Maa Tujhe Salaam
Vande Matram Controversy to the fore again
Ram Puniyani
Jamiat-Ulema-eHind on 2nd Nov 2009 passed a resolution asking Muslims not to recite Vande Mataram on the ground that some verses of the national song are against the tenets of Islam. Similar fatwa was also passed by Darul Ulum Deoband three years ago, when the controversy had begun afresh. Incidentally the same organizations have also passed the fatwa that violence, terrorism is against the concept of Islam.
Hell broke loose, with the fatwa on Vande Matram., The self appointed custodians of nationalism and section of media asserted that this fatwa is anti National. Some went onto assert that ‘Vande Matram Kahna Hoga’ (One will have to say Vande Matram). Earlier Shiv Sena in particular, had dictated that ‘Is Desh Mein Rahna hai to Vande Matram Kahna Hoga’ (If one has to live in this country they must say-sing Vande Matram. So on one extreme, Don’t Sing Vande Matram, on the other you will have to sing Vande Matram.
There is a vast middle ground. Most of the Muslim participants in the television talk shows and many other Muslim leaders, including the minister for minority affairs, Salman Khursheed and many Muslim intellectuals said that this fatwa is unacceptable and not worth giving any importance as Indian Constitution has settled the matter. The first two stanzas of the song, which are free from the Hindu imageries, are to be sung. Many a commentators also pointed out that the singing of any song cannot be imposed as that violates the freedom of religion as guaranteed by the constitution.
So we have three major streams of opinion on the Song issue. On one extreme, Muslim orthodox-conservatives like from Jamiat-Ulema-eHind are opposing it. Middle ground from amongst Muslims and Hindus not making a big issue of someone’s singing or not singing it. As a matter of fact majority of Muslims are stating that they have no problem in singing the song and that they will sing it. On the other extreme is the RSS fatwa, intimidating and assertive, that the song must be sung.
This song as such has a complex history. It was written by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee and, later was made a part of his novel Anand Math. This novel has strong anti Muslim rhetoric. This song was very popular with a section of society, but Muslim League strongly objected to the song, as the song compares India with Goddess Durga. Islam being monotheistic religion does not recognize any other God-Goddess than Allah. Many others belonging to monotheistic religions also had problem with this song. In 1937, the Song committee of the Indian National Congress with Nehru and Maulana Abul Kalam amongst others as members selected Jana Gana Mana as the national anthem and picked up first two stanzas of Vande Matram as national song.
Supreme Court had also to deal with this issue. School-children from the ‘Jehovah's Witnesses faith’ had refused to sing the national anthem because their religion forbade them to sing it, due to which the school expelled the students. The matter went to Supreme Court, which observed that a secular court cannot enquire into the correctness or otherwise of religious beliefs and that not singing this song due to religious beliefs is not against Indian Constitution. The ground on which court gave its verdict was the assessment whether the belief is genuinely and conscientiously held by a sizable section of the community, and that the belief is not opposed to public order and morality. The Supreme Court struck down the students' expulsion as violative of their freedom of religion guaranteed by Article 25 of the Constitution and students were taken back.
.
Soli Sorabjee one of our celebrated legal luminary takes the cue from Justice Chinnappa Reddy to explain the rationale of the judgment, "Our tradition teaches tolerance; our philosophy preaches tolerance; our constitution practices tolerance; let us not dilute it". The controversy has been raging, more so since 2006 when the UPA Government called for singing of the song in schools.
Interestingly even the Shiromani Gurudwara Prabandhak Committee had asked Sikhs not to sing Vande Matram, but most of the Sikhs defied that and continued singing the song. One of the most touching rendition of Vande Matram, Maa Tujhe Salaam, has come from none other than A.R.Rahman, the celebrated Indian music maestro.
To use general labels like anti national for such fatwas is very misplaced. Same Jamat-I-Islami Hind is the one which stood solidly with the concept of composite Indian nationalism, opposing India’s partition, rejecting the two nation theory of communalists. And there are shades and shades of opinions amongst Muslims. Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Maulana Hussain Ahmad Madni and many other Muslim clerics went along with the idea of singing first two stanzas of the song. Legally while Constitution recognizes Vande Matram as a National Song, it also gives us the freedom of religion, and the Supreme Court judgments have struck down the extreme position that Anthem-Song must be sung.
Father of the nation, the heart and soul of Indian Nationalism, who united all the people cutting across religion, caste and gender, Mahatma Gandhi, also came to the conclusion that Jana Gana Mana and not Vande Matram, should be the National Anthem. But this conclusion of Gandhi was not acceptable to Nathuram Godse who made this as one of the points of anger against the father of the nation leading to Godse’s assassinating the father of the nation. (http://www.outlookindia.com/articles.aspx?232358).
So how does one reconcile to differences in a democratic society? Dr. Ambedkar pointed out that in a democracy the minority should gradually try to overcome its separate ‘minority identity’, and the majority should create a situation where minority does not feel insecure and has to retreat inside the shell of its minority identity. One feels the more we create a situation where minorities can live with security, dignity and equity, such fatwa’s will be automatically ignored by most of the minority community. We have seen that in the case with Sikh community, the mandate of SPGC, was totally ignored. And even now amongst Muslims most of them are against this fatwa, so it is time that the other extremists stop sticking anti national label to these conservative groups and more so to the community involved.
Minorities can either be brow beaten to submit to the wish of those claiming to be representing the majority or the situations should be created where minorities feel equally safe and confident in this country to voluntarily and comprehensively overcome such types of dictates, fatwas from one or other section of conservative groups.
--
|
Showing posts with label Vande Mataram. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Vande Mataram. Show all posts
November 21, 2009
Vande Mataram the song that repeatedly sparks trouble
Frontline
Nov. 21-Dec. 04, 2009
CONTROVERSY
Vande Mataram: In rewind mode
by Sabyasachi Bhattacharya
The present controversy over the song Vande Mataram is a rerun of fragments of the political discourse of the 1930s.
Bankim Chandra Chatterjee. The first two stanzas of Vande Mataram and the later stanzas belong to two different strata of his literary life.
THE present controversy over the song “Vande Mataram” may be seen as a re-enactment of what happened decades earlier. At the same time, it may be worthwhile to ponder whether there is a new meaning in the battle of words that has been started against the “compulsion” to sing the song. It is a rerun of fragments of the political discourse of the 1930s, which has played over and again many times since then. But whether that carries a new message, in that it speaks of a fragility of confidence in the integrity of a historically evolved community identity, is an issue that should be a common concern.
