Chennai: ‘Vande Mataram’ composed by famous Bengali poet Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay in 1870s had ignited flames of patriotic fervour among people and freedom fighters marched into prisons singing the song during the freedom struggle under the colonial regime. Nearly 15 decades after penning the song, it has come under the scrutiny of the Madras high court.
Justice M.V .Muralidharan asked the government whether ‘Vande Mataram’ was written first in Bengali or in Sanskrit language. When a petition filed by K. Veeramani, an aspirant for the post of BT assistant came up for hearing, the judge posed the question to advocate general and sought an answer. Veeramani sought direction to authorities to award one mark for the answer attempted by him in the competitive examination for the Question No: 107(D-Type) (Paper II), in which it was asked to answer “In which language the song “Vande Mataram” was written first”.
It was asked to choose right answer among four choices – “(A). Bengali (B).Urdu (C). Marathi (D). Sanskrit.”Veeramani marked (A). Bengali as the correct answer on the answer sheet. He said he was awarded 89 marks whereas the Teacher Recruitment Board (TRB) fixed the minimum eligibility Marks at 90. The TRB had unfortunately not correctly valued his answersheet and so he was declared as an unsuccessful candidate.
Hence he filed the present petition seeking a direction from the court to award one mark for the question and also sought a direction to reserve one post of BT assistant in Government high school. The counsel for the petitioner submitted that Bankim Chandra Chatterjee wrote in both in Bengali and Sanskrit languages. The additional government pleader argued that it was written only in Sanskrit and later was translated into Bengali. The judge who passed the interim order directed the advocate general to appear and inform the court with regarding correct answer.He posted the matter for further hearing to July 11.
