Kerala Education Minister and CPI(M) leader V Sivankutty on Sunday ordered a probe after a controversy erupted over school students singing the RSS song ‘Gana Geetham’ during the inaugural run of the Ernakulam-Bengaluru Vande Bharat Express on Saturday.
Twenty students and teachers from Saraswathi Vidyanikethan Public School in Kochi were among those who joined the inaugural run of the train, which was virtually announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The choice of the song created a political storm in Kerala, with the ruling Communist Party of India (Maoist) and the opposition Congress opposing the incident, and both parties accused the BJP of using the railways to push its “divisive” policies.
Announcing the investigation, Sivankutty said on his social media account that forcing students to sing Jana Jeetham is a dangerous matter. He asked the Director General of Education to submit a detailed report. “Using students for the societal agenda of a political organization is a blatant violation of constitutional principles and is highly unacceptable. There will be no compromise on ensuring secular education for our children,” the minister said.
Later in the day, he told the media in Delhi that no school would be allowed to take actions that challenge secularism. “The state government grants a no-objection certificate for starting a school. There are certain conditions for granting the no-objection certificate. If these conditions are found to be violated, the state government has the power to withdraw the no-objection certificate,” he said.
The CBSE-affiliated school is affiliated to Bharatheeya Vidyanikethan, the Kerala branch of Vidya Bharathi, an educational wing of the RSS. School principal KP Dinto said the Railways had no role in the students singing the song, though the government entity shared the video on its social media.
The CPI(M) continued to criticize the incident on Sunday. The CPI(M) State Secretariat in a statement claimed that the railway action was unconstitutional. “The students were forced to sing RSS Gana Geetham in the guise of a patriotic song. The RSS Gana Geetham does not incite patriotism, but only hatred and contempt. Railways are being used to socialize Kerala, which is a bastion of secularism. In the past, the governor’s office was reserved for this purpose,” the statement read.
(Tags for translation)Kerala Vande Mataram
