Tamil Nadu: "Tamilians have understood the folly behind their aversion to Hindi"

Life has come a full circle in Tamil Nadu which saw widespread anti- Hindi agitation in 1960s which claimed nearly 70 lives. In a State which shunned Hindi for reasons best known only to the agitators, Shabari Siksha Sansthan, a Salem-based publishing company is coming out with, a comprehensive Hindi-English-Tamil trilingual dictionary. "People in Tamil Nadu has understood the folly behind their aversion to Hindi and how they lost out to people from Kerala and Karnataka who took Hindi very seriously," M Sridhar, one of the compilers of Shabari Shabdha Sagar, the Hindi-Hindi English-Tamil dictionary told The Pioneer.

"The 1632 pages-dictionary with 51,000 words took 15 years from completion. We will not tell that it is one of its kind dictionary in the country. But this is a dictionary which is a must for average and above average literate persons," said Sridhar. The fact that the publishers got orders for 1500 copies from Tamil Nadu itself speaks volumes about the changed attitude of the people in the State.

A committee of Hindi experts which included Prof Muthukrishnan Seshan, the octogenarian Hindi teacher, scrutinised each and every word, pronunciation and meanings. "This is a pioneer work of its kind. Though there was a Hindi-Tamil dictionary in the past, it was small in size. The present work is essential for all non-Hindi people . Though this is not a major dictionary, it will be of great help to beginners and people with basic knowledge in Hindi," said Prof Seshan, who has been honoured with Sahitya Vachaspathy and a student of the legendary Prof Hazari Prasad Dwivedi at Benares Hindu University.

Prof Seshan is of the view that a Hindi-Tamil-English dictionary of 1,00,000 words would be the ideal choice. "Let's go slow. The anti-Hindi agitation by the DMK has done more harm to Tamil and people in Tamil Nadu than Hindi. They thought that Hindi will harm Tamil language which has been proved wrong," said the professor. He also explained that the agitation against Hindi was the extension of the hatred the Dravida parties have towards Hinduism and Hindu Gods.

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