“It’s not just about being human, it’s about being humane,” says Leena Mukundan, a teacher for the past 30 years. “Children need to understand the real meaning of integration, international peace and universal brotherhood, and grow up as global citizens.” The social studies teacher, concerned about the rising number of terrorist activities, wondered, one day, what she could do to stop it.
For three years, while she worked in Kendriya Vidyalaya, Tehran, she taught students from over 38 nationalities. Since most of the students she taught were embassy children, who shifted countries about every three years, most of them didn’t know their own national anthems. “Generally, the feeling of patriotism is inculcated only through school education,” says Leena, who encouraged her students to learn their country’s anthems and teach it to their classmates. “One student from Kazakhstan, who was in Class 9 at the time, learnt eight anthems. That was what started things.”
So when she returned to Kendriya Vidyalaya Kanjikode, she had an interesting idea to help her students break free from the narrow ideas of nationality. In early 2014, she put forth the idea to her Class 9 students, who were enthusiastic to be a part of it. Soon, the children could be heard singing in class during intervals, lunch breaks and in the time it took for the teachers to move from one class to another. “However, because of the way the system works, many dropped out,” says Leena, adding that although they started with 15 students, the numbers soon dwindled and there were only three students who were still involved in the project by the end of the year.
“It was not a big project when we started, it grew with time,” says Aparna V., who along with Nimisha S. Pradeep and Anjitha C.N. form the three-student troop who have learnt to sing 35 different national anthems without reference. They started with the anthems of Asian countries — Bhutan, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Japan, Indonesia — because similarity in dialects made pronunciation easier. They then learnt anthems of countries such as Lebanon, Namibia, Egypt, South Africa and Armenia among others. “It helped us learn different languages, proper pronunciations and the music from different nations. It also taught us about cultures and traditions,” says Aparna, and adds that Bangladesh’s anthem was easy to learn because Tagore wrote it and that even though the American anthem took really long to master, it was an enjoyable learning process.
In January, Leena decided to take the project a little further. The anthems have been recorded and released as a video CD, titled ‘Anyonyam’, after the Sanskrit word meaning ‘mutual/reciprocal’. Leena says, “We wanted to make the CD informative. So we’ve included some information about capitals, currency, language and more.”
