Passions of the Tongue "d0e5435"

Notes

1. I am indebted here to the marvellous analysis by Helen Hackett of Elizabeth I of England as both “virgin mother” and “maiden queen” (see Hackett 1995). [BACK]

2. Prior to this, in 1881, Damodaram Pillai had already referred to Tamil as aṇanḳu(Damodaram Pillai 1971: 12, 19), and in 1879, Vedanayakam Pillai had invoked her as araci, “queen” (Vedanayakam Pillai 1879: 285). [BACK]

3. Centamiḻc Celvi 6 (1928-29): 236-43. [BACK]

4. See Centamiḻc Celvi 4 (1926-27): 296-300; 29 (1954-55): 474-76. [BACK]

5. Kuyil, 2 August 1960, 16. [BACK]

6. Intippōr Muracu 1985: 59. [BACK]

7. As far back as 1881, Damodaram Pillai made a similar suggestion in his analysis of the historical development of Tamil (1971: 19). [BACK]

8. Viṭutalai, 18 May 1938, 3; Kuṭi Aracu, 22 May 1938, cover; Pakuttaṟivu 4, no. 2 (June 1938). In his memoirs, Karunanidhi recalls that as a young boy growing up in the Tanjavur suburb of Tiruvarur, he mounted this cartoon on a placard and took it around his small town in a daily procession an effort to mobilize his fellow speakers (1989: 44). [BACK]

9. Aṟappōr, 8 September 1961, 1; Tiruviḷakku, 12 February 1965; Muracoli, 19 and 29 January, 3 February 1965; Muttāram, 15 March 1966; Kaḻakakkural, 15 January 1976. [BACK]

10. Kuṭi Aracu, 19 December 1937, 15. The inspiration behind this cartoon appears to have been K. A. P. Viswanatham, a devotee whose writings are a melange of radical neo-Shaivism, contestatory classicism, and Dravidianism. A native of Tiruchirapalli, Viswanatham inherited his father’s flourishing tobacco business but dedicated himself from his early youth to tamiḻppaṟṟu, playing a leading role in anti-Hindi protests into the early 1990s, in the demand for Tamil as liturgical language as well for as for changing the name of Madras state, and in numerous other such causes (Sambandan 1976). [BACK]

11. Bharatidasan made a similar suggestion in the 1920s (1955: 25-29). [BACK]

12. Viṭutalai, 27 December 1938, 4. In the Mahābhārata, Dushasana is the principal Kaurava prince responsible for disrobing Draupadi. [BACK]

13. Kuyil, 15 August 1948, 29. [BACK]

14. An oblique exception to this is a speech made by V. Balakrishnan in the Madras Legislative Assembly in December 1956, when he compared the efforts of government officials to coin Tamil neologisms for English bureaucratic words to the “rape of virgin Tamil” (kaṉṉittamiḻai kaṟpaḻittatu pōl ākum); MLAD 37 (1956): 637-38. [BACK]

15. Kuyil, 15 August 1948, 29. [BACK]

16. Tamiḻ Muracu (Pondicherry), 14 January 1960, 27. [BACK]

17. Nam Nāṭu, 28 January 1979, 8. [BACK]

18. Kuṭi Aracu, 28 May 1939, 16. [BACK]

19. See also the essay entitled “Sahōtaratuvam” (Fraternity), Intiyā, 11 December 1909; and the editorial entitled “Vantē Mātaram” (Homage to [our] mother), Intiyā, 22 January 1910. [BACK]

20. NNR 13 (1913): 816. Such equations between language and mother’s milk are not limited to the Indian context. For instance, a sixteenth-century Spanish theologian, Luis de Leon, also likened “vernacular” languages to the “milk that children drink from their mother’s breast” (Rafael 1988: 25). Similarly, David Laitin, in his study of language politics in contemporary Somalia, cites Somalian poetry in which an explicit equation is made between Somali, mother’s breast, and mother’s milk (1977: 115, 133-34). See also Faust’s exhortation that the mother “must be an educator” because “the child sucks in its first ideas with the mother’s milk” (Kittler 1990: 55). [BACK]

21. MLAD 37 (1956): 628. Here, as in other instances, the term “bottled milk” refers to English. For other comparisons between Tamil as mother’s milk and English as “bottled” milk, see Maraimalai Adigal (1967b: 82) and his daughter Nilambikai’s speech to Tamilnadu Women’s Conference in 1938 (Viṭutalai, 15 November 1938, 1; Nilambikai n.d.: 3). [BACK]

