DMK flays sidelining of Tamil in digital library : Says it indicates north-south divide

Chennai: The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam on Tuesday alleged in the Tamil Nadu assembly that Tamil and other south Indian languages had been sidelined in the national digital library portal, a new initiative of the HRD ministry.

Raising the issue during Zero Hour, Leader of the Opposition M K Stalin (DMK) said only English, Hindi and Sanskrit had been featured in the portal and charged that it would tantamount to nurturing a "north-south divide."

Responding, Tamil Culture Minister K Pandiarajan said he had already taken up the issue with the Human Resource Development Ministry and the content in other Indian and foreign languages, including Tamil, would soon be added. 

Stalin said "Mother Tamil has been sidelined and this is a big shock. Not only Tamil, all South Indian languages have been sidelined," he said adding this would tantamount to nurturing a "north-south divide."  He urged the government to take steps to upload content in Tamil language in the library.

Pandiarajan said the confusion was in view of featuring only English, Hindi, Sanskrit in the portal. The Minister said he had written to HRD minister Prakash Javadekar on the matter. 

"Very soon, they will feature the user-interface in eight Indian languages and eight foreign languages. They (HRD ministry) say they have taken up hosting content in three languages as a pilot project," he said.

The eight Indian languages include Tamil, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam and Sanskrit and foreign languages include English, Swedish, Italian and German, he said.  Noting that the national digital library of India was an initiative aimed at integrating all Indian digital libraries and provide a portal for it, he said facilitating learning was a key goal.

"Amma's (late chief minister Jayalalithaa's) government will not accept sidelining of Tamil," he asserted. School Education Minister K A Sengottaiyan said arrangements have been made to set up a digital library by featuring 10,000 titles available in the Connemara library here.