L2/11-058 From: arock samy To: emuller@adobe.com Cc: Lisa Moore/Santa Teresa/IBM@IBMUS, rich@unicode.org, tdildc@cdac.in Date: 02/03/2011 08:57 PM Subject: An Appeal to the Unicode Tech. Committee Dr. Lisa Moore, Chair, Unicode Tech Committee, Unicode Consortium, USA Respected Dr. Lisa Moore, I, Dr. M. Arockiasamy assistant Professor of Arul Anandar College, Karumathur, Madurai ,Tamil Nadu, South india, have learnt that the Unicode Technical Committee is considering to encode the Grantha script through proposals L2/10 426 and L2/10 447. We also understand that these proposals falsely include 7 Tamil characters into the Grantha block as follows, 1130E Letter E, 11312 Letter O,11329 Letter NNNA,11331 Letter RRA,11334 Letter LLLA,11346 Letter Vowel Sign E, 1134A Letter Vowel Sign O As for as tradition goes, these are purely Tamil Characters and have never been attested as part of Grantha and as per many scholars in Tamil as well as Sanskrit. You may be aware that there are large number of inscriptions (more than 100000) in Tamilnadu with mixed Grantha and Tamil portions, in which the ancients have strictly maintained "Grantha as Grantha" and "Tamil Script as Tamil script". They have never confused/violated the orthographic identities of the scripts. Bringing these 7 Tamil characters into the Grantha block would destroy / mutilate that tradition and the long needed study and research of these ancient documents would get permanently affected, if these 7 characters are encoded into the Grantha block. We understand that the Govt. of Tamil Nadu, has constituted a high level Govt panel to investigate these proposals and make a formal recommendation on these characters to the Govt of Tamil Nadu and then to the Central Govt, through them. The constituted committee is presently deliberating. We urge you to understand the deep time honoured tradition of the Tamil people who live in all the five continents spanning many countries and numbering approximately 100 million thoughout the world. We also urge you not to take any precipitative action on these matters and include these 7 characters falsely into Grantha. Doing so would permanently damage the Tamil, script, the Tamil Langurae and the glorious Tamil Traditions. Sincerely yours, Dr. M. Arockiasamy Ph.d. Assistant Professor Dept. of History Arul Anandar College Karumathur Madurai Tamil Nadu South India Copy to: * Hon’ble Mr. Kapil Sibal, Union Minister for Communications and Information Technology * The Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, Chennai * Justice Mohan, Chairman, High Level Committee, Tamil Nadu * Ms. Swaran Lata, Director & HOD, Human C.C.Dn, New Delhi