Omission of stanzas from Vande Mataram sparks row between BJP, Congress
New Delhi: The Congress hit back at Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday after his attack on the party over the dropping of stanzas from “Vande Mataram” in 1937, saying Rabindranath Tagore himself had suggested that the first two stanzas of the song be adopted and it was “shameful” of the prime minister to accuse the Nobel laureate of harbouring a divisive ideology.
The opposition party also demanded an apology from Modi over his statement.
In an apparent attack on the Congress, the prime minister said important stanzas of the national song, “Vande Mataram”, were dropped in 1937, which sowed the seeds of the partition, and asserted that such a “divisive mindset” is still a challenge for the country.
He made the comments after inaugurating the year-long commemoration of “Vande Mataram” to mark 150 years of the national song. Modi also released a commemorative stamp and coin on the occasion at the Indira Gandhi Indoor Stadium here.
Reacting to the prime minister’s remarks, Congress general secretary in-charge communications Jairam Ramesh shared extracts from Sabyasachi Bhattacharya’s definitive biography of “Vande Mataram”, giving the background of the Congress Working Committee (CWC) resolution of October 29, 1937 that adopted the song.
“Three days before the meeting, on October 26, 1937, Tagore wrote to (Jawaharlal) Nehru on this issue. It was the Gurudev himself — with his own special relationship to Vande Mataram — who suggested that the first two stanzas of the song be adopted. His letter in fact profoundly influenced the resolution in its entirety,” Ramesh said in a post on X.
“The Prime Minister is now accusing the Gurudev of harbouring a ‘divisive ideology’. It is a shameful statement from a man whose lies and distortions have no limits. The people of India demand an unconditional apology,” he said.
On January 24, 1950, the Constituent Assembly officially adopted “Vande Mataram” as the national song, giving it enduring significance.
According to various accounts, a truncated version of “Vande Mataram”, keeping only the first two of the six original stanzas, was chosen as the national song in 1937 by the Congress after a panel recommended its adoption.
According to excerpts from the book, screenshots of which were shared by Ramesh on X, “Upon being consulted, Rabindranath Tagore’s advice was threefold. While the first two stanzas were entirely acceptable to Rabindranath, he could not sympathise with the sentiments in the latter stanzas.”
In a letter to Nehru. Tagore wrote, “To me, the spirit of tenderness and devotion expressed in its first portion, the emphasis it gave to beautiful and beneficent aspects of our motherland made a special appeal, so much so that I found no difficulty in dissociating it from the rest of the poem and from those portions of the book of which it is a part, with all the sentiments of which, brought up as I was in the monotheistic ideals of my father, I could have no sympathy.”
“I freely concede that the whole of Bankim’s ‘Vande Mataram’ poem, read together with its context, is liable to be interpreted in ways that might wound Moslem susceptibilities, but a national song, though derived from it, which has spontaneously come to consist only of the first two stanzas of the original poem, need not remind us every time of the whole of it, much less of the story with which it was accidentally associated.
“It has acquired a separate individuality and an inspiring significance of its own in which I see nothing to offend any sect or community,” Tagore was quoted as saying in the book.