Vande Mataram mandatory? Well, there’s another choice
Today’s order from the Madras High Court making the singing of ‘Vande Mataram’ mandatory in schools/govt and private offices, is worth studying, for the original plea from the petitioner had nothing to do with this.
K Veeramani, the petitioner, had failed to clear the written test for the post of BT Assistant as he answered ‘Bengali’ to a question on which language Vande Mataram is written. He argued that the Teachers Recruitment Board had made an error in their answer key, which said the song was written in Sanskrit. He claimed that he failed to clear the cut off by one mark and thus lost the job due to this error. After the AG clarified that the original language of ‘Vande Mataram’ was Sanskrit but written in Bengali script, the judge asked the Govt to include the petitioner in the selection process.
The the Judge went on to ‘use’ the occasion to utter this Vande Mataram mandatory order. Ofcourse, in these times of crying peacocks, someone knows that people up North will be taking note of such things and that rewards will come, sooner than later.
Wonder what would have happened, had the question been — “In which language was the song “Kattippudi Kattippudida” written?”
