Thank you for reading this post and I hope after reading this you will support by sharing and getting in touch to help start this project that I have long dreamt of doing. So here I am taking the first step towards something I strongly believe will be a powerful and useful tool to help identify and track our Tamil ancestors. Anyone and everyone who contributes will create the bridge to finding our ancestors for future and current generations.
The agenda is to create a platform which brings all the Tamils around the world together. This will be a portal to find our ancestors.
As Tamils, what sets us apart from other Western cultures is our ability to identify and differentiate each and every member of our family with a specific title. For instance, our mothers older sister is our “Periyamma” and her younger sister will be our “Chithi”. We don’t simply name them both our Aunt. This aspect is unique to many eastern cultures, however the issue we are facing is our inability to trace and track our ancestors. A few generations back, married women in our community started taking the first name of their husband as their last name. While this is a personal and special choice made by couples in our community, there is no way to track down our lineage past a few generations. We also have the issue of families displaced and separated by war to take into account.
This platform will be used to find ancestors and our heritage. Individuals will be able to sign up and input their ancestral information so we can link them together around the world. The portal will include published materials, artifacts, findings, histories, etc
Our grandparents are coming to age and passing away and we have not collected or documented their wealth of knowledge and we want to collect as much as possible before it’s too late.
Many of our ancestors photos, literature, history are either lost, destroyed, forgotten or in the process of being forgotten.
I will initiate this long term goal of mine and want to start getting a team together to initiate the portal startup for year 2020.
The task is extensive and difficult but I believe it’s essential to preserve and pass on what’s left of our beautiful history. I hope this has piqued your interest so let’s get this started! I need each and every one of you to start asking questions about your family and ancestors. This could be the beginning of something amazing and I hope each and every one of you can help make this happen.
Mandate
- Bring forth a committee of different generations to analyze the type of data to collect
- Create a Funding team
- Build team of Programmers and web developers
- Historians, government officials, archeologist, Tamil writers
What the site will offer
- Extensive Family tree
- Amma, Appa, Mama, Mami, Appamma, Appappa, Ammamma, Thatha, Paatan, Paati, Mupaatan, Chinnamma, Periyamma, Chithappa, Chithi, Anna, Thambi, Thangachi, Akka, and the list goes on instead of just Aunt, Uncle, Great Uncle and Aunt.
- Collect, validate, and create a library of literature written by our ancestors, recreate another digital form of Jaffna Library
- Video blogs, journals and autobiography will be featured with transcript
Project by yours truly
Srinikanth Pannerselvam