“Rain, Rain, Go Away, Little Johnny Wants to Play”—this nursery rhyme has upset the Higher Education Minister of Uttar Pradesh, Yogendra Upadhyay. It ought to be removed from school textbooks, he believes, because it runs contrary to Indian culture. The poem asks the rain to go away so that little Johnny may play. Imagine that: rain—which nourishes all, which sustains agriculture, which is indispensable to life—is being asked to depart for the sake of one child’s amusement!
According to the Minister, the rhyme teaches selfishness. It is written in the spirit of “svāntah sukhāya”—for one’s own pleasure. And, he insists, “svāntah sukhāya” is not Indian culture. Indian culture, he tells us, is “Sarvajan Hitaya, Sarvajan Sukhaya”—the welfare and happiness of all. Therefore, a poem that asks the life-giving rain to disappear merely so that one Johnny can play has no place in schoolbooks, because it imparts false values to children.
Incidentally, “svāntah sukhāya” itself is an Indian expression; it was not borrowed from Thomas Hobbes. And the greatest poet of today’s Indian traditionalists had himself declared that he composed the gatha of Raghunath for the pleasure of his own soul: “svāntah sukhāya”!
This was not a one-off. Earlier too, while addressing a gathering to felicitate Shiksha Mitras in Kanpur, the Minister had objected to another nursery rhyme: “Johny Johny, Yes Papa, Eating Sugar? No, Papa.” In this poem, Johnny lies to his father after eating sugar. Such verses, according to the Minister, teach children dishonesty, something wholly opposed to Indian culture. They plant the wrong values in young minds.
One should not assume that the Minister was merely carried away in the excitement of addressing teachers. After the gathering, he patiently explained to journalists as well why a poem that asks the rain to leave for Johnny’s sake violates Indian values.
People, listening to the Minister’s grave reflections, are left astonished at how far foolishness can travel. Others remark that such a public exhibition of one’s idiocy requires considerable self-confidence.
Foolishness wears academic robes
There are also the generous souls who advise us not to take such statements seriously. Ministers are politicians after all, they say; politicians speak absurd things to please their audience. What truly matters in the Minister’s words, these charitable interpreters suggest, is his advocacy of “Sarvajan Hitaya, Sarvajan Sukhaya” and Indian values. We should retain the essence and discard the chaff.
But I wish to insist that the Minister is not alone in this absurdity, and it deserves to be taken with the seriousness with which he condemns these “un-Indian” English rhymes. Some years ago, at the India International Centre in Delhi, I heard almost the same argument from Anu Singh Lather, the Vice Chancellor of Dr B.R. Ambedkar University Delhi. At a seminar organised under the banner of an intellectual campaign against coloniality, the Vice Chancellor recited a nursery rhyme, much like the Minister: “Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water.” Then she asked: why should anyone go uphill to fetch water? Water is found below, not on higher ground. The rhyme is anti-scientific and irrational. That, she explained, is why Jack broke his head!
According to the Vice Chancellor, the poem communicates falsehood and irrationality. By teaching such rhymes to generations of Indians, the English colonised their minds. We must free ourselves from this by returning to Indian nursery rhymes. Replacing Jack and Jill, she urged us to remember: “Machhli jal ki rani hai, jeevan uska pani hai” (Fish is the queen of water; water is her life). Here, she said, you find sensitivity toward the environment and compassion toward living beings.
The Minister, too, had recommended replacing “Rain Rain Go Away” with rhymes such as “Kale megha pani de, pani de” (O dark clouds, give us water). There, rain is not driven away; it is invited.
What, then, is the difference between the Minister’s “foolishness” and the Vice Chancellor’s “wisdom”? When I spoke to a friend about these two episodes and expressed my amazement that both should say equally ridiculous things about English nursery rhymes, he replied: how could you forget that both are saplings nurtured in the same nursery called the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh?
Can we afford to laugh this off? We must remember that a Minister’s whim determines the syllabus, and a Vice Chancellor’s logic shapes university life. Their absurdity has the power to institutionalise idiocy.
Listening to the press conference of the Uttar Pradesh Higher Education Minister and the presidential address of the Vice Chancellor of Ambedkar University, one is reminded of Jawaharlal Nehru’s observation that communalism narrows minds. It has a direct relationship with stupidity.
In the Minister’s statement, this bond between communalism and stupidity was perhaps not immediately visible. But the Vice Chancellor, extending her argument further, made it unmistakably clear that such foolishness flourishes only within a communal mind. After her “rational” critique of English nursery rhymes, she went on to explain that colonialism in India began long before the British, when the Mughals conquered Hindustan by the sword. This is a communal interpretation of colonialism, and any serious scholar would hesitate a thousand times before uttering it in an academic gathering. But the Vice Chancellor possessed two qualities in abundance: the confidence born of foolishness, and the authority bestowed by communal power.
In any case, the teachers whom the Minister was exhorting to fill children with Indian values were also informed that their monthly stipend would be raised from Rs.10,000 to Rs.18,000. It is with this Rs.18,000 that the teacher must now also disseminate this Indian nationalist foolishness among children.
Apoorvanand teaches Hindi at Delhi University and writes literary and cultural criticism.
Also Read | Gramsci stays, Iqbal goes
Also Read | What NCERT’s new textbook cuts from history, and why it matters