Tamil Quotes
I should want to go home, like Fenella. I should be so tired of the shambles here, the obscurantism, the colour-prejudice, the laziness and ignorance, as to desire nothing better than a headship in a cold stone country school in England. But I love this country. I feel protective towards it. Sometimes just before dawn breaks, I feel that somehow I enclose it, contain it. I feel that it needs me. This is absurd, because snakes and scorpions are ready to bite me, a drunken Tamil is prepared to knife me, the Chinese in the town would like to spit at me, some day a Malay boy will run amok and try to tear me apart. But it doesn't matter. I want to live here; I want to be wanted. Despite the sweat, despite the fever, the prickly heat, the mosquitoes, the terrorists, the fools at the bar of the club, despite Fenella.
Anthony Burgess
Maula Bakhsh, a peasant, lives in Tamil Nadu and speaks Tamil. In Andhra Pradesh he speaks Telugu. In Bengal, his language is Bengali. Do we think of such a Muslim for whom I have invented the name Maula Bakhsh. Jinnah, Khaliquz Zaman, Maulana Azad, the Aga Khan, M. C. Chagla and the Raja of Mehmudabad... were Muslims. So was Hakku, the elderly grandmother of our locality. She prays 5 times a day. She was so deeply moved by one of Gandhi's speeches that she would repeat his name after Allah and His Prophet. At the age of 70, she stitched her own khadi kafan, because she did not want her body to be wrapped and then buried in a foreign cloth. So when people discuss India's Muslims, I wonder who are they talking about. Maula Bakhsh? Jinnah and Co.? Or Hakku?
Khwaja Ahmad Abbas
BBC Interviewer: Mr. Prime Minister, the introduction as Sinhalese as the official language by your government [Sri Lankan Government], appears to have damaged the good relations, which previously existed between Sinhalese and Tamils, how do you justify this act?
S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike: Well, when our country became independent, naturally the question aroused... of national language. superseding English as the official language of the country. Sinhalese, we decided upon, as the official language, because 70% of the people of Ceylon are Sinhalese. At the same time, we naturally realized that the Tamil minority had a language that was also old, very rich language, literature... so on, and therefore we decided, also, to give a reasonable use to the Tamil language, as a language of a national minority. In such matters, and education, examinations, and the public service, and so on: We fear that that is the fairest way, for a problem to be settled.
S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike