The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Vande Mataram: Some schools sing it, others don't

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Sep 08, 2006

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Vande Mataram: Some schools sing it, others don't

City Bureau

Decision was left to the schools: Education Department officials

NATIONAL SONG: Schoolchildren singing `Vande Mataram' on Kamarajar Salai on Thursday. — Photo: D. Gopalakrishnan

CHENNAI : With the State and Union Governments stating there was no compulsion for schools to sing `Vande Mataram' on Thursday, only a section of schools in the city chose to observe the occasion, claimed to be the centenary of the National Song.

Schools, which normally sang the National Song every day, did so on Thursday too. But managements were not prepared to discuss the controversial issue; and neither did School education department officials. They only said the option was left to the schools and the matter ended there.

Symbolic gesture

As a symbolic gesture, nearly 1,000 students assembled near the Gandhi statue on the Marina to sing `Vande Mataram' and distributed pamphlets with the lyrics of the song, and of Subramaniya Bharathi's `Vande Mataram' to members of the public.

"Students from Queen Mary's College, retired civil servants and children from about ten schools joined in," said Girija Seshadri, Principal, Jaigopal Garodia Hindu Vidyalaya, West Mambalam. The school has a practice of singing it every Monday on campus as it was, "... a patriotic song uniting citizens of different religions, classes and castes," she added. Chitra Prasad, Principal, NSN Matriculation said "Every year, we sing Vande Mataram at school on Independence Day and Republic Day. We shall continue to do so."

Though she did not wish to comment on the controversy over the song, she said, "At school, we celebrate Ramzan, Christmas and Diwali with equal enthusiasm. And we see this particular song as patriotic."

In most of the government schools, it was a normal day. Heads of government and aided schools noted there was no official word either way about the song. And most of the students here did not know the lyrics or its meaning. Dr.S.K. Khadri of Murthuzaviya Foundation that runs a school said "no advisory or instruction was received on the issue... so we did not sing the song... " In another aided institution P.S. Higher Secondary, Mylapore, headmaster B. Raghuveeran said "we felt there was nothing wrong in singing it and so we sang the first two stanzas and read out its meaning to the students."

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