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Tamil Renaissance
Tamil Renaissance refers to the literary, cultural, social reform and political movements that took place in the Tamil-speaking districts of Southern India starting in the second half of the 19th century and lasting to the culmination of the anti-Hindi agitations of the 1960s. The period was characterized by a literary revival, spearheaded by Tamil writers of two different factions. One preferred an increased mixture of Sanskrit words with Tamil, believing that such a fusion raised the quality of Tamil language. The other faction favored reducing Sanskrit words to the barest minimum, in the belief that Sanskrit-origin words made the Tamil language lose its individuality. Rapid propagation of Western ideas and formulation of the Dravidian civilization theory during the second half of the 19th century inculcated a sense of pride in educated Tamils, eventually leading to the birth of Tamil nationalism, which inspired the Dravidian movement. Beginnings When the British Crown took ...
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Anti-Hindi Agitations
The anti-Hindi agitations in Tamil Nadu have been ongoing intermittently in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu (formerly Madras State and part of Madras Presidency) since the early 20th century. The agitations involve several mass protests, riots, student and political movements in Tamil Nadu concerning the official status of Hindi in the state. The Anti-Hindi agitation of 1937–40, first agitation was launched in 1937, to protest the introduction of compulsory teaching of Hindi in the schools of Madras Presidency by the first Indian National Congress (INC) government led by C. Rajagopalachari. This faced immediate opposition by Periyar E. V. Ramasamy, "Periyar" E. V. Ramasamy, Soma Sundara Bharathiyar and the opposition Justice Party (India), Justice Party. The three-year-long agitation was multifaceted and involved Fasting, fasts, conferences, marches, picketing and protests. Government crackdown resulted in the deaths of two protesters and the arrests of 1,198 persons ...
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Subramania Siva
Subramaniya Siva (4 October 1884 – 23 July 1925) was an Indian freedom fighter, writer and pure Tamil movement activist during the Indian independence movement. Life Subramaniya Siva was born in a Tamil Brahmin Iyer family at Batlagundu near Dindigul in erstwhile Madurai district of Madras presidency. He was born to Rajam Iyer. He joined the Indian freedom movement in 1908. In 1908, he was arrested by the British and was the first political prisoner in Madras jail. While serving a prison term, he was afflicted by leprosy and was shifted to Salem jail. Since leprosy was regarded as a contagious disease, the British authorities forbade him to travel by rail after his release and hence he was forced to travel on foot. He continued to fight for independence and was incarcerated many times until 1922. He was the author of the journal ''Gnanabhanu'' and books ''Ramanuja Vijayam'' and ''Madhva Vijayam''. He eventually succumbed to leprosy on 23 July 1925. Pure Tamil Movement ...
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Subrahmanya Bharathy
Subramania Bharati (Born Chinnaswami Subramaniyan; 11 December 1882 – 11 September 1921) was an Indian writer, poet, journalist, teacher, Indian independence activist, social reformer and polyglot. He was bestowed the title ''Bharati'' for his poetry and was a pioneer of modern Tamil poetry. He is popularly known by his title ''Bharati'' or ''Bharathiyaar'' and also by the other title "Mahakavi Bharati" ("the great poet Bharati"). His works included patriotic songs composed during the Indian Independence movement. He fought for the emancipation of women, against child marriage, opposed the caste system, and advocated reforms of the society and religion. Born in Ettayapuram of Tirunelveli district (present-day Thoothukudi) in 1882, Bharati had his early education in Tirunelveli. He later lived in Varanasi for sometime where he was exposed to Hindu theology and new languages. He worked as a journalist with many newspapers, including '' Swadesamitran'', ''The Hindu'', ''Bala Bh ...
