Chennai, Oct. 14: The delay in appointment of director and senior executives for Central Institute of Classical Tamil (CICT) by the Centre even after five months of its institution here has raised questions as to whether the Centre is adopting a partisan attitude towards Tamil.
CICT is the pet project of chief minister M.Karunanidhi. He has visited the CICT here six times in the last five months. Originally known as Centre of Excellence for Classical Tamil and was based in Mysore, the institute moved to Chennai in mid-May 2008. The 65 scholars in the institute have made remarkable progress in research on classical Tamil literature and Tamil dialects.
However, the inordinate delay by the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) in transferring financial and executive powers to the institute makes the employees remain temporary staff and the salaries are delayed every month.
Anyone from across the world can learn Tamil online if one of the ten ambitious projects of this institute takes off in six months as planned. The mission of taking Tamil to the world arena through standardization of 41 Tamil classics from the classical phase (300 B.C to 600 A.D) is almost complete. The dialect research wing is ready with 10,000 new Tamil words through field research across the state.
The delay in appointment of director, registrar and finance officer for the institute has slowed down the decision-making process. Though MHRD sources claim the selection process would begin soon, the temporary basis of employees and delay in disbursal of salaries has weakened the team momentum. Field research is not undertaken to record new vocabulary after the pilot study as decision-making is delayed.
“We work hard to bring out high quality work aimed at establishing the classical nature of Tamil language. We have been working on a specialized library on Thirukkural (ancient couplets) and Tholkappiyam (a grammatical treatise) which will be a one-stop reference point,” said Mr K.Ramasamy, present officer-in-charge and retired director of the institute.
“There is a slowdown as the transition is not complete yet. Dealing with the MHRD is quite difficult and it causes few hardships,” he admitted.
