President Pranab Mukherjee on Wednesday presented the ‘Presidential Award for Classical Tamil’ for 2009-10 and 2010-11. HRD Minister and Seemandhra leader Pallam Raju, who’s otherwise staying away from ministerial work over his opposition to the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh, attended the event. But none of the UPA ministers from Tamil Nadu were to be seen.
The prestigious Tolkappiyar Award for lifetime achievement in Classical Tamil was given to Dr Iravatham Mahadevan and Prof Tamizhannal Periakaruppan for 2009-10 and 2010-11, respectively. While Mahadevan is an internationally recognized scholar-researcher in epigraphy and former editor of Dinamani, Periakaruppan is revered as well as a popular scholar of literature. Mahadevan’s books The Indus Script: Texts, Concordance and Tables and Early Tamil Epigraphy published by the Harvard University in 2003 have been in use as authoritative foundational texts for a thorough understanding of the language and evolution. Periakaruppan had a more humble beginning, but rose in academic circles out of his passion for Tamil literature, especially of the Sangam era. They got cash awards of `5 lakh each, citation and shawl.
The Kural Peedam Award was given to Dr Jaroslav Vacek and John Ralston Marr for the same year. Marr could not come for the function due to health reasons.
Among the European scholars of Tamil language and literature, Vacek is certainly the most prominent. He’s spent a lifetime studying, researching and teaching at the Charles University, Prague, and is a devoted scholar of Sangam literature, Dravidian comparative grammar and Sanskrit linguistics. Both got `5 lakh and citation.
Pranab also handed over Kural Peedam awards of excellence to young scholars of Tamil, Dr T Suresh, Dr S Kalpana, Dr R Chandrasekaran, Dr Vaani Arivaalan and Dr C Muthamizhselvan for 2009-10; and to Dr T Sangayya, Dr A Jayakumar and Dr A Mani and Dr S Chidambaram and Dr K Sundarapandian for 2010-11.
Surprisingly, prominent ministers from the State, including Jayanti Natarajan, G K Vasan and Sudarshan Nachiappan, were absent. It seems the HRD ministry under whose aegis the awards, instituted by the Central Institute of Classical Tamil, are given failed to send the invites to the ministers, who have complained. As for Finance Minister P Chidambaram, he was also not present as he had flown off to the US earlier in the day.