NEW DELHI: Efforts are being made to change the country’s national anthem and replace ‘Jana Gana Mana’ with ‘Vande Mataram’ as has been demanded by the right-wing groups, a former JNU professor ‘Tanika Sarkar’ said on Friday.

JNUTA’s series on Nationalism continued on Friday and featured Tanika Sarkar – distinguished historian and author from CHS specializing in gender, religion, and politics in South Asia, delivering a lecture on Gandhi’s Nation. Sarkar was the fifth lecturer in the series of the “nationalism” open-air lectures, organised at the varsity in protest of the branding of the university as “anti-national” in the wake of an event against the hanging of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru.

“The right-wing groups have been demanding since long to make ‘Vande Mataram’ the national anthem. So, don’t be sure that ‘Jana Gana Mana’ will remain national anthem forever,” Sarkar told students at the varsity.’

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Following the lecture came, speeches by Kerala’s former Minister of Education and a current member of Parliament E. T. Mohammed Basheer, who encouraged students to continue their fight “against the rising fascism in the country”.

“The government wants to attack the entire country by attacking autonomy of institutions, this agitation is not just for JNU but for the entire nation,” E T Mohammed Basheer said.