Thanjavur: Efforts will be taken to bring Tamil University (TU) at Thanjavur in the list of first hundred Universities in the world, said Mafoi. K. Pandiarajan, state minister for Tamil Official Language and Culture here on Wednesday.
Inaugurating the 'Tamil Culture Centre' at TU, Pandiarajan said that to achieve this, the university should shed its unitary nature and become an affiliated university.
“Central government’s new education policy lays stress on converting unitary universities into affiliated ones with emphasis on research, teaching and consulting-three components of an educational institution. Tamil University, which is a unitary university, should change according to changing times. Under-graduation should be started and more number of students should join the university" said Pandiarajan.
He also said that Tamil is in the 16th position among the world languages which are spoken by maximum number of people. Chinese language-particularly Mandarin form of Chinese language-is the language spoken by maximum number of people in the world, namely 111 crore, followed by English spoken as first language by 40 crore people, he noted.
Regretting that Tamil language has been identified under ‘language under threat’ by Unesco, which releases list of languages on the verge of extinct and threat, Pandiarajan called for popularising Tamil, innovation of new words in the language, keeping in tune with the globalisation of languages to stay young, dynamic as described in Tamil poems.
Quoting a song from the film of MGR, former chief minister who established the University by giving 1,000 acres of land, Pandiarajan said that time has now come for TU to cut across geographical barriers of countries in the world and reach out to people. He sang the song “Paadumpothu naan thendral katru” in which MGR sings “Ellaigallilla Ulagam” (world without barriers).
Tamil Culture centre, inaugurated on Wednesday has a major role to play in setting standards for music-both Thmaizhisai and Carnatic music-culture etc. It should emerge like the Trinity College of Music which sets standards for world music, the minister said.
