A STUDY ON BUYER BEHAVIOR OF TAMIL NEWS PAPER IN THOOTHUKUDI DISTRICT

The first Tamil newspapers providing hard news and writing on politics, both started by Salem Pagadala Narasimhalu Naidu, were Salem Desabhimani, the year The Hindu started, and Coimbatore Kalanidhi in 1880. In 1882, Subramania Aiyer founded his own Tamil weekly, Swadesamitran. When he left The Hindu in high dudgeon in 1898, he made his journal a tri-weekly and the next year, a daily. Speaking at its Silver Jubilee celebrations, Naidu said: “The reputation of ‘The Hindu’ as a paper read all over India and even in England is well-known. However Subramania Aiyer was conscious that those with a knowledge of English are a small number and those with a knowledge of Indian languages the vast majority. He felt unless our people were told about the objectives of British rule and its merits and defects in the Indian languages, our political knowledge would never develop. It was because of this conviction that he founded ‘Swadesamitran’ in Tamil.” Tamil, however, was not Aiyer’s strong point. He ‘learnt’ to write forcefully in it. In the process, he created numerous words and phrases to express modern political thought. A senior Swadesamitran journalist once said, “If it is considered (by some) that the style of ‘Mitran’ is not beautiful, it is not right to hold Aiyer responsible. The shortcoming is in the language. Our language has been used mainly for expressing religious ideas and for poetry. It does not have a wealth of vocabulary in political matters. Prose as such is not common in Tamil. It is a newcomer. It is only after Thandavaraya Mudaliar and Arumuga Navalar that prose has been recognized as a limb of Tamil. Under the circumstances, it is more difficult to write a flawless prose piece than to write a political one.” Despite this – and possibly due to Subramania Bharati’s later contribution– Mitran became the most successful Tamil daily well into Independence. Naidu has the last word: ‘Aiyer’s ‘Mitran’ not only decorates the drawing-rooms of the rich and the palaces of the zamindars, it also is seen in the hands of Sanga Boyan and Rama Boyan aswell as of women of all shades. It also goes to Africa, America, Europe, Burma and other places.