Ethnic groups of Tamil Nadu Ethnic groups of Tamil Nadu Tamil Nadu is one of the 29 states of India. Its capital and largest city is Chennai (formerly known as Madras). Tamil Nadu lies in the southernmost part of the Indian Peninsula and is bordered by the States of Puducherry, Kerala, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. It is the eleventh largest state in India and the seventh most-populous state. As of 2001 census, Tamil is spoken as the first language by 88.43% of the population followed by Telugu by 5.65 percent, Kannada by 2.68 percent, Urdu by 1.51 per cent, Hindi by 0.64 percent, Malayalam by
History of Tamil Nadu Tamil political parties. They exerted pressure on the Indian government to intercede with the Sri Lankan government on behalf of the Sri Lankan Tamilians. However, LTTE lost much of its support from Tamil Nadu following the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi on 21 May 1991 by an operative from Sri Lanka for the former prime minister's role in sending Indian peacekeepers to Sri Lanka to disarm the LTTE. The east coast of Tamil Nadu was one of the areas affected by the Indian Ocean earthquake of 2004, during which almost 8000 people died in the disaster. The sixth most populous state