Coimbatore: The $6 million (approximately Rs 40 crore) endowment fund needed to set up a Tamil chair at Harvard University has been collected and given to the university, said T A Vetriselvan, the US-based global coordinator of ‘Tamil Chair Inc’, which had taken up the cause to collect the fund.
Vetrislevan, who was in the city on Wednesday to give a lecture on ‘Tamil in World Nations’ at Bharathiar University, added that the process to form a team to search for a professor for the chair would begin soon.
He said the endowment fund would ensure the permanent presence of the Tamil chair at Harvard University. “The university would form an international team to search for an able and deserving candidate for the chair,” he said.
As Harvard has been ranked the best university in the world, the Tamil chair there would ensure that the knowledge from Tamil would be taken to the world, he said. “A research paper published on yoga by the university had ensured that global attention fell on the subject. Likewise, research papers on Tamil would gain similar attention to it,” he said.
Vetriselvan said in addition to Harvard, Stony Brook University in New York, University of Toronto and University of Houston have approved to host a Tamil chair. “Besides, we are holding talks with Oxford, Cambridge and Durban universities for setting up Tamil chairs. So far, the responses have been positive,” he said.
The Tamil Nadu government had last year donated Rs 10 crore towards the setting up of the Tamil chair at Harvard. The state minister for Tamil language, culture and archaeology, K Pandiarajan, said the state would support the setting up of Tamil chair at Oxford, Cambridge and Durban universities, Vetriselvan said.
Vetriselvan added there should be inter-disciplinary researches in Tamil, if it has to be relevant globally. “Tamil researchers should learn at least one other classical language so that they can do comparative studies,” he said.
S Chitra, associate professor, department of Tamil, Bharathiar University, said when the Harvard Tamil chair is in place, it should sign a memorandum of understanding with universities such as Bharathiar University so that the research done here could be taken globally. Head of the Tamil department D Gnanasekaran was also present at the event.