To set the record straight, the issue of compulsion was settled about 70 years ago, during 1937-39. Mohammed Ali Jinnah purportedly gave vent to the anxiety of the Muslim community, that its members would be compelled to sing Vande Mataram. At a time when the nationalist leadership or the Indian National Congress did not have much power to compel, how genuine this anxiety was is a matter of debate. However, Jinnah put this point at the top of his agenda in his talks with Jawaharlal Nehru; among the Quaid-e-Azam papers, now in Pakistan, his discussion notes of February 1, 1938, bear this out: “Vande Mataram must go.”
On March 1, 1938, in an article in The New Times of Lahore, Jinnah stated: “Muslims all over [India] have refused to accept Vande Mataram or any expurgated edition of the anti-Muslim song as a binding national anthem.” On April 16, 1938, in his presidential address at the special session of the All India Muslim League in Calcutta, he focussed attention on the charge that the Indian National Congress “endeavoured to impose the Vande Mataram song in the legislatures”. In his presidential address at the Sind Provincial Muslim League Conference, Jinnah reiterated the charge as indeed he did on many other occasions.
While one must acknowledge the build-up of considerable opposition to a song thus targeted by Jinnah, one must not forget the other side of the story. Although Vande Mataram, as a song and as a slogan, had been a part of the freedom struggle since the Swadeshi movement of 1905, there were doubts in Congress circles about its acceptability as a whole. The “expurgated edition” of the song, which Jinnah refers to in his article, was the outcome of these doubts.
A part of the song was indeed dropped by the Congress from the “officially” accepted version, by a resolution of the Congress Working Committee in October 1937.
Gandhi’s words
This was the part against which Muslim sentiment was strong. Further, the Congress addressed the issue of “compulsion” with a series of steps leading to the resolution drafted by Mahatma Gandhi himself in January 1939. The resolution was of vital importance in guiding the party as well as, in the long run, the Constituent Assembly in its decision to designate Vande Mataram as the national song, while “Jana-gana-mana” was given the status of the national anthem. It is evident from the draft resolution that Gandhi wrote with great caution and circumspection, and he wrote on top: “Strictly Confidential: Not for Publication.”
The resolution said: “As to the singing of the long established national song, Vande Mataram, the Congress, anticipating objections, has retained as national song only those stanzas to which no objection could be taken on religious and other grounds. But except at purely Congress gatherings it should be left open to individuals whether they will stand up when the stanzas are sung. In the present state of things, in Local Board and Assembly meetings, which their members are obliged to attend, the singing of Vande Mataram should be discontinued.”
Dissenting voices
There were some dissenting voices in the Congress. C. Rajagopalachari thought that such a “concession will not save the situation” (Rajagopalachari to Sardar Vallabbhai Patel, January 7, 1939), and even G.B. Pant was quite lukewarm about the idea (Pant to Nehru, January 8, 1939). Nevertheless, Gandhi and, by and large, the top leadership of the Congress regarded the measure as essential. The main idea was to decisively remove any apprehension of compulsion. It was nevertheless a decision that went against the grain of Gandhi’s cast of mind, and he wrote a sort of apologia in Harijan (July 1, 1939): “…now we have fallen on evil days…. I will not risk a single quarrel over singing Vande Mataram at a mixed gathering. It will never suffer from disuse. It is enthroned in the hearts of millions.”
Differences among leaders
THE HINDU PHOTO LIBRARY
Mohammed Ali Jinnah (sixth from left) with Muslim leaders at a conference in Bombay. On April 16, 1938, Jinnah, while addressing a special session of the All India Muslim League in Calcutta, focussed attention on the charge that the Indian National Congress “endeavoured to impose the Vande Mataram song in the legislatures”.
Of these two policy decisions, that of October 1937 on “expurgating” the song and that of January 1939 recognising freedom from any compulsory participation in events where the song was sung, the first one caused agonising moments to the national leaders for it was the first time that they faced the task of reappraisal of a song sanctified by its historical associations. Thereby hangs a tale, which has as its protagonists not only Nehru, Rajendra Prasad, Subhas Chandra Bose and others in political decision-making but also Rabindranath Tagore.
Nehru was one of those Congress members who were not familiar with the song – in fact as late as October 20, 1937, he wrote, “I do not understand it without the help of a dictionary”, but he had “managed to get an English translation”. He read for the first time Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s novel in which the song features only six days before the Working Committee meeting to decide the fate of the song. There were others among his peers who had a strong attachment to it. Congress members noted that Vallabbhai Patel and Rajendra Prasad concluded their address as Congress presidents, in 1931 and 1934, with the Vande Mataram slogan; Nehru did not in 1929 and 1936. Thus, there was a difference in attitude within the leadership.
Dropping any part of the song was not an easy task. (The same difference probably persisted until the Constituent Assembly passed its resolution making “Jana-gana-mana”, not Vande Mataram, the national anthem. Since it was moved from the Chair by Rajendra Prasad, it was neither discussed nor put to vote and that conveniently put a stop to the controversy on the song’s status.)
The problem due to differences within Congress was exacerbated by two factors. The Hindu Mahasabha organised a Vanda Mataram day in Pune and Bombay in October 1937, and elsewhere on other occasions, the party spokesmen began to urge the adoption of that song as the national anthem. Subhas Chandra Bose, in the meanwhile, was up in arms in favour of Vande Mataram. Nehru’s response to him was that considering that there was an outcry against the song and “people who have been communistically inclined” were watching the Congress actions in this regard, the Congress must “meet real grievances where they exist”, without pandering to communalism (Nehru to Bose, October 20, 1937).
Tagore’s advice
Nehru sought a way out of the situation by appealing to Tagore, who delivered a judgment that ultimately decided the issue for the Congress. Tagore’s reply was complex since he squarely faced the dilemma of reconciling loyalty to literary sensibility with political expediency.
The basic advice he offered was as follows: The first two stanzas of the song were unexceptionable. As regards the rest of the song, there could be objections from those with “monotheistic ideals”, and these stanzas could be dissociated from the first two. His advice was that while the song taken as a whole “might wound Muslim susceptibilities”, delinked from the rest of the lyric the first two stanzas might be accepted since they appeal to everyone on account of “the spirit of tenderness and devotion expressed”.
In his letter to Nehru (October 26, 1937), Tagore also mentioned that he “was the first person to sing it at a session of the Indian National Congress”, presumably the session in 1896 in Calcutta.
Different parts, different times
Recent research has established that Vande Mataram was indeed written in two distinctly different parts, and at different times. When Bankim Chandra wrote the first two stanzas sometime around 1872, it was just a beautiful hymn, the classical vandana in Sanskrit, to the motherland, richly watered, richly fruited, dark with the crops of the harvest, sweet of laughter, sweet of speech, the giver of bliss.
