SLI Lecture: Tamil Culture, A Curtain Raiser

SLI Lecture: TAMIL CULTURE: A CURTAIN RAISER

Date: 18^th October 2016, Tuesday

Time: 10 a.m. to 12 noon

Summary: The Tamils contributed significantly to the fabric of Indian culture with a continuity of over 2000 years. The major fields fall under all the three major areas of creative expressions, literature, fine arts and performing arts, mostly form a religio-spiritual angle typical to the Indian sub-continent.  Such complex web would not be easily understood by those who have not been brought up in this tradition or even those who have been brought up without the awareness of the arts, music or literature. An attempt during this occasion would be made to demystify the culture of the Tamils by profiling the emergence of their literature, arts and music during this lecture.

Speaker: Prof. Swaminathan. S. Swaminathan was born in Pudukkottai, Tamilnadu in 1940. After qualifying as a Mechanical Engineer, he worked as a professor in Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi for more than 30 years.

Realizing that Indian youth have an inadequate understanding of their local heritage, Swaminathan decided to acquaint the students of IIT-Delhi with various aspects of Indian culture. The topics he begun to research and explore were Indian music, Sanskrit, ancient Tamil literature, Tamil prosody, development of scripts, Gandhian philosophy, etc. He has authored books on Mahabalipuram monuments and Ajanta caves.

As an activist, he has participated in and initiated a number of socially relevant projects. Among other projects, he co-founded Tamil Heritage Group in Chennai which has for over 5 years now been organizing significant talks and events to promote Tamil heritage. He was also instrumental in setting up a Centre for Arts and Culture, called Sudharsanam, in Pudukkottai, his native place.