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Samuel Vedanayagam Pillai
Samuel Vedanayagam Pillai (1826–1889), also known as Mayavaram Vedanayagam Pillai was an Indian civil servant, Tamil poet, novelist and social worker who is remembered for the authorship of '' Prathapa Mudaliar Charithram'' (1879), recognized as the "first modern Tamil novel". Vedanayagam's ideals of women's liberation and education are reflected in the novel. Early life Vedanayagam Pillai was born on 11 October 1826 in Inam Kulathur, a village in present-day Tiruchirappalli district to Arockia Mariammal and Savarimuthu Pillai, both of whom were Catholics. His father was his first tutor and later he learned Tamil and English under a tutor named Thayagaraja Pillai. On completing his education, Vedanayagam joined the judicial court of Trichinopoly as record keeper and soon was elevated as a translator. He learnt Sanskrit, French and Latin during his tenure and then cleared his law exams. Literary works He became the District Munsiff of Mayuram (now Mayiladuthurai) and serv ...
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Puthumaipithan
C. Viruthachalam (25 April 1906 – 30 June 1948), better known by the pseudonym Pudhumaipithan (also spelt as Pudumaipithan or Puthumaippiththan), was one of the most influential and revolutionary writers of Tamil fiction. His works were characterized by social satire, progressive thinking and outspoken criticism of accepted conventions. Contemporary writers and critics found it difficult to accept his views and his works were received with extreme hostility. He as an individual and his works have been extensively reviewed and debated for over sixty years since his death. His influence has been accepted and appreciated by the present day writers and critics of Tamil fiction. In 2002, the Government of Tamil Nadu nationalised the works of Pudumaippithan. Life and career Pudhumaipithan was born in Thiruppadirippuliyur (Cuddalore district). His early education was obtained in places like Gingee, Kallakurichi and Tindivanam. He completed his Bachelor of Arts degree from Tirunelveli ...
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Kalki Sadasivam
Thiagaraja Sadasivam (4 September 1902 – 21 November 1997), better known as Kalki Sadasivam, was an Indian freedom fighter, singer, journalist and film producer who was one of the founders, along with Kalki Krishnamurthy of the Tamil magazine Kalki. He is well known as the husband of famous classical carnatic singer M.S. Subbulakshmi. Life Kalki Sadasivam was born in a Tamil Brahmin family on 4 September 1902 at Aangarai in Tiruchirapalli District, the third of 16 children of Tyagarajan and Mangalam Iyer. His maternal uncle was Aswathy Narayanan Iyer. Impressed by the fiery speeches and writings of Lala Lajpat Rai, Bipin Chandra Pal, Lokamanya Tilak and Aurobindo Ghosh, Kalki Sadasivam joined the freedom movement at an early age and being a disciple of Subramaniya Siva desired to kill an Englishman and court imprisonment for the sake of it. As a result, he quit school and enlisted in the Bharata Samaj, serving Subramaniya Siva, who was afflicted with leprosy and ar ...
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Kalki Krishnamurthy
Ramaswamy Krishnamurthy (9 September 1899 – 5 December 1954), better known by his pen name Kalki, was an Indian writer, journalist, poet, critic and Indian independence activist who wrote in Tamil. He chose the pen-name "Kalki", the future incarnation of the Hindu God Vishnu. He founded a magazine, which was also named ''Kalki'', with T Sadasivam being the co-founder, in 1941. Krishnamurthy‘s writings include over 120 short stories, 10 novellas, 5 novels, 3 historical romances, editorial and political writings and hundreds of film and music reviews. Early life Ramaswamy Krishnamurthy was born in a Poor Tamil Brahmin Iyer family on 9 September 1899 in Puthamangalam, near Manalmedu, in Mayiladuthurai district in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Krishnamurthy's father was Ramaswamy Aiyar, an accountant in Puttamangalam village in the old Tanjore district of erstwhile Madras Presidency. He began his primary education in his village school and later attended Municipal High Scho ...
