Pure Tamil Movement

Thani Tamil Iyakkam (Tamil: தனித் தமிழ் இயக்கம்) (Pure or Independent Tamil Movement) is a linguistic-purity movement in Tamil literature which attempts to avoid loanwords from Sanskrit. The movement began in the writings of Maraimalai Adigal, Paventhar Bharathidasan, Devaneya Pavanar, and Pavalareru Perunchitthiranaar, and was propagated in the Thenmozhi literary magazine founded by Pavalareru Perunchithiranar. V G Suryanarayana Sastri (popularly known as Parithimar Kalaignar), a Brahmin, was a 20th-century figure in the movement; in 1902 he demanded classical-language status for Tamil, which it received in 2004.

Thani Tamiļ Iyakkam dates back to the Tholkapiyam era, when non-Tamil words were classified as "northern" (vadamoļi, meaning Sanskrit) or "from elsewhere" (thisaimoļi, foreign) which means foreign. With the passing of Tamil political and economic dominance from the south, first to the 14th-century Deccan Vijayanagara Empire and then to the Farsi-speaking Muslim powers, Tamil declined. Tamil purism and anti-Sanskritism nevertheless remained among the literati and their local patrons, evidenced by Antao De Proenca’s 1679 Tamil-Portuguese dictionary which mentions acrimonious "anti-Kirantha" and "pro-Sanskrit" tendencies in Tamil phonetics. The arrival of British colonialists and American missionaries introduced a linguistic revival among the Tamils, despite European concerns about its usefulness for administration and evangelisation.

The modern revival of the Tamil Purist Movement (also known as the Pure Tamil Movement) is attributed to Maraimalai Adigal, who publicly pledged to defend pure Tamil in 1916. Advocates of purism popularised Tamil literature and crusaded for it, organising rallies in villages and towns and making Tamil purism a political issue. The logical extension of this effort was to purge Tamil of the Sanskrit influence (including its negative social perceptions, which were thought to keep the Tamils in a state of economic, cultural, and political servitude) seen as making Tamil susceptible to northern political domination. Anti-Sanskrit and anti-Hindi Tamil Nadu policies alienated the Brahmins, who were seen as supporting both languages.

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