'Abide with Me' row: A song's destiny is always changing

Abide with me, hallowed by its association with Mahatma Gandhi, suddenly finds itself out of favour, writes S R Ramakrishna

Songs get entangled in politics in the strangest of circumstances. ‘Abide with me,’ a Christian hymn played at the Republic Day ceremony since 1950, is the latest to join the league of songs caught in political controversy.

Mahatma Gandhi had little time to listen to classical music, but he commanded respect among musicians and often roped them in to raise funds for causes dear to his heart. He had a soft corner for prayers though. 'Vaishnava janato' and 'Abide with me' were among the songs he was fond of. The government is now dropping 'Abide with me', a hymn written by Henry Francis Lyte in 1847 as he was dying of tuberculosis, and replacing it with 'Ae mere watan', a poignant song recalling the sacrifices of soldiers.

The story of how 'Jana gana mana' beat 'Vande mataram' to become India’s national anthem is widely known. An earlier generation of Indians tuning into Radio Ceylon was also familiar with the Sri Lankan national anthem, ‘Atha Sri Lanka…’ In those pre-FM years, the station played film songs in a host of Indian languages, and listeners got to hear the Lankan anthem in the process of catching their favourite hits.

Also Read | 'Abide with me' and the idea of India

Ananda Samarakoon (1911-1962), who wrote the Lankan anthem and composed the tune for it, was a student of Rabindranath Tagore, and had studied in Shantiniketan. His life came to a sad end. Many politicians had complained that the opening lines were inauspicious. The government authorities then changed some lines without consulting him. Samarakoon felt insulted and killed himself.

Similarly, buffeted by politics, when the Karnataka government added some words to Kuvempu’s ‘Jaya Bharata jananiya tanujaate’, Poornachandra Tejaswi, his son and a renowned writer himself, was livid.

In the wake of the controversy over the dropping of 'Abide with me', several Indian musicians are posting their renderings of the hymn, and not just in English. The hymn begins with the lines: ‘Abide with me; fast falls the eventide/The darkness deepens; Lord with me abide.’ A fervent prayer has suddenly become a protest song.

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