Fish hunting festivals are happening after a long gap in Tamil Nadu. Just as good rains and farming are related, brimming lakes and ponds is directly related to fish population in them. Tamils welcome crop harvest as an auspicious day. They celebrate many festivals dedicated to farming. There...
Divya, Priya and Dharshini, three children from Avadi Narikuravar colony, met chief minister M K Stalin recently and asked that the government arrange basic facilities in their settlement. Stalin assured them of help. Two days after the students met Stalin, officials visited the settlement and...
Narikuravar have a tradition: they will not stay anywhere outside their own dwellings in the night. This is a community rule that narikuravar folk don't violate. Even children are not exempt from this rule. Three narikuravar men broke that rule when they spent 15 days in jail for agitating for...
Karthik Kumar is a pioneer in Tamil standup comedy. Among the earliest to lampoon and satirize stereotypes, identities and sacred cows standing alone on a stage, Karthik Kumar strongly defends Chris Rock's artistic freedom. In an interview to inmathi.com, he says Tamil comedy has come of age,...
The recent TN budget promised to make Jain, Buddhist religious sites in Tamil Nadu world-class tourist centers. These sites now have poor access, have little or no facilities. Jainism was once popular across today’s Tamil Nadu. The abandoned and neglected Jain monuments across the state stand...
The word dalit is commonly used especially by the English media to refer to people belonging to Scheduled Castes. Groups that are at the lowest rung of the caste system have been categorized as Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, as per the Indian Constitution. The oppressed, the...
Ancient Tamil trade guilds were so powerful that they founded cities, executed irrigation projects, triggered town planning and influenced the foreign policy of kings. For instance, Srivijaya’s king Sang Rama Vijaya Tungga Varman would have never imagined Tamil traders could cause so much...
Writer, activist and politician, Salma is a thoughtful chronicler of the position of women in society, man-woman relationships, as well as the Muslim community and its mores. In an interview to inmathi.com, Salma talks about the hijab controversy. In its ruling on the Karnataka government order...
Ranjan, the star of the Tamil cinema of 1940s, was a multi-faceted personality that dwarfed all other hero wannabes. Kollywood was going to be under his thumb in the years to come, prophesied his growing ranks of fans and movie buffs. But fate had thought otherwise. The lesser mortals of his...
Mud horses continue to be a mode of worship at village festivals. Tamil country is full of folk arts. Many of these art forms have declined because of the poverty that artists face, lack of patronage, and urbanization. Some are on the verge of disappearance. Some have disappeared without any...
