The National Pledge – India is my country and all Indians are my brothers and sisters – was originally written in Telugu 50 years ago

The National Pledge that the students read out everyday in their school assembly – India is my country and all Indians are my brothers and sisters – was originally written in Telugu 50 years ago and in this city.

The author of the pledge was a well-known writer in Telugu, a naturopathy doctor and a bureaucrat – Pydimarri Venkata Subba Rao. When he was the District Treasury Officer of Visakhapatnam District in 1962 he wrote the pledge and presented it to senior leader Tenneti Viswanadam who forwarded it to the then Education Minister P.V.G. Raju, president of Uttarandhra Rakshana Vedika S.S. Shiva Kumar told the media quoting Subba Rao’s son P. Subrahmanyam.

The then Education Minister is reported to have directed all the schools in the district to have the students take the pledge. The pledge was then taken up at the National level and the Government of India had it translated into seven languages and directed that the students of all the schools in the country be asked to take it every day.

The records of the Union Human Resources Development Ministry show Pydimarri Venkata Subba Rao as the author of the national pledge, but he is forgotten in the State and the place it was born, Shiva Shankar lamented. While adapting it for schools the Government simplified the language, he said. The family of Subba Rao, who are settled in Nalgonda, have documentary evidence of the authorship, he added.

Unaware

Interestingly, the author was reportedly unaware of the nation-wide presence of the pledge till he heard his granddaughter read it out from her book, Mr. Shiva Shankar said. The National Pledge is treated on par with the National Anthem and the National Song and deserves to be commemorated.

The Vedika proposes to discuss the subject with senior citizens of the city and the district who might have known Subba Rao and then work out the details of the golden jubilee celebrations of the work, he added. K.L.V. Suresh Banerjee, D.V.T. Ganesh and Bobbili Vijay Kumar of the Vedika were present.