For several years, these first two stanzas remained unpublished. In 1881, this poem was included by Bankim Chandra in the novel Anandamath, and then it was expanded to endow the motherland with militant religious symbolism as the context of the narrative demanded. There now emerged a new icon of the motherland, “terrible with the clamour of seventy million throats”, likened to “Durga holding ten weapons of war”. The first two stanzas and the later stanzas belong to two different strata of Bankim Chandra’s literary life. Thus, the two parts of the song can be justifiably separated. However, when the decision was made to drop the latter part of the song, these facts were not known to the decision-makers.
THE HINDU PHOTO LIBRARY
Mahatma Gandhi and Kasturba Gandhi at a reception given by Rabindranath Tagore at Santiniketan. Tagore, at Jawaharlal Nehru’s behest, delivered a judgment on the “Vande Mataram” situation that ultimately decided the issue for the Congress.
On the lines of Tagore’s advice, the Congress Working Committee passed the resolution mentioned earlier. “The committee recognises the validity of the objection raised by Muslim friends to certain parts of the song.” The committee accepted only the first two stanzas of Vande Mataram and not the other stanzas.
Most important was the degree of freedom conceded in the resolution: “The committee recommends that wherever Vande Mataram is sung at national gatherings only the first two stanzas should be sung, with perfect freedom to the organisers to sing any other song of an unobjectionable character, in addition to, or in the place of, the Vande Mataram song.”
The attempts to eliminate the element of compulsion are beyond question, but that did not satisfy the song’s opponents. Jinnah continued with his tirades. The political appropriation or conspicuous rejection of cultural symbols and artefacts was part of the identity assertion that a political agenda demanded. There were a number of Muslim intellectuals and public spokespersons who accepted the song, specially the amended version that the Congress adopted. Rafi Ahmed Kidwai, for instance, considered the attitude of Jinnah as only a subterfuge. He pointed out that for years the song was sung at the beginning of Congress sessions and no objections were raised by Muslim members including Jinnah (Kidwai’s press statement, The Pioneer, October 19, 1937).
Widely shared discomfort
Likewise, Dr Syed Mahmood of the Bihar Legislative Assembly or Professor Reza-ul Karim in Bengal were not persuaded by Jinnah’s arguments about the song. At the same time, there was undoubtedly a widely shared discomfort with the song in Muslim political circles in these provinces as well as Sind, Madras and Bombay. Jinnah gave voice to it stridently, but it was not entirely his creation.
Today, when there are reassertions of old charges and re-enactments of old battles, it is encouraging to see how many Muslim intellectuals and public persons have reacted. Of the many enlightened reactions, perhaps, the most delightful for its directness is that of the poet Javed Akhtar. He reportedly said: “What is this new resistance? The objection is redundant. You don’t want to sing Vande Mataram, don’t. Who is forcing you? I sing it. I don’t see it as objectionable. If you do, don’t sing it.”
However, perhaps there is an inadequacy and a probably widespread intellectual tendency to say that at the root of it there is ignorance about the battles that are over. It is not enough to say that. What makes uninformed conceptions acceptable to a number of people? It is not enough to say that the misconception originated among a section of clerics; some of them may be plebeians among the intellectuals, but there are also intellectuals among the plebeians. They exercise great influence and merit attention.
And finally, if there is a generalised perception of a threat to cultural identity, even if it is based on wrong premises, it needs to be studied and addressed. In these few pages an attempt has been made to put the record straight in terms of history, but one has to think of tasks beyond that.
Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, formerly Professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University and Vice-Chancellor of Visva-Bharati University at Santiniketan, is Chairman, Indian Council of Historical Research. The views expressed in this essay are entirely personal.
Nov. 21-Dec. 04, 2009
CONTROVERSY
Vande Mataram: In rewind mode
by Sabyasachi Bhattacharya
The present controversy over the song Vande Mataram is a rerun of fragments of the political discourse of the 1930s.
Bankim Chandra Chatterjee. The first two stanzas of Vande Mataram and the later stanzas belong to two different strata of his literary life.
THE present controversy over the song “Vande Mataram” may be seen as a re-enactment of what happened decades earlier. At the same time, it may be worthwhile to ponder whether there is a new meaning in the battle of words that has been started against the “compulsion” to sing the song. It is a rerun of fragments of the political discourse of the 1930s, which has played over and again many times since then. But whether that carries a new message, in that it speaks of a fragility of confidence in the integrity of a historically evolved community identity, is an issue that should be a common concern.
To set the record straight, the issue of compulsion was settled about 70 years ago, during 1937-39. Mohammed Ali Jinnah purportedly gave vent to the anxiety of the Muslim community, that its members would be compelled to sing Vande Mataram. At a time when the nationalist leadership or the Indian National Congress did not have much power to compel, how genuine this anxiety was is a matter of debate. However, Jinnah put this point at the top of his agenda in his talks with Jawaharlal Nehru; among the Quaid-e-Azam papers, now in Pakistan, his discussion notes of February 1, 1938, bear this out: “Vande Mataram must go.”
On March 1, 1938, in an article in The New Times of Lahore, Jinnah stated: “Muslims all over [India] have refused to accept Vande Mataram or any expurgated edition of the anti-Muslim song as a binding national anthem.” On April 16, 1938, in his presidential address at the special session of the All India Muslim League in Calcutta, he focussed attention on the charge that the Indian National Congress “endeavoured to impose the Vande Mataram song in the legislatures”. In his presidential address at the Sind Provincial Muslim League Conference, Jinnah reiterated the charge as indeed he did on many other occasions.
While one must acknowledge the build-up of considerable opposition to a song thus targeted by Jinnah, one must not forget the other side of the story. Although Vande Mataram, as a song and as a slogan, had been a part of the freedom struggle since the Swadeshi movement of 1905, there were doubts in Congress circles about its acceptability as a whole. The “expurgated edition” of the song, which Jinnah refers to in his article, was the outcome of these doubts.
A part of the song was indeed dropped by the Congress from the “officially” accepted version, by a resolution of the Congress Working Committee in October 1937.
Gandhi’s words
This was the part against which Muslim sentiment was strong. Further, the Congress addressed the issue of “compulsion” with a series of steps leading to the resolution drafted by Mahatma Gandhi himself in January 1939. The resolution was of vital importance in guiding the party as well as, in the long run, the Constituent Assembly in its decision to designate Vande Mataram as the national song, while “Jana-gana-mana” was given the status of the national anthem. It is evident from the draft resolution that Gandhi wrote with great caution and circumspection, and he wrote on top: “Strictly Confidential: Not for Publication.”
