a formal committee to write the history of Tamilakam (ancient Tamil territory). The state education minister R. Nedunceliyan declared in the Legislative Assembly that by "history", he meant "from the time of Lemuria that was seized by the ocean". In 1971, the Government of Tamil Nadu constituted a committee of historians and litterateurs, headed by M. Varadarajan. One of the objectives of the committee was to highlight "the great antiquity" of the Tamils. A 1975 textbook written by this committee detailed the Kumari Kandam theory, stating that it was supported by "the foremost geologists, ethnologists, and anthropologists". As late as 1981, the Tamil Nadu government's history textbooks mentioned the Kumari Kandam theory. Characteristics Tamil writers characterized Kumari Kandam as an ancient, but highly advanced civilization located in an isolated continent in the Indian Ocean. They also described it as the cradle of civilization inhabited solely by the speakers of Tamil language. The following sections describe these characteristics in detail. Isolated Kumari Kandam is theorized as an isolated (both temporally and geographically) land mass. Geographically, it was located in the Indian Ocean. Temporally, it was a very ancient civilization. Many Tamil writers do not assign any date to the submergence of Kumari Kandam, resorting to phrases like "once upon a time" or "several thousands of years ago". Those who do, vary greatly, ranging from 30,000 BCE to the 3rd century BCE. Several other writers state that the land was progressively lost to the sea over a period of thousands of years. In 1991, R. Mathivanan, then Chief Editor of the Tamil Etymological Dictionary Project of the Government of Tamil Nadu, claimed that the Kumari Kandam civilization flourished around 50,000 BCE, and the continent submerged around 16,000 BCE. This theory was based on the methodology recommended by his teacher Devaneya Pavanar. The isolation resulted in the possibility of describing Kumari Kandam as a utopian society insulated from external influences and foreign corruption. Unlike its description in the Kanda Puranam, the Tamil revivalists depicted Kumari Kandam as a place free of the upper-caste Brahmins, who had come to be identified as descendants of Indo-Aryans during the Dravidian movement. The non-utopian practices of the 20th century Tamil Hindu society, such as superstitions and caste-based discrimination, were all described as corruption resulting from Indo-Aryan influence. A land lost to the ocean also helped the Tamil revivalists provide an explanation for the lack of historically verifiable