The BJP-led Centre’s portrayal of Tamil as the oldest Indian language amid its ongoing tussle with Tamil Nadu chief minister M.K. Stalin over the alleged imposition of Hindi does not have any factual basis and is solely aimed at deriving political mileage, according to several Sanskrit scholars.
While attending the Kashi Tamil Sangamam in Varanasi in November 2022, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had claimed that Tamil was the world’s oldest language. He has made similar assertions on several occasions since then.
The Centre is currently locked in an intense language row with Tamil Nadu, where the ruling DMK has been alleging the imposition of Hindi through the three-language formula under the National Education Policy, 2020.
While Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan has expressed disappointment over the state’s continued resistance to the NEP and denied allegations of “Hindi imposition”, Stalin has stood his ground on following the two-language policy — Tamil and English.
In a letter to Stalin on February 21, Pradhan had lauded the Tamil language as eternal and the Tamil culture as global, adding that the Centre had taken several initiatives to promote the language.
“It is a matter of national pride that the Tamil language is one of the oldest classical languages in the world and the oldest in India,” Pradhan had written.
Linguists and scholars of Sanskrit said there was no evidence to determine the antiquity of a language.
Panchanan Mohanty, a retired professor of linguistics at the University of Hyderabad, said it was scientifically impossible to establish the antiquity of any language, but records suggested that Sanskrit was older than Tamil.
“Whether Tamil is older than Toda, a tribal language of Tamil Nadu, or Sanskrit is older than Savara, a tribal language of Odisha, cannot be determined scientifically. A language exists in a spoken form before they are written down. Going by the record available, the literature available in Sanskrit is older than that of Tamil,” Mohanty said.
Most scholars maintain that Sangam literature, considered to be the oldest literature in Tamil, was written in the 3rd century BC. Astadhyayi, a Sanskrit treatise on grammar written by Panini, was produced in the 5th century BC.
Another linguist, who did not wish to be identified, said Tamil should have had an influence on Sanskrit if it was older. “But we do not see any evidence of that. On the contrary, we see many Sanskrit words being used in Tamil,” he said.
“The government knows that there is no conclusive evidence about the antiquity of Tamil or Sanskrit. Therefore, its statements are aimed at deriving political benefits,” he added.
Shrinivasa Varakhedi, a Sanskrit scholar and vice-chancellor of Central Sanskrit University in Delhi, said Sanskrit and Tamil were the oldest Indian languages but there was no evidence to prove which one was older.
“Rigveda being the undisputed oldest text admitted by eminent scholars internationally, Vedic Sanskrit has more weightage. Despite that, there is no clear evidence for the antiquity of classical Sanskrit or Tamil. We need to respect both the traditions equally. Both are the oldest Indian languages,” he said.
Sukhadeo Bhoi, a professor of Sanskrit Sahitya at Shri Lal Bahadur Shastri National Sanskrit University in New Delhi, said the Vedas were the oldest manuscripts to have been discovered in India. Tolkappiyam, the ancient Tamil treatise on grammar, poetics and rhetoric, came much later, he said.
“The Vedas are at least 5,000 years old literature,” Bhoi added.
