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The Hindu
5 days ago
- General
- The Hindu
Tara Murali, 75, passes away
Tara Murali, 75, architect and wife of N. Murali, Director of The Hindu Group of Publications and president of The Music Academy, passed away at their home in Chennai late in the evening of Saturday (July 26, 2025). She had been ailing for some time. She is survived by her husband, their son Krishna Murali, their daughter Kanta Murali, three grand-children, and her elder brother, Ramesh Pattabhiraman. Tara Murali was schooled at Sacred Heart Matriculation Higher Secondary School at Churchpark in Chennai, did her pre-university course at Stella Maris College, and took her Bachelor of Architecture ( degree at the School of Architecture and Planning, University of Madras. She had an active architectural practice over four decades and pursued public causes related to town planning, and environmental and consumer protection. Among the causes she has taken up were the conservation of Palani Hills, protection of heritage buildings including the Director General of Police's office, and Queen Mary's College. Thoroughly secular and modern in outlook, she had varied interests: music, literature, environment, heritage and consumer action. She served for several years as a Trustee of the Citizen Consumer and Civic Action Group (CAG), was a member of the Broadcast Complaints Council and INTACH governing council, and was active in book groups. She was President of the Tamil Nadu Table Tennis Association and also of the Table Tennis Players Welfare Association. She translated Ma. Po. Sivagnanam's Tamil book on Veerapandiya Kattabomman into English. The cremation will be at the Besant Nagar crematorium on Monday (July 28, 2025).
The Hindu
15-07-2025
- General
- The Hindu
12 govt. schools to get copies of The Hindu In School for academic year
The formal launch of the distribution of free copies of The Hindu In School, an initiative supported by the Manappuram Foundation, took place at their Valappad office on Tuesday. As part of the foundation's corporate social responsibility (CSR) efforts, the project was officially inaugurated by George De Das, CEO of the foundation. The project aims to encourage students to enhance their English language skills and better prepare themselves to meet the challenges of the future. In addition to The Hindu In School, participating schools will also receive copies of The Hindu YoungWorld and The Hindu In School Weekend tabloid, offering a well-rounded reading experience. Speaking on the occasion, Mr. Das stressed on the importance of reading newspapers, highlighting how it enriches students — especially in an era where classroom education and textbooks alone were not sufficient. He noted that activities like these played a vital role in fostering a more holistic learning experience. Suresh Kumar Pillai, general manager at The Hindu Group of Publications, enlightened the participants on how to read a newspaper and took them through the wide range of contents each of these specially curated publication for students covered. Silpa Tresa Sebastian, CSR Head at Manappuram Foundation, also underscored the significance of newspaper reading, emphasising its role in broadening perspectives, enhancing critical thinking, and keeping students well-informed about the world around them. Principals, teachers, and student representatives from the schools benefitting from the project attended the function.