The resolution said: “As to the singing of the long established national song, Vande Mataram, the Congress, anticipating objections, has retained as national song only those stanzas to which no objection could be taken on religious and other grounds. But except at purely Congress gatherings it should be left open to individuals whether they will stand up when the stanzas are sung. In the present state of things, in Local Board and Assembly meetings, which their members are obliged to attend, the singing of Vande Mataram should be discontinued.”
Dissenting voices
There were some dissenting voices in the Congress. C. Rajagopalachari thought that such a “concession will not save the situation” (Rajagopalachari to Sardar Vallabbhai Patel, January 7, 1939), and even G.B. Pant was quite lukewarm about the idea (Pant to Nehru, January 8, 1939). Nevertheless, Gandhi and, by and large, the top leadership of the Congress regarded the measure as essential. The main idea was to decisively remove any apprehension of compulsion. It was nevertheless a decision that went against the grain of Gandhi’s cast of mind, and he wrote a sort of apologia in Harijan (July 1, 1939): “…now we have fallen on evil days…. I will not risk a single quarrel over singing Vande Mataram at a mixed gathering. It will never suffer from disuse. It is enthroned in the hearts of millions.”
Differences among leaders
THE HINDU PHOTO LIBRARY
Mohammed Ali Jinnah (sixth from left) with Muslim leaders at a conference in Bombay. On April 16, 1938, Jinnah, while addressing a special session of the All India Muslim League in Calcutta, focussed attention on the charge that the Indian National Congress “endeavoured to impose the Vande Mataram song in the legislatures”.
Of these two policy decisions, that of October 1937 on “expurgating” the song and that of January 1939 recognising freedom from any compulsory participation in events where the song was sung, the first one caused agonising moments to the national leaders for it was the first time that they faced the task of reappraisal of a song sanctified by its historical associations. Thereby hangs a tale, which has as its protagonists not only Nehru, Rajendra Prasad, Subhas Chandra Bose and others in political decision-making but also Rabindranath Tagore.
Nehru was one of those Congress members who were not familiar with the song – in fact as late as October 20, 1937, he wrote, “I do not understand it without the help of a dictionary”, but he had “managed to get an English translation”. He read for the first time Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s novel in which the song features only six days before the Working Committee meeting to decide the fate of the song. There were others among his peers who had a strong attachment to it. Congress members noted that Vallabbhai Patel and Rajendra Prasad concluded their address as Congress presidents, in 1931 and 1934, with the Vande Mataram slogan; Nehru did not in 1929 and 1936. Thus, there was a difference in attitude within the leadership.
Dropping any part of the song was not an easy task. (The same difference probably persisted until the Constituent Assembly passed its resolution making “Jana-gana-mana”, not Vande Mataram, the national anthem. Since it was moved from the Chair by Rajendra Prasad, it was neither discussed nor put to vote and that conveniently put a stop to the controversy on the song’s status.)
The problem due to differences within Congress was exacerbated by two factors. The Hindu Mahasabha organised a Vanda Mataram day in Pune and Bombay in October 1937, and elsewhere on other occasions, the party spokesmen began to urge the adoption of that song as the national anthem. Subhas Chandra Bose, in the meanwhile, was up in arms in favour of Vande Mataram. Nehru’s response to him was that considering that there was an outcry against the song and “people who have been communistically inclined” were watching the Congress actions in this regard, the Congress must “meet real grievances where they exist”, without pandering to communalism (Nehru to Bose, October 20, 1937).
Tagore’s advice
Nehru sought a way out of the situation by appealing to Tagore, who delivered a judgment that ultimately decided the issue for the Congress. Tagore’s reply was complex since he squarely faced the dilemma of reconciling loyalty to literary sensibility with political expediency.
The basic advice he offered was as follows: The first two stanzas of the song were unexceptionable. As regards the rest of the song, there could be objections from those with “monotheistic ideals”, and these stanzas could be dissociated from the first two. His advice was that while the song taken as a whole “might wound Muslim susceptibilities”, delinked from the rest of the lyric the first two stanzas might be accepted since they appeal to everyone on account of “the spirit of tenderness and devotion expressed”.
In his letter to Nehru (October 26, 1937), Tagore also mentioned that he “was the first person to sing it at a session of the Indian National Congress”, presumably the session in 1896 in Calcutta.
Different parts, different times
Recent research has established that Vande Mataram was indeed written in two distinctly different parts, and at different times. When Bankim Chandra wrote the first two stanzas sometime around 1872, it was just a beautiful hymn, the classical vandana in Sanskrit, to the motherland, richly watered, richly fruited, dark with the crops of the harvest, sweet of laughter, sweet of speech, the giver of bliss.
For several years, these first two stanzas remained unpublished. In 1881, this poem was included by Bankim Chandra in the novel Anandamath, and then it was expanded to endow the motherland with militant religious symbolism as the context of the narrative demanded. There now emerged a new icon of the motherland, “terrible with the clamour of seventy million throats”, likened to “Durga holding ten weapons of war”. The first two stanzas and the later stanzas belong to two different strata of Bankim Chandra’s literary life. Thus, the two parts of the song can be justifiably separated. However, when the decision was made to drop the latter part of the song, these facts were not known to the decision-makers.
THE HINDU PHOTO LIBRARY
Mahatma Gandhi and Kasturba Gandhi at a reception given by Rabindranath Tagore at Santiniketan. Tagore, at Jawaharlal Nehru’s behest, delivered a judgment on the “Vande Mataram” situation that ultimately decided the issue for the Congress.
On the lines of Tagore’s advice, the Congress Working Committee passed the resolution mentioned earlier. “The committee recognises the validity of the objection raised by Muslim friends to certain parts of the song.” The committee accepted only the first two stanzas of Vande Mataram and not the other stanzas.
Most important was the degree of freedom conceded in the resolution: “The committee recommends that wherever Vande Mataram is sung at national gatherings only the first two stanzas should be sung, with perfect freedom to the organisers to sing any other song of an unobjectionable character, in addition to, or in the place of, the Vande Mataram song.”
The attempts to eliminate the element of compulsion are beyond question, but that did not satisfy the song’s opponents. Jinnah continued with his tirades. The political appropriation or conspicuous rejection of cultural symbols and artefacts was part of the identity assertion that a political agenda demanded. There were a number of Muslim intellectuals and public spokespersons who accepted the song, specially the amended version that the Congress adopted. Rafi Ahmed Kidwai, for instance, considered the attitude of Jinnah as only a subterfuge. He pointed out that for years the song was sung at the beginning of Congress sessions and no objections were raised by Muslim members including Jinnah (Kidwai’s press statement, The Pioneer, October 19, 1937).
