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The Union home ministry’s January 28 note, mandating that all six stanzas of India’s national song Vande Mataram be played or sung before the national anthem Jana Gana Mana on some specific occasions, has triggered reactions in poll-bound West Bengal.
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders said the Centre has shown respect to Bengal’s literary icon Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, whose 1870s 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 made references to Goddess Durga. Professor Moidul Islam from the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences told HT that the Constituent Assembly took its decision to ensure harmony among communities.
“Fundamental duties of citizens, which included singing or playing the first two stanzas of Vande Mataram, were 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.
“Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and Rabindranath Tagore, who composed the national anthem, both wanted a secular nation. Singing of all stanzas of Jana Gana Mana should be made mandatory as well, as these mention India as a nation of Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims, Parsis and Christians,” he added.
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 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, Chattopadhyay’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 Durga may not be acceptable to many religious groups, such as Muslims, to whom the almighty has no physical form,” Nandy said at a press conference.
The debate over Vande Mataram started in West Bengal in November last year when the BJP and the Centre launched nationwide celebrations marking the 150th anniversary of the song’s 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 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.
