Coining Words Language and Politics in Late Colonial Tamilnadu
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CHAPTER 8 Coining Words Language and Politics in Late Colonial Tamilnadu Forming words with Sanskrit roots will certainly ruin the beauty and growth of the Tamil language and disfigure it; and is sure to inflame communal hatred. —E. M. Subramania Pillai to Government of Madras, Memorandum, 5 September 1941. Though a common terminology may be possible in Northern India where Hindustani and Sanskrit have mingled together very much and local lan- guages have been greatly modified by them, such a terminology would be unsuited to the Tamil area where Tamils have preserved the purity of their language. Words coined must have Tamil roots and suffixes to make them intelligible to the Tamils. —Memorandum submitted by the Committee of Educationists to the Government of Madras, 22 August 1941. Some months ago, there raged in the academic world, a controversy regard- ing the coining of technical terms. While some said that there should be no bar on borrowing terms from other languages to express new scientific disciplines, others argued that only pure Tamil terms should be used.... [This] has raged since the beginnings of the Tamil language. But, in earlier days, it was not conducted by opposite camps; there were no acrimonious polemics; there was nobody to say 'Our language is ruined by the admix- ture of other languages; we should have a Protection Brigade to safeguard our language' and so on. —S. Vaiyapuri Pillai, Sorkalai Virundu, Madras, 1956, p. 31 (originally published in Dinamani, 10 May 1947). Drawing on Raymond Williams' formulation in his classic Key- words, that 'important social and historical processes occur within language',1 this chapter seeks to explore the cultural politics 144 In Those Days There Was tio Coffee Coining Words 145 surrounding the coining of technical and scientific terms for Bharati's views are typical of the nationalist perspective, which pedagogic purposes in late colonial Tamilnadu. But, while Williams was shared by a wide range of Brahmin intellectuals. Fed on a takes up a cluster of words, I will focus on the conscious struggle staple diet of Orientalist scholarship, the newly emerging English- between two broadly defined ideological schools to establish their educated Brahmin intellectuals sought to reconstitute the own set of principles for the very coining of technical terms. inferiorisanon of Tamil vis-a-vis Sanskrit.4 In the specific context In studying the debates surrounding the coining of technical of Tamilnadu, this attitude was reinforced by the activities of the terms in late colonial Tamilnadu and delineating the counter- Theosophical Society. For instance, V. Krishnaswamy Iyer, a promi- hegemonic efforts of Tamil scholars to displace Sanskrit and other nent Congress leader of the pre-Swadeshi era, claimed that 'San- foreign languages in this arena, I will try to demonstrate how well- skrit is the parent of all Indian literature including Tamil; for much entrenched views that favoured the use of Sanskrit and/or English that is claimed in Tamil as original is indebted to conceptions technical terms were challenged by a large number of Tamil schol- which are entirely to be found in the field of Sanskrit,'5 while P.S. ars, leading to a general consensus by the 1940s about the existence Sivaswamy Iyer saw Sanskrit 'as the language which enshrines the of a common Tamil past that was rich and independent (especially highest ideas of Indo-Aryan.. .'.6 The flip side of this glorification of Sanskrit) and, as a direct result, to demands that the develop- of Sanskrit was the demotion of Tamil. Nambi Arooran has shown ment of the Tamil language on modern lines be free of all foreign how, in the University of Madras, Tamil was marginalised as a influence. These processes took place in the context of the non- 'vernacular' while Sanskrit was accorded the status of a classical Brahmin movement which was giving political voice to such as- language.7 It has also been argued that the hegemonic location of pirations. The question, then, was not just about coining words but the Brahmin in civil society was rooted in the privileging of San- also about the fundamental definition of Tamil identity. skrit and the accompanying contempt for Tamil.8 Given this per- With the gradual expansion of Western education under colo- spective on Sanskrit and Tamil, and the nationalist compulsion to nial aegis, the need to produce standard textbooks based on com- imagine a united and homogeneous Indian nation, it was stressed monly understood terminology in indigenous languages was keenly that Sanskrit should be the root (both etymologically and figura- felt. In early Tamil textbooks, there was an excessive reliance on tively) of all new word coinage. English terms, many of them being little more than awkward This construction of an Indian/Tamil past did not go unchal- transliterations