Widely shared discomfort
Likewise, Dr Syed Mahmood of the Bihar Legislative Assembly or Professor Reza-ul Karim in Bengal were not persuaded by Jinnah’s arguments about the song. At the same time, there was undoubtedly a widely shared discomfort with the song in Muslim political circles in these provinces as well as Sind, Madras and Bombay. Jinnah gave voice to it stridently, but it was not entirely his creation.
Today, when there are reassertions of old charges and re-enactments of old battles, it is encouraging to see how many Muslim intellectuals and public persons have reacted. Of the many enlightened reactions, perhaps, the most delightful for its directness is that of the poet Javed Akhtar. He reportedly said: “What is this new resistance? The objection is redundant. You don’t want to sing Vande Mataram, don’t. Who is forcing you? I sing it. I don’t see it as objectionable. If you do, don’t sing it.”
However, perhaps there is an inadequacy and a probably widespread intellectual tendency to say that at the root of it there is ignorance about the battles that are over. It is not enough to say that. What makes uninformed conceptions acceptable to a number of people? It is not enough to say that the misconception originated among a section of clerics; some of them may be plebeians among the intellectuals, but there are also intellectuals among the plebeians. They exercise great influence and merit attention.
And finally, if there is a generalised perception of a threat to cultural identity, even if it is based on wrong premises, it needs to be studied and addressed. In these few pages an attempt has been made to put the record straight in terms of history, but one has to think of tasks beyond that.
Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, formerly Professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University and Vice-Chancellor of Visva-Bharati University at Santiniketan, is Chairman, Indian Council of Historical Research. The views expressed in this essay are entirely personal.
November 18, 2009
India: Concerned citizens statement in response to Jamait Ulema's resolutions
the below statement was released on the 18th November 2009 at a press conference which was addressed by Zafar Agha, Shabnam Hashmi, Gauhar Raza and Sohail Hashmi.
among the signatories there are prominent names like Nasiruddin Shah, Javed Akhtar, Shabana Azmi, Saeed Akhtar Mirza, Shaid Mehdi etc.
STATEMENT BY CONCERNED CITIZENS
- We, the under signed, are shocked at the Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind (M group) unprovoked move to revive the Vande Matram controversy now. It is a well-known fact that the debate on Vande Mataram was settled way back in 1930s with the consent of the then leadership of the Jamiat. It was then agreed upon that the controversial parts of the Vande Matram would not be recited. The practice continues.
- We neither believe that the Vande Mataram is a test case of some one’s patriotism. Nor do we agree with the Jamiat interpretation that reciting the song would endanger one’s faith. Therefore, we strongly condemn the Jamiat move to unnecessarily provoke a controversy around Vande Mataram at this juncture. The Jamiat move has only strengthened the Hindutva forces, which have been in disarray since the last parliamentary election. We also condemn the Hindu right wing forces’ attempt to impose its recitation on citizens to prove one’s patriotism.
- We are further shocked with the Jamiat attitude towards girls’ education. The Jamiat wants to “establish non-residential modern educational institutions for girls education” with “specially carved out syllabus which should be completed within six years.” The Jamiat further demands: “On completion of 10 years of age, complete shariat norms should be observed while continuing their education.”
- It is a retrogressive move not only to isolate girls from the mainstream of the national education but also to keep them confined in a secluded sectarian atmosphere. It is shocking to demand shariat norms in education for girls or for any segment of society in a secular state. We condemn this anti women move in the strongest possible manner and demand that such moves must be checked in time.
- The Jamiat though encourages Muslims to take to modern education but it advises the young Muslim students not to take admissions in government or non-government schools because in such institutions Muslims students “get isolated and sometimes unaware about their Islamic values.
- We see this move as an indirect attempt to keep Muslims boys away from the mainstream education, which is exactly what Hindutva forces want. It will not only keep the community backwards but would discourage Muslims from taking to education for the fear of unnecessarily loosing “Islamic values”. We, therefore, condemn it in the strongest manner and appeal the Muslims not to heed to such ill-advised moves.
- The Jamiat has also come out strongly against the Central government move to standardize modern education syllabus through establishing a madarsa board. The move, as practiced in nine other states, will open a window for madarsa students to the modern education. It will also streamline and standardize teachers’ salaries within madras’s.
- We support the government move in this regard and appeal the Muslim clergy to accept it in the larger interest of the community, madarsa students and madarsa teachers most of whom are presently very lowly paid.
- A widespread debate on the women reservation bill is going inside and outside the parliament. There is a divide on this issue among various political parties. But the Jamiat move to oppose the Women Reservation Bill on the ground that it is a ‘desparate attempt to bring women into the mainstream’ and that ‘this will create various other social problems including their insecurity’ is highly objectionable. We strongly condemn it because it is another move to keep the Muslim women backward.
