The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : ``Tamil-German relation has a lot for research''

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Aug 19, 2006

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

``Tamil-German relation has a lot for research''

Staff reporter

Meet organised by Max Mueller Bhavan

INDO-GERMAN CONNECTION: (From right) Gabriele Landwehr, director, Max Mueller Bhavan, M. S. Ananth, director, IIT-Madras, Birgit Kuhlmann from German Consulate, Anand Amaladass, director, Satya Nilayam, Gita Dharampal-Frick of South Asia Institute, H eidelberg, and S. Muthiah, historian at a conference organised by the Goethe Institute, Max Mueller Bhavan on Wednesday. — PHOTO: R. Shivaji Rao

CHENNAI : India's German connection dates back to the days nearly 500 years ago, when the first German was said to have entered the country.

The Goethe Institute, Max Mueller Bhavan, Chennai, organised a conference to look into Germans' cultural encounters in south India since then.

Inaugurating the three-day conference here on Wednesday, M. S. Ananth, director, IIT-Madras, recalled the Indo-German agreement signed in 1959 for the establishment of the Indian Institute of Technology at Madras.

Of the Indian Institutes of Technology, IIT-Madras is the only one that is in regular touch with the country that helped found it, Professor Ananth said.

S. Muthiah, editor, Madras Musings, spoke on the Tamil-German connection with a particular reference to contributions of Bartholomaeus Ziegenbalg , who came to India in 1706. Ziegenbalg was responsible for re-introducing printing in India, he said. Ziegenbalg was also a Tamil scholar who did a lot of translation work during his stay at Tranquebar, then a small Danish colony near Nagapattinam.

Gita Dharampal-Frick of the South Asia Institute, Heidelberg, said a close analysis of Ziegenbalg's proto-ethnographic treatises gave a contrastive view of Indian societal ordering. "Despite their inevitable missionary bias, it represents an early example of oral history," she said.

C. S. Mohanavelu, who spoke on Thursday, highlighted German observations of how Hindu festivals were celebrated a few years ago. He said the Tamil-German connection had a "fathomless fascination" which offered a wide scope for research.

The conference concluded with a series of lectures on Friday.

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