THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: When Pinarayi Vijayan was sworn in as the chief minister last Thursday, he solemnly affirmed his allegiance to the Constitution by starting the oath in Malayalam as ‘Pinarayi Vijayan aaya Njan’. On Monday, when he took the oath as an MLA, it was changed to ‘Pinarayi Vijayan enna Njan’.
Not only Pinarayi, all the MLAs who took oath in Malayalam used ‘enna njan’, a more accurate translation of the oath in the Constitution that begins as ‘I...’, drifting away from the practice of using ‘aaya njan’.
The change in the Malayalam version of oath was the result of a seven-year-long fight by a retired bank manager here.
73-year-old Varghese Alexander started his correspondence with various government agencies to correct the coordinating conjunction ‘aaya’ to ‘enna’ after he listened to the Lok Sabha swearing in ceremony on 2014. LDF MP Innocent who was elected from Chalakudy began the oath in Malayalam as ‘Innocent aaya Njan’. “That meant he is innocent while his intention was to say ‘I, Innocent’. I found a problem there. When there is a proper word ‘enna’ in Malayalam why do they use ‘aaya’?” Alexander told TNIE.
He found out that the error was in the Malayalam version of Indian Constitution in which the format of oath is printed. His friends in the assembly secretariat told him that there couldn’t be any change as long as the printed text was corrected. Alexander then approached the official language department of the state government with a request to revise the Malayalam translation.
Alexander’s suggestion was noted by the then secretary K Suresh Kumar who forwarded a proposal to the Official Language (Legislative) Commission and Committee on Official Languages of the Assembly. A year later, both bodies acknowledged that the suggestion of Alexander is valid. However, there was no change in the format when the new cabinet and new assembly were sworn in in 2016. When he checked with officials, the answer was that the revised version of translated Constitution was not published by then.
When the counting was over this time, Alexander reminded the Legislative Assembly secretary of the issue. “I was disappointed when the ministers were sworn in using the old translation. Hence, this was a big surprise for me,” he said after watching the swearing in of MLAs on TV. The logistical delay in getting new copies before the swearing in of the cabinet prompted the Raj Bhavan officials to use the old version of the translated Constitution.
“We rightfully acknowledge the suggestion of Alexander. The new copies of Malayalam version of Constitution were ready last week and we could provide them to new MLAs today (Monday),” said S V Unnikrishnan Nair, secretary, Kerala Legislative Assembly.
“Even the Devikulam MLA who took oath in Tamil used ‘entra njan’ today,” he said. Former chief minister Oommen Chandy, who took the oath for the 12th time, inadvertently used ‘Oommen Chandy aaya njan’ as had been the practice, though the book with him carried the revised translation.