purpose of nandan’s book is to have an entry point to the politics..

My prediction would be, he will be elected to Rajya sabha, and then made a formal entry to politics..

To me it is simple – if you read Nandan’s book (which i have done and not sure if you have) and look at his appointment as UIA chief. He is in politics. Period. Manmohan Singh, who has much better credentials in public service than Nandan is now inarguably in politics although if we had had a similar argument about Manmohan Singh in 1991 you may not have accepted that he is in politics.

Here is my reco – please read Nandan’s book. If after that if you still feel this UIA has nothing to do with Nandan entering politics, we can discuss.