The Hindu
17-06-2025
- General
- The Hindu
Delving into multiple layers of Tamil identity
The rich repository of Tamil heritage and culture has largely remained invisible to the wider world, said Nirmala Lakshman, Publisher and Chairperson of The Hindu Group of Publications, speaking at a discussion on her book The Tamils, at the Bangalore International Centre here. Ms. Lakshman described how it took her four years of multiple journeys across Tamil Nadu, studying, researching and listening to stories of people, to come up with the book. 'I spoke to epigraphists, historians, experts as well as ordinary people who generously shared their experiences, their sense of culture and tradition, and I discovered that multiple narratives coexisted,' she noted. It was during this journey, Ms. Lakshman said, that she realised how a large part of it still remained unknown to the larger world. 'Many expert voices had not been heard outside of Tamil Nadu and Tamil world which led me to realise that the wealth of knowledge of the rich repository of Tamil heritage and culture has not been visible to larger world, and the nuanced and better-informed reading of Tamil history and society as seen through their eyes could be highlighted in my book.' 'Through The Tamils, I hope to convey my personal insights to what I have learned about Tamil culture, history and literature to an audience of not just Tamil people, but also to non-Tamil speaking people everywhere,' she further added. Connection to roots The discussion, moderated by Ranvir Shah, founder of Prakriti Foundation, and introduced by Ramachandra Guha, writer and historian, delved into multiple aspects that have shaped the Tamil identity. 'The Tamil diaspora is as strong in Tamil as people in Tamil Nadu are. In places like Malaysia, there is a thirst to know more about one's roots,' said Ms. Lakshman, who further added that the research for the book was a journey of discovery for her too. According to her, Tamils, as with many other communities, are a complex demographic and carry with them a weight of history that goes back several millennia. Pointing out that there are about 90 million people across the world who identify themselves as Tamil, she recollected how, when she visited places like Malaysia, the diaspora there expressed a strong desire to know more about their roots, despite having migrated at least three generations ago. The essence 'In this book, I tried to find that Tamil essence as I weave through history and story, talking to a wide spectrum of people. So that in that sense it's an anecdotal and personal journey,' Ms. Lakshman remarked while further adding that today, a Tamil in Tamil Nadu is no more a Tamil than a Tamil in Malaysia or Sri Lanka or Canada.
The Hindu
14-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Hindu
Nirmala Lakshman to discuss ‘The Tamils' at BIC on June 17 )
Around 90 million-strong today, the community of Tamils is not only spread across India but is a growing global diaspora which hold on to their distinct cultural identity even as they fan out. Nirmala Lakshman, in her book The Tamils, chronicles the journey of this civilisation from the Stone Age and the Sangam era to the Bhakti movement and colonial history. On June 17, Ms. Lakshman, Publisher and Chairperson of The Hindu Group of Publications, will engage in a discussion on her book with Ranvir Shah, cultural activist, philanthropist and businessman, at the Bangalore International Centre (BIC). Ramachandra Guha, writer and historian, will do the introduction. The discussion will not only explore the themes of the book but also examine the Tamil identity in the 21st century, its evolution through intersections of caste, religion and gender, and how modernity and migration have given the culture newer meanings as the community across the globe continues to adapt and thrive. Ms. Lakshman, who founded and edited The Hindu Literary Review, conceptualised and created Young World, India's only children's newspaper supplement, and launched Lit for Life, The Hindu's annual literature festival. She is also the author of Degree Coffee by the Yard. Mr. Shah founded the Prakriti Foundation in 1998 with the idea of enlivening Chennai's cultural arena through scholarly discourses, multi-media events, experimental and protest cinema, music festivals and contemporary dance performances. Dr. Guha is a public intellectual whose research interests range from political and environmental history to cricket history. The programme begins at 6.30 p.m. and entry is free.
The Hindu
09-05-2025
- Politics
- The Hindu
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman reviews Nirmala Lakshman's book ‘The Tamils: A Portrait of a Community'
