Jayalalitha's AIADMK will boycott Tamil meet

(October 20, Chennai, Sri Lanka Guardian) AIADMK general secretary J Jayalalithaa today said her party would boycott the World Tamil Classical Conference organised by the DMK government in Tamilnadu. In a statement here, she said the ninth World Tamil Conference had now become a World Classical Tamil Conference after the International Association for Tamil Research (IATR) refused to give clearance to Karunanidhi's move.

'When the announcement for the ninth Tamil conference was made, I had pointed out that the World Tamil Conferences were held only under the aegis of the IATR.

It is for the IATR to announce the conference. Neither Karunanidhi nor his government had the locus standi to organise IATR's series of Tamil conferences.

If the 2010 conference was being organised independent of IATR, then it could not qualify to be the ninth International Tamil Conference as was being made out to be.

I had also pointed out that the Tamil people worldwide were in a state of distress. Quite obviously, Professor Noboru Karashima, the president of IATR, a true lover of the Tamil language and the Tamil people, had refused to give IATR's clearance for specifically the same reasons that I had mentioned.'

She added: 'Karunanidhi, who could not accept this, decided to buy some time and made a tall claim that Tamil scholars had asked him more time as they had to prepare research papers for presentation at the conference.

As such he was bowing to their request, he postponed the conference from January 2010 to June 2010,' she said.

'Now we are told that the ninth Tamil conference is being abandoned. The IATR has been sidelined. Karunanidhi will hold a conference to show that he too has a Tamil conference under his belt.

To invest such a dubious project with legitimacy, he has invited me to be on the committee organising the event or depute someone on my behalf.

Does he genuinely believe that I will deman and lower myself to such an extent as to be part of this dubious exercise. There is no need for the AIADMK to take part in the conference.

Hence, the AIADMK will boycott the World Tamil Classical Conference organised by the DMK government,' she added.

-Sri Lanka Guardian