7 months ago
2
As Kerala celebrates yet different Kerala Piravi connected Saturday (November 1, 2025), the State anthem that Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan erstwhile envisioned for authoritative occasions inactive lies forgotten successful the Kerala Sahitya Akademi’s archives.
It was successful 2018 that the Chief Minister, during a face-to-face league with taste leaders successful Thrissur marking the 2nd day of his government, projected that Kerala should person an authoritative State opus to beryllium performed astatine nationalist functions. He urged writers, poets, and musicians to constitute and taxable their works, promising that the champion among them would beryllium declared the authoritative anthem of Kerala.
The akademi was entrusted with the work of inviting entries and selecting the anthem. The effect was overwhelming—over 2,000 songs poured successful from crossed the State, from well-known and caller writers alike. A enactment committee comprising writers M. Leelavathy, M.R. Raghava Varier, Ezhachery Ramachandran, M.M. Basheer, and the akademi caput was formed to prime the champion entry.
But 7 years later, the committee inactive exists, the record remains open, and the opus remains unheard. All the submitted works proceed to beryllium preserved astatine the akademi.
Even the Chief Minister, who erstwhile championed the idea, nary longer appears to beryllium pursuing it up. During the reappraisal process, experts reportedly recovered that astir submissions lacked the expected quality—some were excessively long, others excessively anemic successful composition. Several suggestions arose to alternatively follow an existing poem by 1 of Kerala’s aboriginal poets arsenic the State song.
“The committee is yet to get astatine a unanimous decision,” said akademi president K. Satchidanandan. “Even now, we proceed to person caller entries for the anthem. There are a fewer that I personally like, but the last prime indispensable beryllium a corporate determination of the committee,” helium said.
When the substance was raised during different taste interface with the Chief Minister, helium had reiterated that the contented would beryllium considered, but thing moved forward.
A controversy
The dormant task sparked contention erstwhile seasoned filmmaker and lyricist Sreekumaran Thampi accused the akademi of humiliating him aft inviting him to constitute the State anthem. In a Facebook post, helium claimed that Mr. Satchidanandan and the akademi caput had personally asked him to constitute a elemental song, which helium did. But erstwhile they expressed dissatisfaction, helium made immoderate changes. Later the akademi ignored his enactment and opened nationalist submissions again.
“I’ve written implicit 3,000 songs, yet I was insulted by the akademi,” Mr. Thampi wrote, adding that helium would grounds his mentation astatine his ain disbursal and merchandise it connected YouTube for Malayalees crossed the world.
Mr. Satchidanandan said the committee had recovered Mr. Thampi’s lyrics clichéd.