Nirmala Lakshman's new book The Tamils: A Portrait of a Community is considered more than just a political history of the community. It has been hailed as a layered effort to shine a spotlight on the epigraphy, archaeology, architecture and culture of the people from southern India whose recorded historical existence has been for more than a millennium. Lakshman is currently Publisher and Chairperson of The Hindu Group of Publications and was earlier Joint Editor of the paper. She founded and edited The Hindu Literary Review, conceptualised and created Young World, India's only children's newspaper supplement, and developed several other feature sections of The Hindu. She launched The Hindu's annual literature festival and continues to curate it. Lakshman has a PhD in postmodern fiction, and has written a book on Chennai, Degree Coffee by the Yard, and edited an anthology of contemporary Indian journalism, Writing a Nation. Among a slew of reviews on her latest book is one by the Finance Minister, Government of India, and senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader, Nirmala Sitharaman, who in 2025 created history by becoming the first person to table the union budget eight consecutive times. Sitharaman, in her article, in The Book Review, an India-based peer-reviewed academic journal covering reviews of books on various subjects, opens with a well-known character from Tamil literature — the Sangam poet, Avvaiyyar. 'Growing up, most Tamils including me, have read about the many Avvaiyyars — traditionally, elderly women who were wise counsels to kings. I fondly remember the story from the Madurai-Pazhani region, featuring the Avvai of the 'sutta pazham, sudadha pazham' fame, where Lord Murugan teaches Avvai about the richness of Tamil vocabulary with riddles and puns. However, what I didn't know and learned from The Tamils: A Portrait of a Community by Nirmala Lakshman is that there is an ongoing Avvai festival in the Viswanatha Swamy temple in Vedaranyam in Nagapattinam district, to celebrate the many Avvais of Tamil Nadu.' Sitharaman also mentions that Lakshman highlights another festival — the Meenpudi Thiruvizha, a celebration of people congregating to catch fish in the southern villages of Tamil Nadu. She however adds, that the classical examples that we associate with 'justice and fairness in the generational memory of the Tamil people is curiously missing' referring to King Manuneedhi Konda Cholan (250 BCE) but that Lakshman brings to life a lesser-known incident. 'This is about the Pallava King Mahendra Varman I (600-630 CE), who through his Sanskrit play Mattavilasa Prahasana critiques judicial corruption in a tongue-in-cheek way, through the character of the housemaid.' 'Such lucid stories colour Lakshman's approach to writing about the Tamils as a community. She does not saddle us with burdensome footnotes, instead concocting a rich and delightful mix of her field work, oral history, archaeological surveys, and vivid interviews with domain experts as well. While she chooses to arrange her book chronologically and with broad compartmentalisation, each chapter is also self-contained, making access to the book that much easier,' she says. 'In recent times, the Tamil mind has seen the geographical areas of the Moovvender — Cheras, Cholas, Pandyas — as distinctly separate. This could have come about either because of history books or due to regional affiliations. However, Lakshman is able to clearly tell us that these have been overlapping geographical territories where each of the kingdom's presence was distinctly seen and felt. This is because the Cheras, Cholas and Pandyas, had begun to establish their territories even during the Sangam era, although their days of glory came later in the early Common Era. Lakshman quotes historian KA Nilakanta Sastri on the fact that the pillars of Emperor Ashoka (270 BCE – 230 BCE) had referred to all three dynasties,' she says, adding that the book also traverses the coastline mentioning a ruined Buddhist vihara in Nagapattinam. Sitharaman however feels that the vacuum of about 300 years of post-Sangam history could have been better explored given that Lakshman is a journalist-historian. However, she adds, 'The author does well to highlight the principle of fairness in Queen Sembian Mahadevi's treatment of her arch rivals. The pride of India—the ancient Chola bronzes—are thanks to this great queen's patronage.' Sithraman then discusses how the Tamil society continued to evolve itself. 'In 1939, Vaidyanatha Iyer, a Gandhian, and Muthuramalinga Thevar, a close friend of Subhash Chandra Bose, took Dalits to enter the Madurai Meenakshi Temple. This was a watershed moment in social justice in 20th century Tamil political history. Disappointingly, this hardly finds a mention in this book. The circumstances, the fallout, and consolidation of reform in Tamilakam outside the Dravidian Movement (then Justice Party, and later Dravidar Kazhagam) is given short shrift.' She delves into how Lakshman has brought the social justice question up to date with the mention of the Vengaivayal water tank case. 'Now, looking back, even after 90 years, social justice has not improved — on the contrary, bitter incidents mark the social fabric. Some of these, like the Vengaivayal water tank case have been captured by Lakshman in her book. More coverage of alternative voices with diverse perspectives on such matters of social justice would have given a fairer picture.' She rounds it off with, 'Despite these flags, author Nirmala Lakshman's book is an extraordinary attempt which carefully gathers little and large events of Tamil Nadu's hoary history. She manages to traverse a wide spectrum of the lived social, political, and cultural realities of a people over a couple of millennia. This is no easy feat.' Courtesy: The Book Review
