DP leader defends use of Tagore poem by culture secretary

Puducherry, Oct 22 (UNI) 'Dravida Peravai'(DP) General Secretary N Nandhiverman today defended Puducherry art and culture Secretary Mr B V Selvaraj atainst the charges of distorting Rabindranath Tagore's as ''based on weak foundations.'' In a letter to West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadev Bhattacharjee Nandiverman demanded that the issue be treated as a closed.

He pointed use of 'poetic licence'and said that in Tamil, numerous poets have used the lines of Saint Thiruvalluvar and that in China if a poet exercised his poetic licence to quote Confucius, it was not a literary crime.

He said most of the poets who had English education are influenced by Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth and Shelly, and a reader's subconcious absorbs the finest lines of a poet, which unknowingly springs out in his or her writtings. ''This is not a crime,'' he stressed.

The issue arose when the West Bengal Chief Minister had wrore a letter to his Puducherry counterpart urging him to withdraw a book published by the Puducherry administration for its tourist fair in France recently, in which Mr Bhattacharjee charged that the art and culture department had distorted a poem from Tagore's 'Geetanjali', to publicise Puducherry.

He also urged Mr Rangasamy to initiate action against those who wrote the poem in that manner.

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