The debate on the national song “Vande Mataram” on its 150th anniversary in parliament saw a spirited defence of the Congress from its senior leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, who accused the government of highlighting the issue in view of the coming assembly election in Bengal. She also accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of “selectively” quoting Jawaharlal Nehru.
“Why are we having a debate on Vande Mataram? Priyanka Gandhi Vadra questioned in the Lok Sabha today, asserting that there is no scope for a debate on the issue, since the song is “alive in every part of the country”.
The government, she said, “wanted debate on Vande Mataram because the Bengal polls are coming soon… The government wants us to keep delving in past because it does not want to look at present and future,” she added.
The BJP has alleged that Vande Mataram was truncated and its crucial lines excised in the version adapted as national song by Jawaharlal Nehru under pressure from the Muslim League.
In his address in the Lok Sabha today, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the Congress “surrendered before the Muslim League and partitioned Vande Mataram”, calling it a part of the Grand Old Party’s “appeasement politics”.
PM Modi said Nehru had followed Jinnah’s stand in 1937, claiming the hymn could “irritate Muslims”, and thereby compromised its legacy.
“Instead of condemning the slogans of the Muslim League and expressing loyalty towards Vande Mataram, he wrote to Netaji Subhas Bose, agreeing with Jinnah. He wrote that the context of Anandamath can irritate Muslims,” PM Modi said.
“Nationalists across the country took out prabhat pheris against it when the Congress Working Committee decided to inspect Vande Mataram,” but the Congress decision prevailed. This, he said, was the mentality that led to the Partition, he added.
Priyanka Gandhi Vadra contended that PM Modi was misrepresenting the matter. Nehru — her great-grandfather and India’s first Prime Minister – had called the row over Vande Mataram “manufactured by communalists”, she said.
Others in the Congress and some allies also alleged that the BJP was distorting Nehru’s views. DMK’s A Raja also agreed that Nehru had observed in his letter to Subhas Bose that the public outcry against Vande Mataram was “manufactured by communalists”. But Nehru had also accepted that there was “some substance” in the grievances expressed by sections of people, he said.
The 150th anniversary of India’s National Song, Vande Mataram, which translates to “Mother, I Bow to Thee”, was observed on November 7.
Composed by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, ‘Vande Mataram’ was first published in the literary journal Bangadarshan on November 7, 1875.
Later, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee incorporated the hymn into his immortal novel ‘Anandamath’, published in 1882. Set to music by Rabindranath Tagore, the words became a battle cry of nationalists during the freedom movement and later became an integral part of the nation’s cultural consciousness.