Simplified Tamil script or Reformed Tamil script refers to several governmental reforms to the

Tamil script The Tamil script ( ) is an abugida script that is used by Tamils and Tamil language, Tamil speakers in India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Singapore and elsewhere to write the Tamil language. It is one of the official scripts of the Indian Republic. ...

. In 1978, the Government of

Tamil Nadu Tamil Nadu (; , TN) is the southernmost States and union territories of India, state of India. The List of states and union territories of India by area, tenth largest Indian state by area and the List of states and union territories of Indi ...

reformed certain syllables of the modern

with view to simplify the script. It aimed to standardize non-standard ligatures of , , and syllables. Furthermore, only 13 out of 15 of the proposed simplifications were successful as people continued to use instead of the proposed and instead of the proposed .

History

Kuthusi Gurusamy initially proposed script reform and seems credit was not given to him. A Script Reform Committee was formed in 1947 under Periyar E. V. Ramasamy, while in 1951 the Government of

accepted its recommendations, it failed to enforce them. He encouraged it on the basis that it allegedly eased typesetting as Periyar was himself a typesetter of his newspapers in early days. Other person who was responsible for helping Periyar was Kuthusi Gurusamy

This was preceded by many reforms during early 20th century, led by Tanittamil Iyakkam, Tamil purist movement, which purged most of the Grantha consonants from the Tamil-Grantha script (except , , , ) and standardized the modern Tamil alphabet.K. Kailasapathy (1979)
The Tamil Purist Movement: A Re-evaluation
Social Scientist, Vol. 7, No. 10, pp. 23-27

References

Spelling reform Tamil language {{Brahmic-script-stub