ABSTRACT
This chapter explores an unprecedented distinction between literary and popular writing that emerged in debates in Maṇikkoṭi and Āṉanta Vikaṭaṉ, two well-known Tamil magazines that were launched in the 1930s. Through short stories and critical essays, the writers who contributed to these magazines attempted to create new lenses through which to view the purpose of literature in society. While discussions of Indian modernism have sidelined regional and communitarian aesthetic and socio-political concerns, the Maṇikkoṭi-Vikaṭaṉ debates demonstrate that extremely localised, intimate conversations profoundly influenced the trajectory of Tamil modernism. The essay shows how the 1930s literary/popular distinction situates Tamil modernism at a tangent to scholarly characterizations of late colonial Indian modernism as preoccupied with anticolonialism and nation-building. The essay argues that Tamil modernism centered on formulating new aesthetic sensibilities aimed at diffusing regional contentions regarding linguistic and caste affiliations – rather than as focused on either developing or subverting Indian nationalist politics.
