Is Tékumel too hard to play?

I normally don't  bother such things on this blog, but recently, on a site that I have been known to frequent, the often voiced opinion that Tékumel is not a popular, or well known setting, because it is too complex to run successfully, unless you are MAR Barker, was repeated again

Tékumel as a setting is as playable as any other commercial setting. The failure lay in the foolish notion that somehow arose, and was perpetuated by many gamers, that the only/one way to run a game using this campaign setting was to follow Phil's "Tékumel Prime game" in order for it to work. All of the later affectations regarding pronunciation, immersion, etc stem from this desire to emulate the original campaign game, even though from the get go MAR Barker asserted that this was not possible, and people should make Tékumel their own. I have never understood this attitude. The complexity of the setting is not a prerequisite to playing a Tékumel campaign, but something that needs to be gradually developed over many sessions, if that is what the DM and players want. This is the crux of the matter. Do you want an Anthropological exercise, or do you want to play make-belief, "make some shit up," and push some lead figures around? From my experience, and probably the experience of the vast majority of regular Tékumel players, including  "Chirine baKal", "Gronan of Simmerya" (aka General Korunme), Dave Arneson (aka "Captain Harchar") and MAR Barker himself, the latter is closer to so-called "real Tékumel" than the former.

I am currently running a Tékumel Campaign that is in its second year, with two of the four players in the group not having a clue what the game world was like before they sat down to play. The remaining players in the group had, at best, a passing familiarity with the milieu but certainly were not "experts." They are now, finally, "getting" Tékumel. They have absorbed the background material and, to quote the above mentioned Chirine, have "gone native." The reality is that I could have easily had the same campaign set in Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, or my own campaign world and changed very little of the story. The complexity would have gradually developed except that you would have a faux medieval world to explore instead a fusion of Mughal, Meso-American, Egyptian and Barsoomian cultures. Both have their challenges if an immersive gaming experience is desired, but in both cases you can still enjoy yourself and not give a toss whether a name is pronounced a certain way, or someone should be greeted by a particular honorific. There is no need to understand the cultural nuances of Tsolyáni society prior to playing. I would be curious if anyone knows if such a requirement is even stated anywhere in the official literature.

The fact that many gamers feel that some type of major prep work is mandatory in order to play is too bad. They are missing out on a playing experience that is not a mere re-hash of the same Tolkienesque tripe.