The Tamils largely inhabit Tamil Nadu, an Indian state created in 1956 to be a home for Tamil speakers, a group tending to be stockier and somewhat darker than northern Indians. Since before the arrival of the Aryans (Indo-Europeans) around 2500 B.C., these people have lived at the southeastern limit of the Indian subcontinent.

More than 50 million Tamils define themselves as Tamil-speaking Hindus. Going back nearly 2,000 years, the rich Tamil literary history includes epics, religious and secular poetry, philosophy, and moral instructions.

Of particular interest are the verses and hymns of devotional literature dating from the sixth to ninth centuries. Collectively, these works are considered to be among the great contributions to Indian civilization.

Over the years Tamils have resisted the encroachment of the Hindi language and northern cultural influences. They have done so even though they too are overwhelmingly Hindu, worshipping at more than 9,000 temples and celebrating a huge variety of riotous festivals.

Chennai (Madras), the Tamil capital, was a weaving center when the British East India Company built a fort and trading station there in the mid-17th century. Later it became the administrative and trading capital of southern India. Because of British needs for labor elsewhere, immigration created Tamil communities as far away as Fiji, Malaysia, Singapore, South Africa, and Mauritius.

The Tamil people's strong presence in Sri Lanka consists of two groups: the Sri Lankan Tamils, who settled there more than 1,500 years ago, and the Indian Tamils, who came in the 19th and 20th centuries to work on tea and rubber plantations. Civil war in Sri Lanka has led Tamils to migrate to many other countries, but wherever they go, they build temples and develop strong local ties.