‘Tamil books in National Digital Library in 2 weeks’

Responding to Leader of Opposition MK Stalin’s allegations in the Assembly that Tamil had been ignored in the national digital platform, the Minister said that the digital library was launched only five days ago and efforts are being made to create facilities to upload books in eight languages including Tamil, Gujarati and Kannada. 

Pandiarajan said about two thousand books of Tamil scholars besides 10,000 other books would find their place in the digital library. The designing of the facilities would be completed in two weeks and everyone could read them in the digital library, he said. 

Earlier, Leader of Opposition MK Stalin condemned the Union government for ignoring Tamil and other south Indian languages in the National Digital Library of India, a digital initiative launched by the Union Human Resources Development Ministry and urged the state government to take steps to upload Tamil literature on the website.

Union Human Resource Development Minister Prakash Javadekar on June 19 launched the digital repository containing textbooks, articles, videos, audio books, lectures, simulations, fiction and all other kinds of learning materials. 

Raising the issue in the Assembly, Stalin complained that Tamil had been totally ignored in the digital library. 

Besides, all the south Indian languages Malayalam, Telugu and Kannada had been neglected showing the divide of north and south India. 

The Centre had declared that the digital library would help the university and research students of all the countries to learn about India and its culture. 

Despite the uploading of one crore books written by three lakh writers, none of the Tamil books or famous writers had found a place in the digital platform, the DMK working leader complained. 

The Union government which appreciated Sanskrit had ignored the ancient Tamil language and the act showed that the Centre considered Tamils as second grade citizens, Stalin alleged. The Chief Minister must intervene immediately to give facilities to upload Tamil books in the platform, he demanded.