Mixed reaction to Centre’s Vande Mataram order

The Union home ministry’s January 28 note, mandating playing or singing of all six stanzas of Vande Mataram, India’s national song, before Jana Gana Mana, the national anthem, on some specific occasions has triggered reactions in poll-bound West Bengal

The Union home ministry’s January 28 note, mandating playing or singing of all six stanzas of Vande Mataram, India’s national song, before Jana Gana Mana, the national anthem, on some specific occasions has triggered reactions in poll-bound West Bengal.

Mixed reaction to Centre’s Vande Mataram order

Bharatiya Janata Party leaders said the Centre has shown respect to Bengal’s literary icon Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay whose 1870’s composition in Sanskritized Bengali became the driving spirit of the freedom movement.

Academicians, on the other hand, argued that the Constituent Assembly adopted only the first two stanzas as the national song on January 24, 1950 because the fourth and fifth stanzas devoted to idol worship and Goddess Durga, went against the Constitution’s secular spirit.

Professor Moidul Islam from the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences told HT that the Constituent Assembly took its decision to ensure harmony.

“Fundamental duties of citizens, which included singing or playing of the first two stanzas of Vande Mataram, was adopted in the 42nd Amendment to the Constitution in 1976 when Indira Gandhi was the Prime Minister. It appears that the current regime wants to erase the norms and practices of the Nehruvian era,” said Islam.

Political science professor Udayan Bandopadhyay welcomed the Centre’s decision but with riders.

“As a song, Vande Mataram has religious symbolism but there is no denying the fact that it inspired thousands of freedom fighters and strengthened the spirit of nationalism. The song is unique. However, only the first two stanzas should be performed and the decision should be enforced by amending the Constitution,” Bandopadhyay told HT.

“Many people point out that Anandamath, Chattopadhay’s 1882 novel in which Vande Mataram was inserted later, had some subtle anti-Musim content. But the song had nothing to do with that. It lives beyond the book to this day,” Bandopadhyay added.

Ratan Kumar Nandy, a researcher on Chattopadhyay, raised the same points.

“References to idol worship and Goddess Durga may not be acceptable to many religious groups, such as Brahmas and Muslims to whom the almighty has no physical form,” Nandy said at a press conference.

The debate over Vande Mataram started in Bengal in November last year when the BJP and the Centre launched nationwide celebrations marking the 150th anniversary of the composition. The Trinamool Congress government tried to set a different narrative by making it mandatory for children in state-run schools to sing Banglar Mati, Banglar Jol, a song Tagore composed in 1905 amid protests against partition of the Bengal province by the British.

Adopted by the TMC government as the official state song in 2023, Banglar Mati, Banglar Jol was sung at the Raksha Bandhan ceremony Tagore started on October 16, 1905 to mark unity among Hindus and Muslims in the midst of the Swadeshi Movement against the partition ordered by Lord Curzon, the then Viceroy of India. The song became equally popular in the Muslim dominated East Bengal province which became East Pakistan after the 1947 Partition and Bangladesh after the 1971 Liberation War.

Vande Mataram, on the other hand, was written as a tribute to the motherland. It was inserted in Anandamath which told the story of saffron-clad Hindu monks engaged in a guerilla war against the British and tax collecting landlords during the 1770 Bengal famine. The song soon became the symbol of the nationalist movement and Tagore is said to have recited it first at the annual convention of the Indian National Congress in Kolkata in 1896.