22. See also Kuyil, 1 September 1947, 6. [BACK]

23. See also Kuyil, 15 July 1948, 12. [BACK]

24. Viṭutalai, 26 November 1938; see also Muracoli, 26 January 1965, 1. [BACK]

25. Ņāṉapānu 3, no. 9 (1915): 222. [BACK]

26. Muttāram, 15 March 1966, cover. The same cover was reprinted years later in the DMK party magazine on the occasion of the celebration of the “Language Martyrs’ Day” in January 1976 with a verse celebrating the young men (Kaḻakakkural, 15 January 1976). [BACK]

27. Camanīti 1965, February 12: 5. [BACK]

28. English transcript of Tamil speech. Government of Madras Order No. 4818-4819 (Home Confidential), 5 October 1938. [BACK]

29. Teṉmoḻi 2, no. 8 (1964): 69. [BACK]

30. Kumari Malar 29, no. 7 (1972): 71-72. [BACK]

31. The noun kaṉṉi in this compound means, among other things, virgin maiden, youthfulness, freshness, and everlastingness. So, from at least the 1880s, Tamil’s modern devotees refer to their language as kaṉṉittamiḻ, which in various contexts could mean “virgin Tamil,” “youthful Tamil,” “eternal Tamil,” and so on. [BACK]

32. Kumari Malar 4 (1943): 11-12. [BACK]

33. Tiṉappuraṭci, 21 January 1993, 2. [BACK]

34. MLAD 37 (1956): 637-68. [BACK]

35. Kuyil, 19 August 1958, 1; Teṉmoḻi 2, no. 5 (1964): 7-9. See also Kuyil, 15 July 1948, 3-5, for a poem titled “The Pleasure (iṉpam) That Comes in Serving the Dravidian Nation.” [BACK]

36. Nineteenth-century mystics like Ramalinga Adigal and Dandapanisami characterized Tamil as “father tongue” to assert its superiority over Sanskrit, described as “mother” (Krishnan 1984: 197-99). In recent years, the domination of the feminized Tamiḻttāy notwithstanding, occasionally some verses personify Tamil as king, father, son, and male lover (Mudiyarasan 1976: 32-33, 40-41; Nagarajan 1980: 3-8, 13-15, 17-25, 39-31). [BACK]

37. Intippōr Muracu 1985: 52. [BACK]

38. A historically nuanced study of motherhood in colonial India has yet to be written, though a beginning has been made in “Ideology of Motherhood,” a special issue of the Economic and Political Weekly 25, nos. 42-43 (1990). [BACK]

39. Viṭutalai, 18 May 1938, 3; and Kuṭi Aracu, 22 May 1938, cover page. [BACK]

40. To the best of my knowledge, living women have not played Tamiḻttāy in public processions. For comparative examples of real women representing female icons of the nation in other parts of the world, see Hunt (1984: 63-66) for eighteenth-century France; and Ryan (1990: 26-37) for the nineteenth-century United States. [BACK]

41. Pōrvāḷ, 7 August 1948, 10. [BACK]

42. Tamiḻaracu 11, no. 13 (1981): 1-12. I thank Paula Richman for bringing these poems to my attention. See also Richman 1997. [BACK]

43. Aṟappōr, 8 September 1961, 1; Muracoli, 19 and 29 January, 3 February 1965; Muttāram, 15 March 1966; Kaḻakakkural, 25 January 1976. [BACK]

44. Tiruviḷakku, 12 February 1965. [BACK]

45. Muttāram, 1 December 1968, cover; Maṟavaṉ Maṭal, 3 May 1970, cover. [BACK]

46. Nakkīraṉ, 15 January 1960; Camanīti, January 1968. [BACK]

47. Muracoli, 19 and 29 January, 13 March 1965. [BACK]

48. See cover of Kandiah Pillai (1958) and illustration accompanying the essay “Intikku tāymoḻi Tamiḻē” (Tamil is the mother tongue of Hindi), Kaḻakakkural, 19 January 1975, 19. [BACK]

49. Muracoli, 18, 19, 21, April 1993; Mālai Muracu, 17 April 1993; Indian Express, 18 April 1993. [BACK]