The song that united India under British rule remains a bitter dividing line in India under self-rule. A law for upholding its dignity was notified little over a week ago. But the song in praise of the motherland has been dragged into squalid political waters. It’s not new.
For 90-odd years, Vande Mataram has stood at the crossing of reverence and controversy.
At the national flag hoisting at the Congress Headquarters, Vande Mataram was playing. During the first two stanzas, both party president Mallikarjun Kharge and Sonia Gandhi were seen singing along. Cameras were rolling, and everyone knew that. The moment the third stanza started playing, neither Kharge nor the party’s political face, Rahul Gandhi, set the reaction rolling. It was Sonia Gandhi, the matriarch, who displayed the first cringe. She turned towards Kharge. Hand gestures suggested that she was objecting to something. Rahul turned and noticed her discomfort. Later, an animated conversation between the top three ensued. The Congress later offered a clarification that Sonia Gandhi merely wanted a chair for the octogenarian party president. It’s a Congress-ruled state. Priyanka Gandhi Vadra is an MP from Wayanad. Rahul Gandhi’s man Friday and most powerful general secretary, K C Venugopal, is from Kerala. So I wonder, is it possible that the Kerala government decided to defy the central directive from the Union Home Ministry and the order didn’t come from the Congress high command? The target was the Congress. It is rather plaintive and mournful and repetitive.”
After all, well before August 15, the Kerala government had ordered that Vande Mataram should not be played at its official Independence Day celebrations led by Chief Minister V D Satheesan. But by 1908, Muslim leaders started their chant against it. K Fazlul Haq, the then chief minister of Bengal, on 17 October 1937 said, “The Congress is trying to establish a Hindu raj in India. Interestingly, in a cabinet note in 1948, Nehru is said to have written, “Vande Mataram for all its beauty and history is not an easy tune for orchestral or band rendering.
Home Minister Amit Shah on Thursday accused the Congress of reviving its “extreme policy of appeasement”, saying that the decision was a repetition of a historical error that had contributed to the partition of India. On December 30, 1908, at the 2nd All India Muslim League session in Amritsar, Syed Ali Imam said, “Under the cloak of nationalism, Hindu nationalism is being preached in India”. “Bande Mataram” was termed a sectarian cry. On the tryst with destiny night of August 14, 1947, at the Assumption of Power ceremony, Sucheta Kripalani sang the first verse of “Vande Mataram” as the opening item.
