Kalyan Singh

A favourite hobby of Indian politicians in recent times has been to rename cities in an attempt to correct ‘colonial wrongs’. Kalyan Singh has gone one-up on that trend even though technically, as a governor now, he should be above politics. It is not cities that he is after, but the country’s national anthem. At a convocation ceremony of Rajasthan University, he said that the word ‘adhinayak’ should be expunged from Jana Gana Mana because its writer Rabindranath Tagore actually meant ‘British masters’ by that term. Showing his prowess as a lyricist, Singh also suggested that adhinayak be replaced with mangal.

There is no evidence that Tagore was referring to the British monarch. But even if we go by what Singh alleges, the logic leads us to a rather peculiar position. Because then it would imply that the entire anthem was meant for the British monarch, and by a natural extension of Singh’s logic, all the lines would have to be revised and an entirely new anthem penned in its place—perhaps with lots of mangals in it, if Singh gets to do the honours.

Actually, there is very little to be gained from such nominal tokenism beyond satisfying some politician’s whims. There are far more pressing current issues to ponder than which potentate Tagore meant.

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