Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin on Friday urged the Union government to recall Governor RN Ravi after a sentence with the word “Dravida” was omitted from the state song when it was sung at an event attended by the governor.
The state song, titled Tamil Thai Vaazhthu, is sung at the beginning of programmes organised by the Tamil Nadu government.
Earlier in the day, the governor attended an event celebrating “Hindi month” and commemorating the golden jubilee of Doordarshan Chennai, the public broadcaster, PTI reported. A choir from Doordarshan left out the sentence with the word “Dravida” while singing the state song at the event.
In response to this, Stalin said that omitting the word from the song was against the law of Tamil Nadu.
In a social media post, the chief of the state’s ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam said that the Union government should immediately recall Ravi, who was “deliberately insulting Tamil Nadu and the sentiments of the people of Tamil Nadu”.
The chief minister said that a person who did not act according to the law was unfit to hold the governor’s office. “Will the governor who suffers from Dravidian allergy ask them to leave out Dravidian in the national anthem?” he added.
In response to Stalin’s statement, Ravi said that the chief minister had made a “racist remark” against him and was levelling false allegations that he had disrespected the state song.
“He [Stalin] knows it well that I recite full Tamizh Thaai Vaazhthu at every function and do so with reverence, pride and precision,” the governor said on social media.
Ravi said: “Making racist remark and alleging incorrect imputations against governor by the chief minister is unfortunately cheap and lowers the dignity of the high constitutional office of the chief minister.”
The Union government had created several institutions to spread “Tamil language and heritage within India including Tamil Nadu and several countries of the world,” he added.
Doordarshan Tamil, in a statement, apologised for the omission of the word during the state song. “During the rendering of the Tamil Thai Vazhthu, inadvertently a line was missed, which happened due to a distraction,” it said in a statement.
The state broadcaster said that it did not intend to “disrespect Tamizh or Tamizh Thaai Vazhthu”.
“We apologise for the inconvenience caused to the hon’ble governor of Tamil Nadu,” it added.
In an earlier post on social media, Stalin had also “strongly condemned” the Hindi month celebration. Addressing Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he said that the Constitution did not grant a national language status to any language.
“In a multilingual nation, celebrating Hindi Month in non-Hindi speaking states is seen as an attempt to belittle other languages,” the chief minister said. “Therefore, I suggest that holding such Hindi-oriented events in non-Hindi speaking states could be avoided, and instead, the celebration of the local language month in the respective states should be encouraged.”
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