When a Language Becomes a Mother/Goddess
An Image Essay on Tamil
In this potted history of the Tamil language, Bhārat Mātā and Tamiḻttāy are presented verbally as allies, mother and daughter even, as befitted a lesson being taught in an Indian schoolroom, albeit one located in a part of the country with a highly developed sense of regional pride. Nonetheless, the picture accompanying this lesson tells a slightly different story (Figure 14), for here Tamiḻttāy’s presence is not just confined to the Tamil-speaking part of India. Her body occupies, as we see, the entirety of the mapped form of the country, with no place whatsoever for any other goddess, rival or friendly. In contrast to Figures 3 and 4 where Tamiḻttāy more modestly occupies only “Dravidian” India, in this schoolbook illustration all of India appears as her domain. The illustration visually translates a claim of some Tamil nationalists that Tamil had been not just the oldest language of India but had once been spoken all over the subcontinent before the arrival of Sanskrit and its speakers had confined it to the south-east corner.
Some Tamil nationalists even claimed that Tamil had been spoken not just throughout the subcontinent, but indeed the world over, at a time when few other peoples and nations existed on the surface of the earth. This claim finds visual manifestation in pictures that circulate in the Tamil country, showing Mother Tamil seated or standing on a terrestrial globe, as in a beautiful poster issued by the literary organization Kamban Kazhagam based in the town of Karaikkudi (Figure 15).
In the artist S. K. Ayya’s imagination, Tamiḻttāy’s sari is arranged to roughly outline the cartographic shape of India, as the goddess perches on a globe, carrying the symbols traditionally associated with literature, music and drama. |
Figure 15 |
Figure 16 |
In another image from a couple decades later, the goddess once again appears, this time rather seductively seated on a globe, the map of India hinted at by the curves of her body, as she gazes out at us rather coquettishly from the cover of a Tamil literary magazine (Figure 16): |
| The year 1967 in which this illustration appeared is significant because that is when the Tamil nationalist party, the Dravida Munnera Kazhagam (DMK) was voted to power in the state for the first time. The ascension to power of the party was symbolically presented in some nationalist circles as the crowning of Tamiḻttāy after years of being in exile. Various acts that marked the triumph of Tamil—such as the renaming of the state as Tamilnadu (the land of Tamil), and the abolition of the mandatory study of Hindi in state schools—followed soon after, all of which confirmed to the ardent Tamil devotee that Tamil was sovereign in its domain, once again. Thus, in some DMK party magazines, the Chief Minister C.N. Annadurai is shown placing a crown on Tamiḻttāy’s head (Figure 17): |
Figure 17 |
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