| A G Danish | Professional—NRI | |
| Abid Ali Khan | Academician | |
| Abid Manzoor | Social Activist | |
| Ahmad Cameron | Scientist | |
| Ain Haider | Journalist | |
| Ali Ala Zaidi | Executive | |
| Ali Asghar | Social Activist | |
| Amir Zaman | ||
| Aniz Azmi | ||
| Asim Rehman | Professional—NRI | |
| Dr Jamal Kidwai | Academic | |
| Dr Khalid Ashraf | ||
| Dr Sarwat Ali | Physician | |
| Dr Syed Zawed Zaidi | Physician | |
| Dr Tariq Ashraf | ||
| Dr. Aijaz Ilmi | Journalist | |
| Dr. Anwar Pasha | Academic | |
| Dr. Faiyaz Ahmed | ||
| Dr. Hamid Sarmadi | ||
| Dr. Kausar Wizarat | Academic | |
| Dr. Sayeed Alam | ||
| E Mohd Rafique | Physician | |
| Faizan Haider Naqvi | Business | |
| Faizi Hashmi | ||
| Faraz Ahmad | Journalist | |
| Farheen Mahboob | Home Maker | |
| Farida Bano | Teacher –NRI | |
| Farrukh Khan | Professional | |
| Gauhar Raza | Scientist, Poet, Filmmaker | |
| Hanif Lakdawala | Social Activist | |
| Hasan Shuja | Journalist | |
| Hasina Khan | Social Activist | |
| Huma Ghazanfar | Home Maker | |
| Humayun | Professional | |
| Imran Khan | Professional NRI | |
| Iram Zaidi | Researcher | |
| Irfan Ahmad | ||
| Irfan Engineer | Social Activist | |
| Jamila Nishat | Social Activist | |
| Jamshed Zaidi | Social Activist | |
| Jaseem Jamal | Professional—NRI | |
| Jasim Hasan | Student | |
| Javed Akhtar | Lyricist | |
| Javwed Iqbal | Professional | |
| Kajri Akhtar | Student | |
| Khurram Ilyasi | Professional | |
| Khursheed Akram | ||
| Lh Zaidi | Senior Citizen | |
| Marian Rizwi | Student | |
| Md. Maqsood Ahmad | Professional NRI | |
| Md. Masoom Basheer | Proffessional NRI | |
| Mehru Jaffer | Journalist | |
| Mohd Irfan | Student | |
| Mohd Kashif Imam | Student | |
| Mohd Zahid | ||
| Mohd, Kashif Rizvi | Professional | |
| Mohd. Amir | Professional NRI | |
| Mohd. Asif | Professional NRI | |
| Mohd. Javed | Professional Nri | |
| Momin Latif | ||
| Mujeeb Kidwai | Academic | |
| Nafisul Hasan | Professional | |
| Najma Rahmani | ||
| Nasiruddin Shah | Film And Theatre Actor/ Director | |
| Nauman Shauq | ||
| Nh Rizvi | Banker | |
| Nisar Shaikh | Academic NRI | |
| Nizam A Khan | Professional | |
| Parvez Rizwi | Social Activist | |
| Prof Iqbal Niazi | Educationist | |
| Qurban Ali | Journalist | |
| Rakshanda Jalil | Media Advisor | |
| Razi Raziuddin | Professional | |
| Rukhsana Parveen | Home Maker | |
| S Irfan Habib | ||
| Saba Azad | Film Actress And Model | |
| Sabiha Hashmi | Art Educator | |
| Sabina Kidwai | Filmmaker | |
| Saeed Akhtar Mirza | Cinema Director | |
| Saeed Haider | Journalist | |
| Saleem A Khan | Professional | |
| Saleha Siddiqui | Home Maker | |
| Salhauddin | Professional—NRI | |
| Salman Khairi | Professional | |
| Samina Abid | House Maker | |
| Sania Hashmi | Film Maker | |
| Sarah Hashmi | Student | |
| Sarah Rahman Niazi | Student | |
| Sayeeeduddin Haider | Professional—NRI | |
| Seema Mustafa | Journalist | |
| Shabana Azmi | Actress | |
| Shabnam Hashmi | Social Activist | |
| Shahid Abbad | Journalist | |
| Shahid Anwar | ||
| Shahid Askari | Social Activist | |
| Shahid Faridi | Journalist | |
| Shahnaz Haq | Professional NRI | |
| Shama Zaidi | Film/Television Writer | |
| Shameem Kausar | Teacher | |
| Sheilah Khaliq | Home Maker | |
| Sm Afsar | Un Professional | |
| Sohail Hashmi | Writer, Filmmaker | |
| Soheb Niazi | Student | |
| Sophia Abbas | Student | |
| Sophia Khan | Social Activist | |
| Syed Ghazanfar Ali | Professional | |
| Syed Shahid Mahdi | Former Vice Chancellor | |
| Tariq Hasan | Journalist | |
| Tariq Khan | Filmmaker | |
| Waqar Qazi | ||
| Wasi Haider | Academic | |
| Yasir Yusuf | ||
| Zafar Agha | Senior Journalist | |
| Zareena Sultan | Teacher | |
| Zoobi Amir | Cinematographer | |
| Nadeem Ahmed | Journalist | |
| Nadim Nikhat | Lawyer |
September 09, 2006
Vande Mataram and Anandamath: The Song and the Novel
(Mainstream
9 September 2006)
The Song and the Novel
by Sumit Sarkar
There is something mysterious about the current furore around the compulsory singing of Vande Mataram in schools. No mystery of course about why the BJP has enthusiastically taken up the issue, and already made it compulsory in Chhattisgarh, specifically mentioning that it has to be sung in madrasas. It likes nothing better than to provoke possible riots, and the issue enables it to avoid far more important questions that one would expect a normal Opposition party to take up, like farmers’ suicides or soaring prices. But it was the HRD Ministry that had started it all, by calling for the observance of September 7 as some kind of centenary occasion for the song. Vande Mataram was written in 1875, and published for the first time as part of Bankimchandra’s novel Anandamath in 1882.
The surprising thing is that nothing relevant to the song happened on September 7, 1906 (or 1905). The Congress did not take any decision then about its national status for the simple reason that it always met in the last week of December. The Benaras session of December 1905 did hear the song sung by Sarala Debi, in what had become a common practice since the beginning of the anti-Partition movement in Bengal a few months back. But there was no discussion or decision about a national anthem, there or in the session held exactly a year later in Calcutta in 1906.
I can make these statements with some authority, as I spent 10 years of my life researching nationalism in Bengal during 1903-08, and wrote a book about the Swadeshi movement in 1973 that is still widely read. Clearly the HRD Ministry had been wrongly advised, and has handed over an issue on a platter to the BJP, as part of the repeated Congress efforts to steal the Sangh Parivar’s thunder. One more effort at appeasement that every time proves harmful for secularism.
Vande Mataram was certainly often used as a slogan or song in the freedom struggle. But there were many other rallying cries. Let me cite two memorable instances. Bhagat Singh and his comrades threw a bomb in the Central Assembly in 1929 to protest an anti-labour law, raising the slogan ‘Inquilab Zindabad’, and Subhas Bose made Jana Gana Mana the anthem of his Azad Hind Fauj and Jai Hind its greeting, not Vande Mataram. The slogan and song, Vande Mataram, were quickly appropriated also by Hindu communalists, most evidently of course by the RSS. It has been often used as a war cry during riots, as counterpart to a similar misuse of Allah-ho-Akbar.
Muslims have objections to the deification of any entity except Allah, but what has vastly enhanced the problem is the way that the song ultimately becomes an evocation of a particular Hindu divinity. The discussions in the Congress in 1937 about the status of the song turned around the way what begins in the first two stanzas with an unexceptionable evocation of the beauty of the motherland then collapses the country into Durga. This was point made by Tagore when Nehru asked his opinion that year, and the Congress then decided to adopt only the first two stanzas. Sabyasachi Bhattacharya has recently described this debate in his book on Vande Mataram.
Vande Mataram, further, is an integral part of a novel that has been much translated and read. Anandamath is set in a Bengal ravaged by the famine of 1770, where the Company had already become the ruler, reducing the nawab to a puppet after the battle of Plassey in 1757. There were anti-British peasant revolts, sometimes led by Hindu and Muslim mendicants, sanyasis and fakirs, and Bankim was well aware of these facts. His novel, however, made the nawab and Muslims real tyrants, the British merely their compliant agents, and the whole story becomes one of aggression, brutality and violence by Muslims.
