Govt dropped 'Abide With Me' from Beating Retreat as Indian tunes are more appropriate: Sources

PTI

New Delhi, January 23

The Centre decided to drop one of Mahatma Gandhi's favourite hymns ‘Abide With Me’ from this year's Beating Retreat ceremony as playing more Indian tunes would be appropriate in view of the 'Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav', which celebrates the 75th year of India's Independence,  government sources said on Sunday.

‘Abide With Me’, written by Scottish Anglican poet and hymnologist Henry Francis Lyte in 1847, had been part of the Beating Retreat ceremony since 1950.

The Indian Army announced on Saturday that it had been dropped from this year's ceremony.

Sources said the Centre wanted to include maximum number of Indian tunes and consequently, it was decided that only Indian-origin tunes would be played at this year's ceremony on January 29.

The Centre had in 2020 also planned to drop ‘Abide With Me’ from the ceremony but had later retained it after an uproar.

For this year's ceremony, the hymn has been replaced by the popular patriotic song ‘Ae mere watan ke logo’, which was written by Kavi Pradeep to commemorate the supreme sacrifice made by Indian soldiers during the 1962 Indo-China war.

‘Ae mere watan ke logo’ is an Indian tune and pays respect to all who laid their lives for the safety and integrity of the nation, sources said.

The move to drop the hymn from this year's ceremony came days after the Centre's decision to merge the Amar Jawan Jyoti flame at the India Gate with the eternal flame of the National War Memorial. The merger took place during a brief ceremony on Friday.

While some military officials defended the decision to merge the flame, several opposition parties, including the Congress accused the BJP-ruled Centre of "removing history".