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Bala Pillai, born in Seremban, Malaysia, in 1958, is a self- made genius. This mult-dimensioned humanist is one of the pioneers in the Tamil internet world. Recently, Sethu, host of the popular Tamilnadu TV talkshow, Naiyandi Durbar, crowned Bala "INaiya Himayam". He is the founder of http://www.tamil.net, http://www.malaysia.net, and http://www.sydney.net.

Presently Bala is working on networking Tamils around the globe though his Erumbugal e-group. Bala has worked and lived in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; Charlottesville, Virginia,Boston, Massachusetts, Singapore, Toronto, Canada, Brussels, Belgium and Hongkong .Presently based in Sydney, Bala plays Senior management roles in banking, finance, financial technology, and media.

Bala talks about his dream of establishing Tamildom in his exclusive interview with Nilacharal.
- Nila



Do you think Tamils are in the right path in taking the language forward?
They should take Tamil forward but they are not in the right path in doing it. I will explain. 10 years from now, we can expect the world to have solved most of the technical problems with connecting minds worldwide, just as there are little tech problems with TV now. So that means a wirelessed or a wired halls without walls. International conversation is the same price as local conversation and I'd say there's a 90% chance that politicians would have succumbed to the pressure so that villages in Tamil areas in the world, Tamilnadu in particular are wirelessed.

People would have figured out that the value of brains and their output is higher than the cost of a computer and ongoing wireless charges, like TV now.

But how do these changes affect Tamil language?
The problems then will be in communication. It is already quite obvious to many of us now. Weaknesses in interpersonal relations, in conflict resolution, in networking, in talking precisely.

Do you think Tamils are weak in these areas?
Yes, in being able to deconstruct abstracts and aggregate specifics. In sharing feelings freely just as the birds in the sky do, Tamils are weak. Most Tamils are not good in writing/comprehending in any language compared to native English speakers.

What do you think is the reason for this?
The shift from Tamil to English caused a drop in Tamil comprehension standards and Tamil vocabulary and most Tamils who use English know it in rather narrow confines - technical people are notorious for their tunnel vision.

Do you think we should insist on Tamil as the medium of study?
Yes - Tamil should be compulsory. I am talking about Tamil as a language. Everybody in Tamilnadu should be proficient in Tamil and more importantly great effort should be made to make Tamil a practical language at our fingertips. We should know how to say "risk-taking", "dating" etc in Tamil. We should be able to discuss today's issues, economic issues, occupational issues, liberal arts issues, civil society issues, sweat capital in Tamil.. We should look to the vibrance of the creative Sangam ages and bring back some of the vocabulary that has fallen out of use. The root words are there.

Much of Tamilnadu's education has been geared to produce people for the offshore tech koolie market. We shouldn't take this market for granted. One can't assume that those tech jobs will always be there. If you ask me it is not good strategy to rely on an overseas market so much. Right now that's exactly the problem and really if Tamilnadu had its act together and there were plentiful challenging jobs there itself less people would go overseas. So we have to develop the services sector and people make a sector

How do you think tamil medium will help this cause?
To be good communicators, cooperators and group workers we have to understand each other. We have to know some about all kinds of fields. We shouldn't be tunnel-visioned. We should know there are other perpectives. Communication requires references. References like proverbs, movie scenes, locations, historical recollections, humourous sides and analogies. The 70 million Tamils in the world looked at from a past-present-wired perspective would be stronger at using these references in Tamil than in English. Sure there will be transitional problems to tackle. Amongst them there will be enough who can bridge the Tamil mindcosm with the English mindcosm. Instead of having the majority to be koolies to the West, let's have the majority to be working for each other and a number who bridge these clusters with the non-Tamil world.

There are some efforts in building Tamil vocabulary.....do you think it's not adequate?
Totally absolutely inadequate.

What would you suggest to intensify the efforts?
We have to cooperate as a society. Language is of the society, by the society, for the society. Without language we cannot think, we cannot communicate, we cannot build good relationships. It belongs to all of us - it is the essence of gluing community together. Let us cooperate as a community and make it happen. How? Use Yahoo Instant Messenger to team up with other networked Tamils who are pushing this. Buzz me at my Yahoo ID at bala2pillai or email me at bala@tamil.net

U mean to say that it should be a collective effort?
The initiative has already been taken by the Internet using Tamils. You can see lots of new Tamil words coming out of here. For example the word "Innaiyam" -- Tamil for Internet -- was coined in Thamil Innaiyam www.tamil.net in 1996.

