Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Tamil Renaissance was a set of literary, cultural, social reform, and political movements that took place in the Tamil-speaking districts of Southern India. It began in the second half of the 19th century and lasted through the anti-Hindi agitations of the 1960s.
The Tamil Renaissance was triggered by a combination of forces: rising literacy after the British Crown took over administration from the East India Company, rapid propagation of Western ideas, the formulation of the Dravidian civilization theory, and growing resentment of Brahmin dominance in government appointments.
Robert Caldwell was a bishop who authored the Comparative Study of the Dravidian Family of Languages. His work classified words in Dravidian languages by their linguistic roots and distinguished them from Indo-Aryan equivalents, providing a scholarly foundation for Tamil cultural pride and the Dravidian identity movement.
Two factions of Tamil writers disagreed sharply. One favoured blending Sanskrit words into Tamil, believing it raised the language's quality. The other argued that Sanskrit-origin words caused Tamil to lose its individuality and should be reduced to the barest minimum.
Tamil nationalism inspired a pan-Indian anti-British school of thought that strengthened the independence movement in Tamil Nadu. Figures including Subramanya Bharathy, Chakravarthi Rajagopalachari, V. O. Chidambaram Pillai, and V. V. S. Aiyar were accomplished Tamil writers who were also active independence campaigners.
The Tamil Renaissance is linked to several scientists of international stature, including C. V. Raman, Srinivasa Ramanujan, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, G. N. Ramachandran, Venki Ramakrishnan, and S. R. Srinivasa Varadhan. Several of these figures received Nobel Prizes in Physics and Mathematics.