State positive on Harvard Tamil Chair funding

“We have sent the proposal to Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami, who had also convened a meeting in this regard,” sources from Tamil Development Department added. When contacted, Minister for Tamil Official Language and Tamil Culture Ma Foi K Pandiarajan confirmed that they were pursuing the matter. 

“An internal note had already been sent to the Chief Minister and that the poll promise of Jayalalithaa will be realised. We must make our commitment to Harvard by this month end. The commitment will have to be remitted with the Harvard University by June 2018,” Pandiarajan observed. 

As to what should be the quantum of funds, the matter will be decided in conjunction with the Chief Minister. The announcement on the allocation of funds for HTC can be expected soon, Pandiarajan added. 

In July 2015, Harvard University had cleared the proposal to set up a Tamil Chair based on the request made by Dr Vijay Janakiraman and Dr Sundaresan Sambandam, both practising in the US. Both had contributed to a seed money of 1 million dollars besides forming Harvard Tamil Chair Inc (harvardtamilchair.org), a non-profit organisation, for fundraising. It requires 6 million dollars (around Rs 39 crore) to set up the chair. 

A forum of students and youth petitioned the government on Thursday pressing the state to make the donation to HTC. Director V Gowthaman, who accompanied the delegation, urged the state to be benevolent towards this drive. Make this as a gift to celebrate the demarcation of states on the basis of language which falls on November 1. He pointed out that the total commitment was only short of Rs 20 crore as the rest had been accounted for by way of fundraising.  

Vetriselvan, who is among those working in US for HTC fund raising, told DT Next that they had raised about Rs 18 crore and was confident of making the rest with the assistance from the state here.