New Delhi: The Congress Working Committee has decided that party programmes will feature only the first two verses of ‘Vande Mataram’. The decision follows criticism from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) over the singing of the national song at an Independence Day event and a later programme in Goa.
The first two verses have a different place in the history of the song. He wrote the complete poem could be interpreted in ways that might hurt Muslim sentiments. He wrote that the national song should draw from the original composition while naturally being limited to its first two verses. Nehru chaired the meeting, which was attended by several Congress leaders, including Vallabhbhai Patel, Rajendra Prasad, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Bhulabhai Desai, Jamnalal Bajaj, J B Kripalani, Pattabhi Sitaramayya, C Rajagopalachari, Acharya Narendra Dev, Jayaprakash Narayan and Subhas Chandra Bose. The CWC concluded that the first two verses, which had commonly been sung at the Congress and other public gatherings, should be adopted as the national song. It recommended that only those two verses be sung at national gatherings, with Tagore’s version and musical composition being followed.
Because congress leaders consulted him when they discussed objections to some of its verses in the 1930s, his views on the song are important to the debate. Because they had developed their own identity and inspirational value, he supported using the first two verses as the national song. Rabindranath Tagore helped popularise the song during the Swadeshi and anti-Partition movements in Bengal and sang it at the 1896 Congress session. A 1994 Sahitya Akademi publication, ‘The English Writings of Rabindranath Tagore: A Miscellany’, also records his views. The issue was formally debated at a Congress Working Committee meeting in Calcutta, now Kolkata, on October 30, 1937.
He said the song had acquired an independent identity and inspirational value and did not contain anything offensive to a particular community.
