The State Government has recently issued orders to set up Tamil study centres in Mumbai and Calcutta on the lines of the Central Government's Hindi Prachar Sabha and create a Tamil Chair in Orissa to popularise the language all over the country, Tamil Development Minister M Tamil Kudimagan disclosed today.

Participating in the 30th conference of the Indian University Tamil Teachers' Forum organised by the World Tamil Research Centre in the city, the Minister said the Government had earmarked Rs 6 lakh for setting up the Tamil study centre in Calcutta and Mumbai.

Tamil reigned supreme in ancient India, proof of which could be found in Orissa where a few places bear `Tamil-sounding' names like `Tamilikudi' and `Tamili', as cited in a recent study by a Tamil bureaucrat deputed to Orissa, he said.

Thehistory of Tamil literature would be updated in a year's time, with the inclusion of the creative contribution of Tamils living in Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Singapore, he said.

Calling on Tamil teachers to regard their profession as a service to the language, he said urgent steps had to be taken by the teaching community and scholars to free Tamil from the influence of English. In this context, he criticised Tamil magazines and newspapers for using `adulterated' Tamil, adding the standards of written and spoken Tamil had fallen.

Elaborating on efforts to give an impetus to Tamil studies, he said the Government had made a budgetary allocation of Rs 31 crore for the Tamil Development Department, as against Rs 9 crore allocated three years ago.

The Tamil University in Thanjavur had been allotted Rs 88 lakh this year for improvement of infrastructure, he said. He asked the University's printing unit to pull up its socks and clear the backlog of doctoral theses and encyclopeadiae, failing which the Governmentwould be forced to close down the unit.

K Sivathambi, Professor, World Tamil Research Centre, called for the standardisation of scientific terms in Tamil. Centre Director Raman Ilango urged the teaching community to take to creative writing, apart from pursuing research works.