BJP passes resolution on 'Vande Mataram', condemns Congress move to sing 2 stanzas

The BJP said the full national song, comprising six stanzas, represents India’s national consciousness and the legacy of the freedom struggle.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Saturday passed a resolution opposing the Congress Working Committee’s decision to reaffirm its 1937 resolution and restrict the singing of Vande Mataram to its first two stanzas at party programmes, while seeking to uphold the National Song’s historical legacy.

BJP national president Nitin Nabin during an induction meeting with the party’s newly appointed national office-bearers at the BJP headquarter, in New Delhi on Saturday. (ANI)

The resolution stated that the legacy of the National Song cannot be “reduced to the calculations of contemporary vote-bank politics.”

BJP resolution on Vande Mataram

The party resolved to “uphold the honour, dignity, legacy and national status of the complete Vande Mataram as the National Song of Bharat and as an immortal symbol of India’s national consciousness and freedom struggle… To affirm the constitutional and statutory status of Vande Mataram as established by the Constituent Assembly’s 1950 pronouncement and reinforced by Parliament’s 2026 amendment extending statutory protection to the National Song equivalent to that accorded to the National Anthem,” the resolution said.

Lashing out at the Congress for refusing to sing all stanzas of the National Song, the BJP said it will reject every attempt to subordinate the National Song to communal pressure, political appeasement, or narrow vote-bank considerations.

The CWC earlier decided to abide by its 1937 resolution on Vande Mataram and sing only two stanzas of the National Song, instead of its full rendition, at all party events.

“…To remind the Congress that a resolution of its Working Committee cannot override the constitutional institutions or laws of the Republic of India, and that a political compromise of 1937 cannot be elevated above the constitutional settlement of 1950 and legislation enacted by Parliament in 2026….To expose before the people of Bharat the historical and political context in which the truncation of Vande Mataram took place, including the objections raised by the Muslim League and the subsequent politics of communal and separatist demands,” the resolution said.

Earlier, Union home minister Amit Shah had dubbed the Congress resolution as anti-national and designed to foster vote-bank politics.

To counter the opposition’s claims that some faiths have reservations about the stanzas with religious imagery, the BJP said it will recall and disseminate Mahatma Gandhi’s testimony that Vande Mataram had become an “anti-imperialist cry” and that he associated it with “the purest national spirit,” demonstrating its larger national meaning beyond the literary or religious context of particular stanzas.

The party will undertake a nationwide campaign to take the history, meaning, national significance and glorious legacy of Vande Mataram to every corner of Bharat.

“…To educate and mobilise the people, especially the younger generation, so that the complete six-stanza National Song and its history are not forgotten and future generations understand the sacrifices, struggles and patriotic awakening with which Vande Mataram is inseparably associated,” the resolution said.

The party urged citizens to remember that the words Vande Mataram were once “powerful enough to frighten an empire.”