into Tamil. Not surprisingly, the nationalist intel- lenged. As we have seen in earlier chapters, by the late nineteenth lectuals were the first to react to this situation. C. Rajagopalachari, century, a group of non-Brahmin Tamil scholars from the elite the prominent nationalist, along with a friend, started in 1917 the Vellalar caste, like P. Sundaram Pillai, V. Kanakasabhai and J.M. Journal of the Tamil Scientific Terms Society.2 Predictably enough, the Nallasami Pillai, drawing on the philological works of Robert 'Tamil' technical terms coined in the journal were almost exclu- Caldwell, M. Winslow and G.U. Pope, counterposed their con- sively drawn from Sanskrit. Subramania Bharati was critical of the struction of history, effectively displacing Sanskrit and Brahmins journal being published in English but was in broad agreement with Tamil and Vellalars, and conjuring up a vision of a glorious with its aim of drawing technical terms from Sanskrit: and independent Tamil past. The Nagari Pracharini Sabha of Varanasi is producing a huge glossary Thus it should come as no surprise that this very group of by translating European technical terms into simple Sanskrit. Our scholars came to contest word coinage based on Sanskrit roots. By vernacular languages may, to the best possible and desirable extent, 1920, P.N. Appuswamy, the doyen of popular science writing in draw from these terms. All European languages, likewise, draw from Tamil, and the editor of Tamilar Nesan (which contributed not a Greek and Latin. If we do the same [adopting from Sanskrit] there will little to Tamil technical terminology) had identified three streams be uniform terminology in our vernaculars.3 in this regard: 146 In Those Days There Was No Coffee Coining Words 147 Some stress that technical terms should be based on pure Tamil root- referred to the question of coining Tamil technical terms and ex- words. Some are of the view that they may be drawn from the fraternal pressed the opinion that no attempt should be made to replace language, Sanskrit. While yet others say, why waste our efforts, let us already existing technical terms (i.e., even if they were of non- adopt in toto the English terms used all over the world. It is time we Tamil origin). In his view, the terms were to be simple and easy decided this [issue].9 to understand: it mattered little whether they were of pure Tamil But the issue was not be settled so easily. It took decades to resolve origin or not. But then, he expressed the caveat that the borrowed the question, and well over a decade passed before it was even terms should be in keeping with Tamil conventions regarding seriously, if acrimoniously, debated. phonology.13 Swaminatha Iyer's views did not satisfy Sanskrit die- The first round of the debate started around the organisation hards who felt that his views were not clear-cut and that he had of the Tamil Anbar Mahanadu (The Tamil Enthusiasts' Confer- tried to accommodate the ideas of the pure Tamil champions.14 The ence) in Madras in December 1933. From the beginning, the con- hard-hitting speech of Raja Sir Annamalai Chettiar,15 attacking ference was plagued by controversy. It was generally perceived 'pedants' who insisted on coining pure Tamil terms at the expense that the conference was the handiwork of Brahmin scholars to of simplicity and easy comprehensibility more accurately reflected push through their own programme of Tamil development. The the general tenor of the conference.16 monthly Bharati queried why some of the major non-Brahmin Some activists of the Self-Respect Movement seem to have Tamil scholars such as Maraimalai Adigal, Somasundara Bharati, raised questions and caused a commotion during the conference.17 Pandithamani Kathiresan Chettiar, V.O. Chidambaram Pillai, K. However, many resolutions were passed emphasising the need for Subramania Pillai, TV. Umamaheswaran Pillai, Sachidanandam education through the medium of Tamil, the preparation of an Pillai, and N.M. Venkatasami Nattar were not invited to the con- encyclopaedia in Tamil, and assigning classical status to Tamil in ference. It further stressed that issues of caste, religion and politics the Universities.18 But two resolutions, one urging the use of terms should not be brought into common issues like language and already in currency when suitable Tamil terms could not be coined, literature.10 If this was the criticism of non-partisan intellectuals, and another recommending the pruning of the Tamil alphabet of the Self-Respect Movement was more open and vehement in its some supposedly redundant letters and incorporating new ones attack. An editorial in the Kudi Arasu titled 'Prohita Atchiyin to spell foreign sounds stirred a hornet's nest. Within a fortnight Pithalattangal' (The Skulduggery of Priestly Rule) expressed the of the Tamil Enthusiasts' Conference, a group of Vellalar Tamil view that the conference was little more than a conspiracy by the scholars led by M.V.