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Ashokamitran
Ashokamitran (22 September 1931 – 23 March 2017) was the pen name of Jagadisa Thyagarajan, an Indian writer regarded as one of the most influential figures in post-independent Tamil literature. He began his prolific literary career with the prize-winning play "Anbin Parisu" and went on to author more than two hundred short stories, and a dozen novellas and novels. A distinguished essayist and critic, he was the editor of the literary journal "Kanaiyaazhi". He has written over 200 short stories, nine novels, and some 15 novellas besides other prose writings. Most of his works have also been translated into English and other Indian languages, including Hindi, Malayalam, and Telugu. Life Born in Secunderabad in 1931, Ashokamitran spent the first 20 years of his life there. His real name was Jagadisa Thyagarajan. He moved to Chennai in 1952 after the death of his father, following an invitation from his father's friend, the film director S.S.Vasan to come work at Vasan's Gemini ...
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Sivaramakrishna Chandrasekhar
Sivaramakrishna Chandrasekhar FNA, FRS (6 August 1930 – 8 March 2004) was an Indian physicist who won the Royal Medal in 1994. He was the founder-president of the International Liquid Crystal Society. Chandrasekhar was born on 6 August 1930 at Kolkata, to (sister of C.V. Raman) and . He received his MSc degree in physics with first rank from Nagpur University in 1951. Subsequently, he joined the Raman Research Institute (RRI), Bangalore to work for his doctoral degree in physics under the guidance of his maternal uncle, C. V. Raman. The main topic of his research was related to optical rotatory dispersion measurements on several crystals. He received the D Sc degree from Nagpur University in 1954. Then he went to the Cavendish Laboratory on an 1851 Exhibition Scholarship and obtained a second doctorate degree from Cambridge University mainly for his work on the corrections for extinction in neutron and X-ray scattering from crystals. His subsequent postdoctoral work ...
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Venki Ramakrishnan
Venkatraman Ramakrishnan (born 1952) is a British-American structural biologist. He shared the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Thomas A. Steitz and Ada Yonath for research on the structure and function of ribosomes. Since 1999, he has worked as a group leader at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus, UK and is a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. He served as President of the Royal Society from 2015 to 2020. Education and early life Ramakrishnan was born in 1952 in Chidambaram in Cuddalore district of Tamil Nadu, India. His parents, Prof. C. V. Ramakrishnan and Prof. Rajalakshmi Ramakrishnan were both scientists, and his father was head of the department of biochemistry at the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda. At the time of his birth, Ramakrishnan's father was away from India doing postdoctoral research with David E. Green at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in the US. Ramakrish ...
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Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (; 19 October 1910 – 21 August 1995) was an Indian Americans, Indian-American theoretical physicist who made significant contributions to the scientific knowledge about the structure of stars, stellar evolution and black holes. He was awarded the 1983 Nobel Prize in Physics along with William Alfred Fowler, William A. Fowler for theoretical studies of the physical processes of importance to the structure and evolution of the stars. His mathematical treatment of stellar evolution yielded many of the current theoretical models of the later evolutionary stages of massive stars and black holes. Many concepts, institutions and inventions, including the Chandrasekhar limit and the Chandra X-ray Observatory, Chandra X-Ray Observatory, are named after him. Chandrasekhar worked on a wide variety of problems in physics during his lifetime, contributing to the contemporary understanding of stellar structure, white dwarfs, stellar dynamics, stochastic process, r ...
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Gopalswamy Doraiswamy Naidu
G. D. Naidu (Gopalaswamy Doraiswamy Naidu) (23 March 1893 – 4 January 1974) was an Indian inventor and engineer who is referred to as the "Thomas Edison, Edison of India" and "the wealth creator of Coimbatore". He is credited with the manufacture of the first electric motor in India. His contributions were primarily industrial but also spanned the fields of electrical, mechanical, agricultural (hybrid cultivation) and automobile engineering. Naidu developed an independently internal combustion four stroke engine. He had only primary education but excelled as a versatile genius. He is also known as "Miracle Man". Personal life G.D. Naidu was born at Kalangal, Coimbatore on 23 March 1893 in Madras Presidency, British India. He was the son of a farmer. His childhood years were spent getting in trouble at school. He disliked attending All classes. Early life Naidu obtained work as a waiter, server in a hotel in Coimbatore with the intention of saving money to buy a motorcyc ...
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