A video shared by Southern Railway showing school students singing a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh song during the inaugural run of the Ernakulam-Bengaluru Vande Bharat Express on Saturday has sparked a political controversy in Kerala.

Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said the Railways was being used to “sneak communal ideology into official functions”, while Leader of Opposition VD Satheesan called it “unacceptable” that a national event had not been spared from “saffronisation”.

The Bharatiya Janata Party, meanwhile, accused the chief minister of disrespecting “children’s right to free speech”.

Twenty students and two teachers from Saraswathi Vidyanikethan Public School in Kochi were among those who joined the inaugural run of the train on Saturday, which Prime Minister Narendra Modi flagged off virtually, The Indian Express reported.

Later in the day, the Southern Railway shared a video of the students singing a song titled Paramapavitramathamie Mannil Bharathambaye Poojikkan, which is associated with the RSS and its affiliated organisations, on social media, India Today reported.

Saraswathi Vidyanikethan Public School is affiliated to the Central Board of Secondary Education and comes under Bharatheeya Vidyanikethan, the Kerala chapter of Vidya Bharathi the education wing of the RSS.

The RSS is the parent body of the ruling BJP.

Amid the controversy, the school’s principal, KP Dinto, said the Railways had no role in selecting the song, The Indian Express reported.

“A TV channel crew approached the students with a request to sing a song,” the newspaper quoted Dinto as saying. “When they started singing Vande Mataram, the crew wanted the children to sing a Malayalam song.”

At the TV crew’s request the children sang the song, which is a “celebration of unity in diversity”, he said.

“The controversy was meant only to insult the students,” The Indian Express quoted Dinto as saying. “The song was not against nationalism. Railways did not ask the students to sing it.”

Reacting to the row, Vijayan said in a social media post that the Southern Railway “making students sing the RSS anthem at the flag-off of the…Vande Bharat Express is highly condemnable”.

“Including the anthem of an organisation known for its communal ideology and hate mongering in an official event is a blatant violation of constitutional principles,” the chief minister said. “By sharing the video on its social media handles, the railway authorities have exposed how eminent national institutions are being subverted by Sangh Parivar politics.”

Congress leader KC Venugopal said that he had written to the railway minister over the incident.

“A public event was converted into an RSS function and the Southern Railway’s official X handle proudly shared this as well,” Venugopal said in a social media post. “This is a blatant misuse of Indian Railways, a national institution that belongs to every citizen, not any divisive ideology.”

Responding to the criticism, BJP state president Rajeev Chandrasekhar said: “What exactly are you condemning [Vijayan]…that some children sang songs they love? That they sang patriotic songs about their motherland?”

He added: “How come a CM who took an oath on the Constitution be so disrespectful of children’s right to free speech?”

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