Living Tamil
இந்தப் பக்கத்தை தமிழில் வாசிக்க: வாழும் தமிழ்
Living Tamil: Living Tamil is a worldwide literary organization established by a fraternity of readers of modern Tamil literature. Its mission is to introduce Tamil literature to the next generation of readers and to present Tamil literary works and their authors to the world.
Beginning
The Living Tamil Literary Organization began as an idea to organize a literary festival that would introduce modern Tamil literature to the next generation of diaspora children and readers from other languages. The name Living Tamil was adopted from an initiative undertaken by Canada-based Tamil writer Kalam Selvam, who had been working for thirty years to promote Tamil writing in exile.
The first Living Tamil Literature Festival was planned for New York in 3 andd 4 of April 2026, bringing together a fraternity of readers. The initiative gradually grew into a movement, and the participants decided to establish it as a permanent, worldwide organization. In 25 March 2026, the organization was announced at a press conference in New Delhi by its delegates.
Following the success of the New York festival, the next festival was planned for London on September 11 and 12, 2027. Various committees were formed to organize the festival, and an overarching organization was established to bring them together. The Living Tamil Literary Organization was formally announced on September 26, 2026, through the launch of its official website.
The structure
The parent organization of Living Tamil is the Vishnupuram Literary Circle, established in 2010. Through its sustained literary activities over the years, the Circle has brought together a large community of readers from across the world.
The Living Tamil Literary Organization has established a structured worldwide fraternity of readers and writers committed to promoting modern Tamil literature and bringing it to a global audience. It has an advisory board comprising 30 honorary members from countries across the world, including Australia, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, India, Sri Lanka, Canada, the Netherlands, Austria, Sweden, South Korea, the UAE, the UK, and the USA.
It has an executive committee consisting of 28 young members from various countries around the world. It also has a general body of members.
Agenda
Living Tamil has four major objectives in its agenda:
- Organizing the Living Tamil Literature Festival every year,
- Presenting the Living Tamil Award for World Literature annually.
- Conducting literary workshops and meetings around the world
- Publishing South Bound Review, a magazine dedicated to modern literature.
Motto
Living Tamil is a purely cultural organization dedicated to promoting Tamil literature and, in a broader sense, South Indian literature. It has no political affiliations or political agenda, though its members are free to hold their own political beliefs.
The fraternity believes that Tamil and South Indian literature possess a unique character, shaped by their independent paths of development. They have evolved largely without the support of governments, academic institutions, or other cultural organizations. Instead, they have grown through little magazines, each often shaped by its own distinct aesthetic and philosophical commitments.
Because of this particular mode of development, Tamil and other South Indian literatures have not received adequate recognition within mainstream Indian literature, which has largely been shaped by Indian English writing and supported by governments, educational institutions, and political and cultural organizations.
The dream of Living Tamil is to bring the distinctive qualities and aesthetics of modern Tamil literature to the attention of readers across the world, and to establish its rightful place in the wider landscape of Indian and global literature.
Mode of Functioning
The Vishnupuram Literary Circle has developed a democratic and decentralized mode of functioning that has proved successful over the past twenty years. Living Tamil follows the same approach.
Although the organization has a trust to manage its financial affairs, it has no formal positions such as president, secretary, or other office-bearers. Everyone contributes according to their ability and takes responsibility for their assigned duties. A person who takes responsibility for a particular activity brings together and coordinates others to organize it.
Writer Jeyamohan is the visionary and leading figure of this movement, and its members are largely readers of his works. However, there is no central control over the cultural and literary organizations that operate as branches of the movement. Each functions independently, guided by a shared commitment to its literary and cultural objectives.
The entire movement is sustained by donations from its own fraternity. Every event is organized in an extremely minimalist manner, with careful attention to expenses. As a result, the movement has never depended on large sums of money to sustain its activities.
This decentralized structure, based on voluntary participation, shared responsibility, and collective commitment, is one of the greatest strengths of the organization.
The Dream
The Living Tamil fraternity believes in idealism rather than ideology. Literature itself is an idealism that finds expression through its aesthetics. In a world often described as postmodern, large institutions such as governments, political parties, and educational institutions are waging a kind of assault on the aesthetic values of literature, reducing it to a mere instrument for their own purposes. Various dubious analytical methods and theories have been developed and widely propagated to support this tendency. In fact, this amounts to an assault on the very phenomenon of literature itself.
The fraternity believes that literature is fundamentally a critique of life, an expression of the subconscious through language, and a process of defining and redefining culture. Reading is not merely an act of decoding or deconstructing, as some forms of pseudo-philosophical literary criticism suggest. Rather, it is an experience of living a narrated life and deriving emotions and knowledge from it.
Literature is a dream enacted in language, and the reader is a co-dreamer rather than a spectator or researcher. The Living Tamil fraternity believes in the pleasure of reading and the wisdom that can be derived from it. Living Tamil is an organic readers’ movement committed to upholding the fundamental values of literature.
References
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