It is nauseating that the celebration of 150 years of “Vande Mataram” — a rallying cry of patriots in an India subjugated by the raj — has been reduced to a polarising occasion. The prime minister recently recited the extracts of “Vande Mataram” that have religious connotations and alleged that the Congress’s decision to adopt only the first two stanzas as the national song was tantamount to sowing the seeds of division that ultimately led to India’s Partition. It is telling that the University Grants Commission has instructed higher educational institutions to render the song in full during celebratory events. Narendra Modi, who has accused the Congress of being divisive, is, of course, pandering to an ideological position that is polarising itself. A scrutiny of the chain of events is necessary to put the controversy in context. “Vande Mataram”, composed originally as verse by Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, was inserted in his novel, Anandamath, with distinct overtones of militant Hinduism. It was sung at a Congress session in 1896; protests against the attempt to partition Bengal in 1905 used “Vande Mataram” spiritedly; by the 1920s, it became a potent slogan for nationalists and was translated into numerous Indian languages. However, with the rise of sectarian politics a decade later, several Indians, including Muslims, began to object to “Vande Mataram’s” idolatrous elements; others pointed out that the tenets of the song were not consistent with the template of secularism. Ultimately, a committee set up by the Congress decided to adopt the first two stanzas of “Vande Mataram” as the national song upon, historians have noted, the advice of Rabindranath Tagore. By Mr Modi’s logic, India’s nationalists, including Tagore, who sought to unite Hindus and Muslims to turbocharge the nationalist struggle by forging a consensus on the national song, are guilty of fomenting division. Poll-bound Bengal would be interested to know the views of the prime minister and his party on this matter.
Art, however, is also a mirror of the times. In that sense, “Vande Mataram’s” journey, from being a slogan for national unity to, now, becoming a tool to bolster a shriller, narrower version of nationalism, is symptomatic of the great transitions that the republic has undergone. The future format of the song could be indicative of the
kind of future — majoritarian or secular — that awaits India.