Govindasamy, Naa. (1947– 99) Author. Naa. Govindasamy founded the Ilakkiya Kalam (Literary Critics’ Circle) in 1977. Among his published works are Velvi (Religious Fire) (1990), a novel; and Thedi (Search) (1991), a collection of short stories. His works focus on social problems and the importance of leaders in the Indian community.

Govindasamy is also credited for having put the Tamil language on the Internet. He developed a 16- bit Unicode system which uses the TamilNet and Tamilfix fonts, and which enables a user to input Tamil on Windows, Macintosh and Unix platforms. He launched the first internet page in Tamil, and also played an instrumental role in the upload (in 1995) of Journey: Words, Home and Nation: Anthology of Singapore Poetry (1984– 95) onto the internet, a collection of poems in the four official languages of Malay, English, Mandarin and Tamil.