A lecture on well-known poet Kulothungan’s poems was held at Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan recently. The lecture was organised by Sri Krishna Sweets in the lecture series ‘Bharathi Marabil’.
Kulothungan is a pseudonym of eminent scholar V C Kulandai Swamy. He served as vice-chancellor in Madurai Kamaraj University and Anna University. His literary work Vaazhum Valluvam was presented with the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1988.
Delivering the lecture, Tamil scholar M K Ramanan said, “A poet is not a critic, but his work can be criticised. The poet just depicts the happenings of his day and later it turns out to be read as history. That is what has happened with Kulothungan’s poems. He wrote about the Eelam struggle in his poems when the struggle had not attained its pinnacle. Kulothungan is worried more about today’s politics and says there have been no good leaders after Gandhi.”
The lecture was presided over by former civil servant B S Raghavan. Renowned advocate R Gandhi was also present on the occasion.