The fakir rebels disappear, and the sanyasis and peasant mobs mobilised by them call for anti-Muslim vengeance in luridly communal language:
We want to exterminate all the Muslims on this land as they are enemies of God—kill, kill the Muslims wretches…Brother, will that day ever come when we will demolish their mosques to build temples for Radhamadhav?
It has been suggested that Bankim was merely using Muslims as surrogate for the British, to evade censorship and trouble as a government official. Not perhaps an entirely convincing plea, for censorship, except on the public stage, was not really very stringent before the Swadeshi days. In any case, one needs to separate the possible intentions of the author, from the likely responses of readers. Is it really irrational for Muslims—and by no means Muslims alone—to object to the compulsory imposition of a song that collapses the country into a specific Hindu deity, and forms part of a novel full of apparently communal passages?
(Courtesy : The Times of India)
9 September 2006)
The Song and the Novel
by Sumit Sarkar
There is something mysterious about the current furore around the compulsory singing of Vande Mataram in schools. No mystery of course about why the BJP has enthusiastically taken up the issue, and already made it compulsory in Chhattisgarh, specifically mentioning that it has to be sung in madrasas. It likes nothing better than to provoke possible riots, and the issue enables it to avoid far more important questions that one would expect a normal Opposition party to take up, like farmers’ suicides or soaring prices. But it was the HRD Ministry that had started it all, by calling for the observance of September 7 as some kind of centenary occasion for the song. Vande Mataram was written in 1875, and published for the first time as part of Bankimchandra’s novel Anandamath in 1882.
The surprising thing is that nothing relevant to the song happened on September 7, 1906 (or 1905). The Congress did not take any decision then about its national status for the simple reason that it always met in the last week of December. The Benaras session of December 1905 did hear the song sung by Sarala Debi, in what had become a common practice since the beginning of the anti-Partition movement in Bengal a few months back. But there was no discussion or decision about a national anthem, there or in the session held exactly a year later in Calcutta in 1906.
I can make these statements with some authority, as I spent 10 years of my life researching nationalism in Bengal during 1903-08, and wrote a book about the Swadeshi movement in 1973 that is still widely read. Clearly the HRD Ministry had been wrongly advised, and has handed over an issue on a platter to the BJP, as part of the repeated Congress efforts to steal the Sangh Parivar’s thunder. One more effort at appeasement that every time proves harmful for secularism.
Vande Mataram was certainly often used as a slogan or song in the freedom struggle. But there were many other rallying cries. Let me cite two memorable instances. Bhagat Singh and his comrades threw a bomb in the Central Assembly in 1929 to protest an anti-labour law, raising the slogan ‘Inquilab Zindabad’, and Subhas Bose made Jana Gana Mana the anthem of his Azad Hind Fauj and Jai Hind its greeting, not Vande Mataram. The slogan and song, Vande Mataram, were quickly appropriated also by Hindu communalists, most evidently of course by the RSS. It has been often used as a war cry during riots, as counterpart to a similar misuse of Allah-ho-Akbar.
Muslims have objections to the deification of any entity except Allah, but what has vastly enhanced the problem is the way that the song ultimately becomes an evocation of a particular Hindu divinity. The discussions in the Congress in 1937 about the status of the song turned around the way what begins in the first two stanzas with an unexceptionable evocation of the beauty of the motherland then collapses the country into Durga. This was point made by Tagore when Nehru asked his opinion that year, and the Congress then decided to adopt only the first two stanzas. Sabyasachi Bhattacharya has recently described this debate in his book on Vande Mataram.
Vande Mataram, further, is an integral part of a novel that has been much translated and read. Anandamath is set in a Bengal ravaged by the famine of 1770, where the Company had already become the ruler, reducing the nawab to a puppet after the battle of Plassey in 1757. There were anti-British peasant revolts, sometimes led by Hindu and Muslim mendicants, sanyasis and fakirs, and Bankim was well aware of these facts. His novel, however, made the nawab and Muslims real tyrants, the British merely their compliant agents, and the whole story becomes one of aggression, brutality and violence by Muslims.
The fakir rebels disappear, and the sanyasis and peasant mobs mobilised by them call for anti-Muslim vengeance in luridly communal language:
We want to exterminate all the Muslims on this land as they are enemies of God—kill, kill the Muslims wretches…Brother, will that day ever come when we will demolish their mosques to build temples for Radhamadhav?
It has been suggested that Bankim was merely using Muslims as surrogate for the British, to evade censorship and trouble as a government official. Not perhaps an entirely convincing plea, for censorship, except on the public stage, was not really very stringent before the Swadeshi days. In any case, one needs to separate the possible intentions of the author, from the likely responses of readers. Is it really irrational for Muslims—and by no means Muslims alone—to object to the compulsory imposition of a song that collapses the country into a specific Hindu deity, and forms part of a novel full of apparently communal passages?
(Courtesy : The Times of India)
September 06, 2006
Vande Mataram: A souvenir, not an emblem
(The Hindu
September 6, 2006)
A souvenir, not an emblem
Malini Parthasarathy
Vande Mataram, the `national song,' played a stirring, historic role in mobilising people in the freedom struggle. But it cannot be an emblem of contemporary Indian nationhood.
FEW WOULD dispute the historic significance or the nostalgic value that attaches to the song `Vande Mataram.' It was truly the `national song' as the leaders of the freedom movement and the framers of the Constitution noted during the early days of India's Independence. This was because of its powerful potential for mobilisation, as its stirring words and imagery inspired thousands to join the nationalist struggle against the British imperialists. But equally part of the song's history were its troubling connotations in terms of its religious imagery and its anthropomorphic depiction of the Indian nation, which left many uneasy with the idea of enshrining it as the national anthem. As is well known, the leaders of the new nation, including Jawaharlal Nehru, decided that Rabindranath Tagore's `Jana Gana Mana' would be the national anthem while Vande Mataram would be its `national song.'
The mixed feelings of the Constitution framers vis-à-vis the Vande Mataram song were summed up succinctly by Jawaharlal Nehru to the Constituent Assembly in 1948, as A.G. Noorani has pointed out in a comprehensive analysis in Frontline (January 15, 1999). Nehru is quoted as paying tribute to Vande Mataram as "indisputably the premier national song of India with a great historical tradition and intimately connected with our struggle for freedom ... It represents the position and the poignancy of that struggle, but perhaps not so much the culmination of it." The latter part of Nehru's observation — "perhaps not so much the culmination of it" — holds the key to the puzzle why the idea of celebrating or commemorating this song continues to elicit so much controversy and resistance, even while there is acknowledgment of its historic place in the annals of India's struggle for freedom. If Vande Mataram had its undeniable appeal to large sections of people, clearly Hindus, who were moved by the depiction of Bharat Mata or Mother India and the references to the Goddess Durga, it obviously alienated the non-Hindu minorities who were otherwise eager participants in the struggle for freedom.
