Subramaniya Bharathi fan's quest for Tamil course faces snag

MADURAI: The ardent desire of a disciple of the late, fiery nationalist Tamil poet Sri Subramaniya Bharathi to open an avenue for non-Tamil people to learn Tamil has not been succeeding. Running from pillar to post, R Lakshminarayanan (68), who runs the 'Subramaniya Bharathiyar Thinkers Forum' in Madurai, has knocked at the doors of the Tamil Nadu government, courts and the Prime Minister's office, but to no avail so far. Lakshminarayanan, an advocate by profession, appealed to the secretary, Tamil Development department in 2011 to introduce short correspondence courses in Tamil language by the Tamil University in Thanjavur. 

When there was no response to this, he approached the Madurai bench of the Madras High Court in 2016. Seeing merit in his petition, a division bench comprising Justice V Ramasubramanian and Justice N Kirubakaran passed an order on April 22 last year, directing the secretary, Tamil Development Department, to teach Tamil to non-Tamils within 12 weeks from the date of receipt of the order. 

"Though the court gave a direction to allocate Rs 37.36 lakh or more to Thanjavur Tamil University, the State government has not passed any orders to release the funds," said Lakshminarayanan to DC. "Bharathi had stressed upon national integration in his Tamil songs to spread Tamil with patriotic fervour across the country," he said. He also approached the Prime Minister's office to help clear the hurdles.