Tamil-Sanskrit row: Action taken, says Sengottaiyan

The response from the Minister comes after politicians across the state raised the issue of misinformation in English textbook of Class 12 where Sanskrit was mentioned as a language older than Tamil by 1,700 years. The issue kicked up a controversy across the state and Opposition parties demanded Sengottaiyan to act on it.

When Sengottaiyan was asked about the issue, he replied, “There is no doubt that Tamil is much older than Sanskrit, but there was a mistake in the book. A circular has been sent to all the Headmasters to correct the mistake and the official who failed to spot the mistake has been served notice.”

The Minister also assured that the content will be removed from the textbook. Meanwhile, PMK leader Ramadoss had thanked Sengottaiyan for taking action on the official and for announcing that the content will be removed.

On the other hand, Minister for Tamil Official Language and Tamil Culture K Pandiarajan in a function at Tamil Music Academy in Chennai stirred a fresh controversy by saying that Tamil and Sanskrit are two eyes of Tamil arts. “People should stop arguing which language is superior as both Tamil and Sanskrit are equally important and the state government is working with the same policy. The late chief minister J Jayalalithaa had a vision to develop various arts in the state and the state is in the process of developing an official policy for arts,” said Pandiarajan.

MDMK leader Vaiko after returning from New Delhi, said that the Union government is trying to impose Hindi and Sanskrit, but Sanskrit is a dead language and he had said this on several occasion. He also thanked Sengottaiyan for taking action on the official for the mistake.