The Hindu Lit for Life 2025: Nirmala Lakshman on ‘Tamils: A Portrait of a Community’

The Hindu Lit for Life 2025: Nirmala Lakshman on ‘Tamils: A Portrait of a Community’

The Tamil Sangam poet, Cittalai Cattanar, wrote: “It looks like a skilled man’s work of art, this Jasmine country.” In the session titled ‘This Jasmin Country’, Dr. Nirmala Lakshman, Chairperson, The Hindu Group, discussed her latest book, The Tamils: A Portrait of a Community, with dancer and choreographer Anita Ratnam. The book is a part of a series brought out by the Aleph Book Company, portraying different communities in India, and was edited by David Davidar.  

Dr. Ratnam introduced the book about a community of 90 million people as a “reminder of the great and complex heritage called Tamilakam as well as a message to the Hindi heartland that south India is far from a monolith.” The Tamil people have given India — and the world — scientists, revolutionaries, political leaders, scholars, artists, industrialists, sportspersons, and Nobel Prize winners. Spread across the world now, the Tamils have left an inedible mark in every field. But who are the Tamils? What is the Tamil gunam or identity?  

Written over five years, Dr. Lakshman’s book draws from a wealth of historical information, painstaking research, her own keen observations of the community, and detailed interviews, to explore the history and culture of the Tamil people over centuries. She also weaves in her own personal story into the narrative. As she was educated in English, and learned Hindi in school, Dr. Lakshman said her mother insisted that she have a Tamil teacher at home. “But we always had the consciousness of being Tamil,” she said. 

Dr. Lakshman begins her book from the Stone Age and travels quickly to the Sangam Age. If she were ever given the choice to live in another period, she said she would happily choose the Sangam period. “I have a passion for poetry. A.K. Ramanujan’s translations of Sangam poetry are not just about love and nature, but also war and heroism. They also convey the harsh realities of life, which are also contemporary in nature,” she said. 

Dr. Ratnam said Dr. Lakshman’s book has not just focused on the “glorious periods of the Pallavas, Pandyas, Cholas, and Cheras”, but also brought out the “inequities, violence, and atrocities of those periods.” She asked Dr. Lakshman about the thriving Jain community of the time. Speaking of her multiple visits to Sittanavasal, a small hamlet in the Pudukkottai district of Tamil Nadu, Dr. Lakshman recalled the beauty of the faded paintings on the ceilings, much like in Ajanta, and said it transformed her idea of what Jainism is.

The book equally talks of a syncretic region. Dr. Ratnam said the book explores the multistrands of faith: Vedic religion, the Bhakti movement, Jainism, Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. “Tamilakam was always a welcoming and accommodative region,” explained Dr. Lakshman. “There was a Tamil spirit of being open to diverse cultures and adapting to them, adopting them, and making them their own. Nothing was lost, but a lot was gained.” As an example, she spoke of Muslim traders. “Some of the finest scholarship on Tamil literature came from Tamil Muslim scholars. They were Tamil by birth and Muslim by faith,” she said.  

Dr. Lakshman explained how there was a peaceful movement to Islam. “A lot of traders married women on the western coast. Subsequently, they settled along the coast.” For these portions, she said she was assisted by the academic and documentary filmmaker Kombai Anwar and scholar Raja Mohamad in Tiruchy.