Is it proper to allow school students to dance for ‘kuthu’ songs in cultural events, asks Madras High Court judge

Madras HC grants anticipatory bail to four college students for ransacking school hostel over Kuthu song dispute. Judge orders them to clean classrooms, write excerpts from Gandhi's autobiography & pay ₹2,000 to school. CCTV footage of violence produced in court.

Questioning the propriety behind allowing school students to dance for ‘kuthu’ songs in cultural events conducted within the school premises or in other places, a Madras High Court judge has left it to the conscience of the school authorities to decide whether it is proper to play such songs in such events.

Justice R.M.T. Teekaa Raman made the observation while granting anticipatory bail to four college students who were part of a 13-member gang that ransacked a school hostel following a dispute between Class X and Class XII students over playing of Kuthu songs during Social Service Guild Yercaud (SSGY) retreat event.

Imposing a series of conditions for the grant of anticipatory bail to the four college students, the judge directed the petitioners to first appear before the Headmaster of Montford Anglo Indian Higher Secondary School at Yercaud and execute a bond for a sum of ₹1,000 each to the satisfaction of the headmaster.

The petitioners were also directed to clean the classrooms of the school, at the rate of four classrooms per day per petitioner, for a week and it was made clear that they should clean the entire class room including the blackboard, benches and the floors. They were further directed to spend time in the school library after the cleaning work.

Justice Raman ordered that the four petitioners must prepare excerpts of at least four pages each from Mahatma Gandhi’s autobiography ‘My Experiments with Truth’ besides writing about the educational schemes promoted by former Chief Minister K. Kamaraj and the dream and vision of former President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam.

The articles penned by all the four petitioners must be handed over to the school principal who shall host them on the school website for a year after making sure that the petitioners had not indulged in any copy-paste work using Google. They were also ordered to pay ₹2,000 each to the Montford School on or before October 10.