ABSTRACT
As we have seen in the foregoing chapter, South Asia is an area of tremendous linguistic diversity, and one that is plagued with perplexing language-policy issues. One example of a regional linguistic subculture within South Asia that is perhaps quintessentially problematical, in whatever polity it is spoken, is that of the Tamils of the Dravidian south and Sri Lanka. 1 It is one that sees itself as separate and different from Indo-Aryan culture, and it has asserted that sense of difference in many ways that have challenged the hegemony of the dominant culture in both India and Sri Lanka. In what follows, I would like to show what Tamil linguistic culture consists of, what cultural notions underlie and inform it, and how different it in fact is from the dominant cultures it is in contact with.
