Lucknow: Higher education minister of Uttar Pradesh Yogendra Upadhyay has triggered a controversy by describing two popular English nursery rhymes – ‘Johnny Johnny, Yes Papa’ and ‘Rain Rain Go Away’ – as being against Indian culture and values, saying that it teaches children to lie and promotes selfishness.Addressing teachers at a thanksgiving programme at a prominent school in Lucknow on Saturday, Upadhyaya said the rhyme, ‘Rain Rain Go Away’, promotes individual pleasure instead of collective welfare.“Self-interest is promoted in the poem, ‘Rain rain go away, come again another day, Little Johnny wants to play’. It says that rain should stop only because Johnny wants to play. What kind of values are these? An act yields joy only when it is performed selflessly, transcending self-interest. But this poem signifies ‘Swantah Sukhay’ (self-satisfaction) which is not our culture,” Upadhyaya said.“Indian culture emphasises ‘Sarvajan Hitay, Sarvajan Sukhay’ (welfare of all, for the happiness of all),” he said.Upadhyaya could not be contacted for comments despite repeated attempts.Earlier on May 6, Upadhyaya had criticised another English nursery rhyme, ‘Johnny, Johnny! Yes Papa’, saying it teaches children to lie to their parents.“Parents take pride in asking their children to recite the poem without realising the message it conveys. This poem teaches children to lie. What are we teaching our children,” he wondered.“It sows the seeds of lies in children during childhood. I’m not against any language or culture. I would have said the same thing had it been in Hindi or Sanskrit,” he said, clarifying his statement on Saturday.Having a dig at the minister’s objection to English nursery rhymes, the UP Congress wrote on social media: “UP’s higher education minister Yogendra Upadhyaya ji believes that children learn to lie from poems like ‘Johnny, Johnny! Yes Papa’. A child doesn’t learn to lie from poetry; a child learns to distrust the system after witnessing paper leaks. The education minister’s job is not to change nursery rhymes, but to stop university crimes and corruption.”Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav posted an illustration on Upadhyaya’s statement published in a Hindi daily and wrote on X, “BJP members are trying to say that when they themselves constitute the world’s largest ‘University of Lies’, why should they source study material from anywhere else? After all, the BJP possesses its very own indigenous factory for mass production of falsehood.”
