Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday recited extracts from Vande Mataram that carry religious connotations and alleged that the Congress’s adoption of only the first two stanzas as the national song in 1937 “sowed the seeds for the division of India”.
“In 1937, important lines that were part of the soul of Vande Mataram were severed. The song was cut into pieces. This action of dividing Vande Mataram into fragments sowed the seeds for the division of the country,” Modi said at an event to commemorate 150 years of the song, written by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay.
“The new generation needs to know the reasons for such injustice to this song. Because, the same divisionary force is a challenge for the nation even today,” the Prime Minister added, his comments coming in the middle of the Bihar elections.
Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge responded by quoting Nehru and Gandhi to show how enthusiastically the Congress had embraced the song, and alleging the RSS and the BJP never sang either Vande Mataram or Jana Gana Mana at their assemblies or offices.
A few years after it was written, the six-stanza song — an ode to the motherland composed in a mix of Sanskrit and Bengali — was included in Chattopadhyay’s 1882 novel Anandamath. Down the decades, the song became an anthem for freedom fighters of all hues and “Vande Mataram” became their foremost slogan.
The Congress’s logic for adopting only the first two stanzas for public singing was that the last four stanzas, with their references to goddesses and other Hindu religious motifs, would be difficult for Muslims to sing. In 1950, the Constituent Assembly adopted the first two stanzas as the republic’s national song.
However, even the adopted version remains contentious. “Vande Mataram” can be translated both as “I praise thee, Mother” and “I bow to thee, Mother” — with the second formulation problematic for Muslims who are not supposed to bow before anyone but God.
As the government begins a yearlong celebration of the song’s 150 years, the University Grants Commission has asked all higher education institutions to organise events where the song would be rendered in full. The full song was sung at Friday’s event, organised by the culture ministry.
Modi invoked the Vedas to argue that the nation was the mother of its citizens. “For those who consider the nation as a geopolitical entity, it may be surprising to consider the nation as the mother. The mother is the protector. If the child faces any problem, the mother becomes the destroyer too,” he said.
“This is why Vande Mataram says ‘Abala keno maa eto bole, Bahubaladharinim’…. It means that Mother India has unlimited power and can protect her children from danger and can destroy the enemy.”
Modi recited the first stanza and parts of the third and fifth stanzas and explained their meaning in Hindi.
Reciting “Tvam hi Durga Dasapraharanadharini/ Kamala kamala-dalabiharini/ Bani bidyadayini…”, he said: “It means Mother India is Saraswati who gives education, Laxmi who gives wealth, and Durga who is armed with weapons.”
BJP spokesperson C.R. Kesavan tweeted: “Congress under Nehru, citing religious grounds, deliberately removed stanzas of Vande Mataram which hailed Goddess Ma Durga....
“Netaji Subash (sic) Bose had strongly advocated for the full original version of Vande Mataram. On October 20, 1937, Nehru wrote to Netaji Bose claiming that the background of Vande Mataram was likely to irritate Muslims.”
School children and other attendees during an event marking 150 years of the national song ‘Vande Mataram’, at the Indira Gandhi Indoor (IGI) Stadium, in New Delhi. PTI
Mridula Mukherjee, a retired JNU history professor, said the decision to adopt the first two stanzas had been taken not by Nehru alone but by a committee set up by the Congress.
The committee had Nehru, Maulana Azad, Subhas Chandra Bose, Rabindranath Tagore and Acharya Narendra Dev, among others. “Since Muslims had concerns about the stanzas with direct references to Hindu goddesses, the committee collectively decided to adopt the initial two stanzas, which were non-controversial, for singing as their national song at different gatherings,” Mukherjee told The Telegraph.
“By adopting the two stanzas, the Congress accommodated the concerns of all sections and promoted national unity. To say the adoption of (only) two stanzas had promoted disunity is not correct.”
Historian Sugata Bose says in his book, The Nation as Mother and Other Visions of Nationhood, that it was Tagore who suggested adopting only the first two stanzas of Vande Mataram for singing at Congress gatherings. Subhas Chandra Bose had suggested that Tagore’s advice be taken.
The book says Tagore wrote privately to Subhas that the song, containing the adoration of Durga, was wholly inappropriate for a national organisation that was the meeting place for different religious communities.
According to the book, “He (Tagore) wrote in Bengali: ‘Bengali Hindus have become restless at this debate, but the matter is not confined to Hindus. Where there are strong feelings on both sides, what is needed is impartial judgment. In our national quest we need peace, unity, good sense — we do not need endless rivalry because of one side’s obstinate refusal to yield’.”
Highlighting Tagore’s role, Congress leader Jairam Ramesh alleged in a tweet: “The Prime Minister is now accusing the Gurudev of harbouring a ‘divisive ideology.’ It is a shameful statement from a man whose lies and distortions have no limits….”
Kharge, in his tweet, wrote that Vande Mataram had been sung publicly for the first time by Tagore at the Congress’s 1896 session in Calcutta, held under the leadership of then Congress president Rahmatullah Sayani.
He quoted Mahatma Gandhi as having written that Vande Mataram had become the “most powerful battle cry among Hindus and Musalmans of Bengal during the Partition days”.
Kharge said Nehru had hailed Vande Mataram as a “song of the people”.
“However, it is deeply ironic that... the RSS and the BJP have never sung Vande Mataram or our National Anthem Jana Gana Mana in their shakhas or offices,” he wrote.
“…Since its founding in 1925, the RSS has avoided Vande Mataram.... Not once in its texts or literature does the song find mention.”
Culture minister Gajendra Singh Sekhawat, Delhi chief minister Rekha Gupta and Delhi lieutenant governor V.K. Saxena attended Friday’s event. A special coin and a postage stamp marking the 150 years of Vande Mataram were released.