Puducherry: Puducherry-based Federation of People’s Rights has appealed to the territorial government to initiate action against Secretary, Department of Art and Culture, B V Selvaraj for his alleged distortion of a poem by Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore.
An adaptation of Tagore’s poem Where the Mind is Without Fear was published under the title Tagore on Pondicherry in the publication, A Glimpse of Our Own Pondicherry, brought out by the department recently, Federation Secretary G Sugumaran said in his appeal.
Sugumaran claimed West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee had expressed his resentment over the official’s penning of the poem and releasing it at a Festival of
Pondicherry held in Paris recently in a letter reportedly written to Chief Minister N Rangasamy.
He had also sought withdrawal of the Department of Art and Culture’s publication, Sugumaran claimed.
The poem has projected Pondicherry by “distorting the verses of Tagore”, he alleged.
Further, Sugumaran also referred to action taken against a music troupe by Kolkata High Court in 1990s when it changed the tune that Tagore himself had set for his songs as per Ravindra Sangeeth.
The “present distortion” by the official also deserved to be handled appropriately by Pondicherry administration, he demanded.
PTI / 24.10.2006.
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