From script to language: the three identities of ‘Arabic-Tamil’
Since at least the eighteenth century, Muslims in southern India and Sri Lanka have been employing the Arabic script to record Tamil texts. Popularly known as ‘Arabic-Tamil’ or ‘Arwi’, this practice has been evaluated in widely divergent manners. While to some, ‘Arabic-Tamil’ is primarily a term res...
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| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Article (Journal) |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2018
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| In: |
South Asian history and culture
Year: 2018, Volume: 9, Issue: 1, Pages: 16-37 |
| ISSN: | 1947-2501 |
| DOI: | 10.1080/19472498.2017.1411052 |
| Online Access: | Verlag, lizenzpflichtig, Volltext: https://doi.org/10.1080/19472498.2017.1411052
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| Author Notes: | Torsten Tschacher |
| Summary: | Since at least the eighteenth century, Muslims in southern India and Sri Lanka have been employing the Arabic script to record Tamil texts. Popularly known as ‘Arabic-Tamil’ or ‘Arwi’, this practice has been evaluated in widely divergent manners. While to some, ‘Arabic-Tamil’ is primarily a term reserved for the use of the Arabic script to record Tamil, others perceive it as a different style of Tamil, or even as a completely separate language. Whereas Tamil nationalist discourse has identified ‘Arabic-Tamil’ as a danger to the unity of the Tamil nation, some Muslims celebrate it as the symbol of a separate identity, while yet others lament that ‘Arabic-Tamil’ fails to provide a clean break with Tamil as used by non-Muslims. Even more puzzling is the fact that before the twentieth century, most ‘Arabic-Tamil’ records fail to identify themselves as anything else but ‘Tamil’. This article traces complex histories attaching to the idea of ‘Arabic-Tamil’ to uncover the historical situated-ness of the term and show how it has been linked to political discourses and processes of identity formation throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. |
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| Item Description: | Published online: 20 Dec 2017 Gesehen am 02.11.2023 |
| Physical Description: | Online Resource |
| ISSN: | 1947-2501 |
| DOI: | 10.1080/19472498.2017.1411052 |