A secular nation is a complex nation. It is not easy to follow the philosophy of secularism in letter and spirit. But India has always accepted, adopted and adapted to the heritage passed down the line by our rulers.
Be it the Mughal invasion or British invasion, we embraced everything we found as new, interesting and prosperous for us. When we realised that they are oppressing us, we chucked them out, although the pain and suffering from war and destruction lingered a long while.
The people who stayed back became a part of us, became us, became India. An Indian could be a Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian, Jain, etc., and is free to follow any religion, irrespective of being born in any caste and creed.
The invasions also brought languages with them. Our old Prakrit and Sanskrit are now ancient, almost extinct. Hindi also turned many leaves, adapting to regional and cultural influences. It has refined itself and is spoken in most of the northern regions of India. Not only Hindi, all Indian as well as a few foreign languages are believed to be derived from Sanskrit.
Those who settled here from generations believe it to be their motherland. They express their love for the country in a language they speak and imagine. In Hindi, English, Urdu, Punjabi, Kannada, Gujarati, Assamese or Bhojpuri, their patriotic expression cannot be compared. 'I love my India' is as beautiful as 'Mera Bharat Mahan'.
With the recent incident of expulsion of the headmaster in a government school in Uttar Pradesh because he started a ‘new’ prayer in the school assembly, the mantra of ‘unity in diversity’ got tossed out of the window.
Bisalpur Primary School in Pilibhit district started to recite a poem written by Muhammad Iqbal in 1902 as their morning assembly prayer since a few months. The students came across the poem “Lab Pe Ati Hai Dua Ban Ke Tamanna Meri” and requested their headmaster to include it in their morning assembly. The poem simply talks about a patriot's feelings for his country. It says ‘I pray to god that my country shines because of me, may its darkness disappear and it attains elegance while my life burns like a candle.’
Vishva Hindu Parishad's (VHP) members complained about it and got the headmaster, Furqan Ali, suspended. District Basic Education Officer said that Ali joined the school in 2011 and became popular among the students soon. He brought necessary equipment, like a projector, for the school out of his own pocket. Notably, number of students doubled and there are now nearly 150 students in the school with no other teacher but him. The school has a majority of Muslim students who, with their Hindu counterparts, were shocked to hear the news. The suspension is revoked and he is asked to transfer to another district with immediate effect.
The poem that Ali had introduced in the morning assembly prayer of the school is in Urdu, written by the same Iqbal who wrote “Sare Jahan Se Accha Hindustan Hamara”. A generation has grown up singing and adoring the song and it evokes the feeling of patriotism even when they hear it today. The first two lines of the song itself have four Urdu words in it－jahan, Hindustan, bulbule and gulsitan.
So clearly, the problem is not in the usage of Urdu words as the jargon is common in everyday verbiage of Hindi speakers. Just ask your neighbour, “Have you had your food?” in Hindi, and recognise the Urdu vocabulary.
Muhammad Iqbal is called Poet of the East and is the national poet of Pakistan even though he passed away in 1938－nine years before Pakistan came into existence. Iqbal wrote the song “Sare Jahan Se Accha…” in 1904 (two years later he wrote “Lab Pe Aati Hai Dua…”) which became an anthem in opposition to British Raj immediately. VHP’s open aversion to the poet is misplaced.
Pilibhit District Magistrate Vaibhav Srivastava said that the headmaster should have sought permission if he wanted to teach another poem. Let me rephrase that. To teach a new prayer to the students, the administration wants the headmaster to seek permission from them.
Another considerable fact is that the poem is in their syllabus. The board should not have allowed for Urdu to be taught as a subject, if it did not want the students to like and learn anything from the language.
All schools pick and choose their own poems for the assembly prayers. The convent and private schools do not have any regulations to assign a prayer to the assembly despite having a mix of children from all religions. No religious institution or parents complain. If the government schools want to implement a particular prayer, they have to be secular in that case, too.
If Saraswati Vandana is to be the standard prayer, non-Hindus might have a problem with that. If “Lab Pe Aati Hai Dua” is Muslim then “Itni Shakti Hame Dena Maata” is Hindu.
There can be two solutions to this issue. One, let people exercise their freedom of expression and be free to pray as they like. Do not impose the compulsion of any language, region or religion. Two, appoint a ‘secular’ poet to write a prayer-song to be sung in all the schools uniformly. It could praise the country and the Almighty that does not have any gender or religion. Atheists might have a little problem there, too. Language will continue to be a problem as our nation lacks an appointed tongue.
The writer is an educationist.
Views are personal.
