After objecting to the poem “Johnny, Johnny! Yes Papa? Eating sugar? No papa” earlier in the week, Uttar Pradesh higher education minister Yogendra Upadhyaya has now turned everyone’s attention to yet another nursery rhyme—“Rain, rain, go away, little Johnny wants to play”—and claimed “it is not our culture.”
“My objection is with this line—rain, rain, go away, little Johnny wants to play,” he said at an event in Lucknow on Saturday.
The minister said this line signifies ‘Swantah Sukhaya,’ which means it is for the sake of one’s own gratification or contentment.
“An act performed selflessly—transcending self-interest—yields joy wherein the poem indicates that rain must go away because little Johnny wants to play,” he said.
“Our culture is of parijan hitay which means welfare and betterment for everyone.”
Speaking at a thanksgiving event organised by City Montessori School on Saturday, the minister said “rain, rain go away” is an insult to India’s traditions and values which always prioritise the larger interest of society; hence, this poem should be removed from all textbooks.
Talking to HT later, the minister said, “I did not oppose the poem. I opposed the sentiments hidden within it. ‘Rain, rain, go away’—this is not our culture. I did not criticise studying in English-medium schools.”
On May 6 (Wednesday), Upadhyaya criticised the English nursery rhyme, “Johnny, Johnny! Yes Papa?”, saying it does not reflect Indian values and teaches children to lie to their parents. The remarks were made during an event for shiksha mitras, or para teachers and contractual educators, at Merchant Chamber Hall in Kanpur.
On Saturday, he tried to justify what he said: “Johnny Johnny Yes Papa… Telling a lie, no papa… The poem sows seeds of lies in children during their childhood. I’m not against any language or culture. I would have said the same thing had it been in Hindi or Sanskrit,” he explained.
The minister said he was told that one former chief minister (without naming anyone) wrote on X that if the higher education minister does not want children to learn these poems, then he should write to the basic education minister (Sandeep Singh) to remove them from the syllabus.
Taking a dig at the minister’s objection to a couple of English nursery rhymes, the UP Congress wrote on social media: “UP’s higher education minister Yogendra Upadhyayaji believes that children learn to lie from poems like “Johnny, Johnny! Yes Papa? A child doesn’t learn to lie from poetry; a child learns to distrust the system after witnessing “paper leaks. The education minister’s job is not to change “nursery rhymes,” but to stop “university crimes” and “corruption.”
The minister had even urged teachers to go beyond the prescribed syllabus and incorporate Indian cultural values in their teaching, invoking the traditional guru–shishya relationship as a model.
Upadhyaya had said teachers should work towards creating an education system that combines academic learning with values. Referring to India’s guru-shishya tradition, he said teachers can guide students only by taking on the role of gurus and moving beyond textbook-based instruction.
The minister even spoke about differences between Western and Eastern value systems. He said lines such as “Eating sugar, no papa” from the rhyme encourage children to lie. In contrast, he said Hindi poems familiar to older generations carried lessons connected to life values.
