Thiruvananthapuram: A powerful Kerala temple board's decision to re-record a devotional song played as a lullaby to Lord Ayyappa at the Sabarimala temple has raised the hackles of a trust named after G. Devarajan, the iconic composer who gave the bhajan its current form in collaboration with vocalist K.J. Yesudas.

The Kerala-based G. Devarajan Master Memorial Trust, which is preparing to celebrate the 90th birth anniversary of the music director, suspected a "conspiracy" behind the Travancore Devaswom Board's decision to re-record the song. The board manages the Sabarimala shrine.

Devarajan (1927 to 2006), a Malayalam film music colossus, had conceived the nine-decade-old Harivarasanam in its present popular music format sung by Yesudas in the late 1970s.

Although there are many versions of Harivarasanam, the one created by Devarajan-Yesudas has been playing for decades at Sabarimala after the final puja as an "urakku paattu" (lullaby) to put the deity to sleep.

The office-bearers of the G. Devarajan Master Memorial Trust said they had launched a campaign on social media urging music lovers to protest any move to change the bhajan.

" Harivarasanam, composed by Devarajan Master, has been playing at the hillock shrine for the past 45 years without any interruption. Iconic musicians, the Tantri family (the chief priests of the Sabarimala temple) and Sanskrit scholars have not pointed out any fault with its composition or rendition so far," music director and general secretary of the Trust, Satheesh Ramachandran, said on Wednesday.

"Nobody has so far said that Lord Ayyappa was unhappy with the present lullaby. We suspect a large-scale conspiracy behind the move. Those who are trying and lobbying to make changes in the present version may have their own agenda.... It seems somebody wants to establish that there were errors in the composition of Devarajan Master," he added.

Newly appointed Travancore Devaswom Board president A. Padmakumar had said recently that the TDB wanted to bring out the song afresh by adding a word that exists in its original text but is missing in the popular musical version, and by "correcting" a pronunciation error.

The word " swamy" was there in every line of the original devotional song, believed to have been penned in the 1920s, and it might have been omitted for ease of rendition when it was brought out in the musical format, he had said.

Padmakumar said the TDB had discussed the plan to re-record the song with Yesudas and that the final date would be fixed when the singer reaches Kerala later this month.

Ramachandran, a disciple of Devarajan, said the composer had clarified in various interviews why he omitted the word " swamy", as Lord Ayyappa is popularly known. "Master had said that when we try to lull a child through a song, we never use his name repeatedly, which is the reason why the word swamy had been omitted by him," he said.

On the alleged pronunciation error in the line that goes " Ari Vimardhanam", he said scholars differed on whether the words should be spelt together or separately. Yesudas himself had admitted some time back that the words "ari" (enemy) and " vimardhanam" (destroy) should have been spelt separately.

Ramachandran said: the Trust did not hold the view that Devarajan or his compositions should not be questioned by anybody."We are protesting against the move by somebody to project that Master had committed a grave error and it should be corrected.... Nobody has even sought the permission of Devarajan's family (to re-record the song)." PTI