Tamil Takes Centre Stage: Tradition and Modernity in Indian Television

Abstract

This paper draws attention to the role of language in mediated modernities in India through an analysis of Sirappu Pattimandram (Special Debate), a Tamil-language debate show on the politically-affiliated corporate Sun TV network in the state of Tamil Nadu in southern India. The show provides an opportunity for the articulation of anxieties over how social and economic changes affect the private lives of Tamil speakers. These anxieties are contained through the use of Tamil-language oratory which recasts quotidian everyday problems in an ancient literary idiom that provides reassurance through imagined continuity with a glorious past.

Keywords

• modernities
• India
• television
• oratory
• Tamil
• invented traditions