Students of Athreya Public School at Kallahalli criticised the developments on reducing the time of ‘Nada Geethe’ written by the late poet Kuvempu.
Nearly 300 of students, holding placards against the attempts to trim ‘Nada Geethe’, took out a protest rally from their campus and staged the demonstration outside the Deputy Commissioner’s office for a while.
Jnanpith laureate Kuvempu’s ‘Jaya Bharatha Jananiya Thanu Jaathe’ is not mere a poem, it is the state anthem, Athreya students said.
The students raised slogans against the committee of experts, which recently submitted a report to the State government suggesting measures to reduce ‘Nada Geethe’.
The song has 44 lines and it will have only 23 lines if the government accept the recommendations of the committee. Therefore, the government should not cut the length of the poem, Class IX student K. Sanjana told The Hindu .
The song varies from two to three minutes depending on the performance. The people can stand for three minutes to sing Nada Geethe, Athreya president K.S. Raghu said.
He asked the people to fight against such developments.