Periyar EVR is called Thanthai Periyar due to the impact of the Dravidian movement in Tamil Nadu. His followers' parties have ruled Tamil Nadu state in India ever since Arignar C. N. Annadurai led DMK to victory in 1967 general elections.
Periyar EVR's main policy with respect to Tamil language is the scientific method of writing Tamil and which calls for Uyirmey matrix simplification. Viduthalai, a newspaper founded by Periyar consistently dispalys on a page the Uyirmey forms of simplified u, uu uyirmey letters as advocated by him from 1930s: Now, Viduthalai has written an Editorial on the subject: http://viduthalai.periyar.org.in/20100520/news06.html Evidently, Tamil Nadu Govt. can act upon Periyar's advice, and allow people to use the simplified uyirmey letters in schools etc., If Tamil Nadu Government asks for this, then like the neigboring Malayalam script in Unicode, Tamil script fonts for the vocalized consonants involving vowel matras, u and uu, can be in unligated form also. Please note that all neighbroing scripts of Tamil namely Telugu, Grantha, Kannada, Sinhala, Malayalam are all having u, uu forms much more simplified than Tamil ligated forms. Anbudan, N. Ganesan