Right...there are lot of such words coming up....Is there any organisation collecting and documenting them?
There is not an organisation collecting it yet. The best way of organising this I would say is a Tamil net-enabled networking cooperative, a group of wired Tamils.This doesn't have to be a large group.

Do u think Tamilnadu government should take some initiative to form this group ?
No. Bureaucrats mostly worry about how to settle their mortgages, about their next position and what happens when the ruling party changes. Too many distractions for them to concentrate on passion or long term issues. It is about time Tamils, you and me, realized that there is a lot of power that we have ourselves. If a little ant, in an ant-hill has power, so does any Tamil in the Tamil ant-hill. The ants have no problem finding food and shelter without any government. I don't see why Tamils cannot organise Tamil words without government.

Someone to take this initiative...why can't it be Bala?
Yes it can be Bala. We are in the process of organizing such a cooperative.

That's nice of you...Is there any forum to discuss tamil vocabulary?
There are several that took off from the inspiration of Thamil Innaiyam (tamil@tamil.net). kalaichol@yahoogroups is one. So is agathiyar@yahoogroups. These are the best for Tamil words. Great catalysts there are Periannan Chandrasekaran from Atlanta and Ram Ki from Chennai. But lots of other Thamil Innaiyam members from all disciplines provide the interactivity platform that is essential for creativity. They include people like me, Ramani from New Orleans and Kumarabarathy from New Zealand amongst tens of thousands.

Do you think political climate in TN deter the progress of tamils all over the world?
Yes very much so.

How?
Well for example - the way Karunaanidhi was arrested. That is a symptom of a masked gang-war and Tamil society allowed the foundations of civil society that we had from our Sangam era heritage to be torn down.The average man today cannot get justice from the police or the courts or even the media. Where's our non-negotiable passion to see the flowering of trust, truth, commitment and respect today? If we brought that back would not Tamils be thousands of times richer both materially and spiritually?

We heard that you are working on net working Tamils all around the globe…can you tell us more about it?
A group of us called Thamil Innaiya Erumbugal are organising the Tamildom cooperative http://groups.yahoo.com/group/erumbugal and more pioneers are welcome to join this history-making initiative. Say you joined a cooperative that gave you US$2000 on one condition. The condition is that you use it to buy any services from an A-Z list from other cooperative members. And you provide US$2000 worth of whatever services you are good at to the cooperative. There are lots more aspects to Tamildom -- this is the entry-level bread-and-butter perspective.

You seem to have done a variety of things and interested in many things, how would you describe you in a single sentence?
A thinker, a process innovator, a communitarian and an ecosystems and liberty lover!

Where are you heading, Bala? What do you think your destiny is?
I think there is a 70% chance that I would catalyse a Tamil thought revolution and a 30% chance that I would die a nobody. Either is cool. I've had lots and lots of fun in the journey and I confident that if I don't achieve my preferred destination, somebody else will continue with the baton. My closest political role model is Pierre Trudeau and if you know him he had fun all the way . Ditto with me - there is lots more fun and challenges to be enjoyed in the journey.

What would you like to achieve, in precise?
I would like to make use of this once in a millenia opportunity to reverse 1000 years of Tamil decline through networked cooperation. We have been on the decline since the establishment of the caste system. Our collective psyche that was superb during the Sangam era got whack upon whack The first whack was the caste system - that limited the amount of cooperation you could get from the flow of Tamil society. It weakened us and set the stage for foreigners to attack us and that happened in the 11th century. We didn't respond then by dismantling the caste system. Our defensiveness had us to break up into more subcastes. It is not an accident then, that a small number of British were able to control millions of Tamils and Indians. Only those who suffer from an inferiority complex need the caste system umbrella. Covert racism against another who is born in your same locality, speaks the same language, professes the same religion is the worst form of racism. I want to strengthen Tamil society by helping remove the impediments to mass cooperation.

Then why is a caste name attached with your name?
We did not have the Periyar thing in Malaysia that was there in Tamilnadu. But for mundane birth certificate process and English illiteracy reasons there are few with caste/clan etc it is Mostly an accident -- me being in the west and a need there for a family name and since then I have come to understand this sensitivity but see the hypocrisy. the Westerners like Schumaker or Carpenter retained the name and lost all the name-social stigma rigidity. we did the opposite. so I am sticking to my name. Bbut I would not suggest for one moment that others should do the same..

Thank you so much Bala for your time.
Romba nantri for nilacharal .


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