Chennai: Giving a sigh of relief to many residents of 1,018 places whose names were changed recently, the Tamilnadu government has withdrawn within a week the controversial order changing the English spellings of 1,018 towns.
Responding to a tweet from Gopal Srinivasan, Chairman, TVS Capital Funds, Minister for Tamil Official Language and Tamil Culture, K Pandiarajan wrote: “We are working on alignment of views by experts on Transliteration standards from Tamil to English. Hopefully, we should get this released in two to three days. The G.O on the change of English names for Tamil names for places has been withdrawn. Will absorb all feedback and reissue shortly.”
Gopal Srinivasan posted: “The BIG miss @mafoikprajan? Dravidian ideologue Su Ba Veerapandian said if the government really wanted to help restore the authenticity..it should first provide a standard for English spellings. It’s not too late for the transliteration standard!”
While many of these English names were anglicised versions of the original and were coined by the British, some had the influence of Sanksrit on them. Hence, the Tamilnadu government changed their spellings.
However, the notification dated 1 April triggered a flurry of reactions on social media. Political parties and Tamil scholars condemned the move, saying appropriate linguistic experts were not consulted.