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Title: Need to make Tamil as one of the official languages of India and to set up Indian National Institute of Epigraphy in Chennai, Tamil Nadu.
SHRI R. THAMARAISELVAN (DHARMAPURI): The Government of Tamil Nadu has successfully organized the first edition of the historic World Classical Tamil Conference in Coimbatore in the month of June, 2010. The conference adopted resolution to make ‘Tamil’ one of the official languages of the country. The World Classical Tamil Conference laid emphasis that the Classical language Tamil should be made the official language of the centre. The Conference also adopted a resolution to recognize and accept Tamil as an official language in Madras High Court and cited that in 2006, an unanimous resolution was adopted in the Tamil Nadu assembly that Tamil should be the language of use in Madras High Court and it was sent to the Union Government with the recommendations of the Governor and Chief Justice of Madras High Court. The State Government of Tamil Nadu has urged the Centre to sanction sufficient funds for research and development of Tamil language on par with those allocated for Sanskrit. It has also proposed to set up the ‘Indian National Institute of Epigraphy’ in Chennai since around one lakh epigraphical representations in all Indian languages have been identified so far and out of these, 60,000 are in Tamil language and the Centre has planned to set up a National Epigraphy Institute. The conference reaffirmed the demand and proposed National Epigraphy Institute be set up in Chennai. The conference has also unanimously demanded the Centre to work out a detailed plan for taking up ocean archaeology research for Kumari Continent and Popompuhar buried in the ocean. I, therefore, urge upon the Government to consider the above said resolutions adopted at the conference.