Even before Independence, the Congress party recognised the limited sectional appeal of the song and was impelled to point out that it should not be forced on communities that found the sentiments in it repugnant. The Congress Working Committee in 1937 recommended that the stanzas that had "certain allusions and a religious ideology" should be dropped and that only the first two stanzas should be sung at national gatherings. Noorani's analysis quotes the Working Committee as observing that "past associations with their long record of suffering for the cause, as well as popular usage, have made the first two stanzas of this song a living and inseparable part of our national movement and as such they must command our affection and respect ... The other two stanzas of the song are little known and hardly ever sung. They contain certain allusions and a religious ideology which may not be in keeping with the ideology of other religious groups in India." Thus it was acknowledged even before Independence that Vande Mataram had problematic associations despite its unquestionable rousing effect and powerful impact.
Pressure on non-Hindus
The reluctance of the Congress to give official symbolic importance to the Vande Mataram song is clearly a casus belli for Hindu nationalists who have, from time to time, raised this issue as a point in their own campaign for majoritarianism. This latest controversy triggered by Union Human Resources Minister Arjun Singh's recommendation that schools sing the first two stanzas of the song on its centenary has generated fresh momentum for the Hindu majoritarian campaign. BJP-ruled States have quickly jumped on the bandwagon, making it compulsory to sing the song that day. In other words, the occasion is now being used to put fresh pressure on non-Hindu citizens, particularly Muslims, to put aside their reservations and compulsorily defer to majoritarian sentiment. The controversy has centred mainly on the overtones of conflict but there is another issue that has received less attention. Of concern too is the question of the appropriateness of the symbolism contained in the Vande Mataram song in the context of the genre of nationhood that India has adopted and is continuing to adhere to — civic nationalism.
The anthropomorphic depiction of the Indian nation that Vande Mataram evokes — Bharat Mata, with its allusions to Durga — is more suited to a context of cultural nationalism. It is important to recall that the new Indian nation that came into being in 1947 was the product of a mass struggle of people of diverse identities, belonging to different communities and regions. This recognition brought forth an open acknowledgment from the makers of modern India that the national ethos that would power the new nation would be only civic and territorial in nature, with civic identity rather than any affiliation being given primacy in the new structure. It was acknowledged that all communities were equal stakeholders in the new democratic republic. It was therefore clear that symbols such as Vande Mataram that had strong overtones of cultural nationalism could not have a place among the official symbols of India's nationhood.
It is in this spirit that the Vande Mataram song needs to be viewed as the UPA Government strives to banish the unpleasantness of the polarising politics of the past few years in which Hindu cultural nationalism sought to stage a comeback, valiantly resisted and overcome by the mass of Indian citizens committed to a diverse and pluralist view of Indian nationhood. While it would be fair to pay homage to the historic importance of the Vande Mataram song and its role in mobilising people in the nationalist struggle decades ago, it is equally important to remember that at best it is a souvenir of the nationalist awakening. It is not and cannot be an emblem of contemporary Indian nationhood.
September 6, 2006)
A souvenir, not an emblem
Malini Parthasarathy
Vande Mataram, the `national song,' played a stirring, historic role in mobilising people in the freedom struggle. But it cannot be an emblem of contemporary Indian nationhood.
FEW WOULD dispute the historic significance or the nostalgic value that attaches to the song `Vande Mataram.' It was truly the `national song' as the leaders of the freedom movement and the framers of the Constitution noted during the early days of India's Independence. This was because of its powerful potential for mobilisation, as its stirring words and imagery inspired thousands to join the nationalist struggle against the British imperialists. But equally part of the song's history were its troubling connotations in terms of its religious imagery and its anthropomorphic depiction of the Indian nation, which left many uneasy with the idea of enshrining it as the national anthem. As is well known, the leaders of the new nation, including Jawaharlal Nehru, decided that Rabindranath Tagore's `Jana Gana Mana' would be the national anthem while Vande Mataram would be its `national song.'
The mixed feelings of the Constitution framers vis-à-vis the Vande Mataram song were summed up succinctly by Jawaharlal Nehru to the Constituent Assembly in 1948, as A.G. Noorani has pointed out in a comprehensive analysis in Frontline (January 15, 1999). Nehru is quoted as paying tribute to Vande Mataram as "indisputably the premier national song of India with a great historical tradition and intimately connected with our struggle for freedom ... It represents the position and the poignancy of that struggle, but perhaps not so much the culmination of it." The latter part of Nehru's observation — "perhaps not so much the culmination of it" — holds the key to the puzzle why the idea of celebrating or commemorating this song continues to elicit so much controversy and resistance, even while there is acknowledgment of its historic place in the annals of India's struggle for freedom. If Vande Mataram had its undeniable appeal to large sections of people, clearly Hindus, who were moved by the depiction of Bharat Mata or Mother India and the references to the Goddess Durga, it obviously alienated the non-Hindu minorities who were otherwise eager participants in the struggle for freedom.
Even before Independence, the Congress party recognised the limited sectional appeal of the song and was impelled to point out that it should not be forced on communities that found the sentiments in it repugnant. The Congress Working Committee in 1937 recommended that the stanzas that had "certain allusions and a religious ideology" should be dropped and that only the first two stanzas should be sung at national gatherings. Noorani's analysis quotes the Working Committee as observing that "past associations with their long record of suffering for the cause, as well as popular usage, have made the first two stanzas of this song a living and inseparable part of our national movement and as such they must command our affection and respect ... The other two stanzas of the song are little known and hardly ever sung. They contain certain allusions and a religious ideology which may not be in keeping with the ideology of other religious groups in India." Thus it was acknowledged even before Independence that Vande Mataram had problematic associations despite its unquestionable rousing effect and powerful impact.
Pressure on non-Hindus
The reluctance of the Congress to give official symbolic importance to the Vande Mataram song is clearly a casus belli for Hindu nationalists who have, from time to time, raised this issue as a point in their own campaign for majoritarianism. This latest controversy triggered by Union Human Resources Minister Arjun Singh's recommendation that schools sing the first two stanzas of the song on its centenary has generated fresh momentum for the Hindu majoritarian campaign. BJP-ruled States have quickly jumped on the bandwagon, making it compulsory to sing the song that day. In other words, the occasion is now being used to put fresh pressure on non-Hindu citizens, particularly Muslims, to put aside their reservations and compulsorily defer to majoritarian sentiment. The controversy has centred mainly on the overtones of conflict but there is another issue that has received less attention. Of concern too is the question of the appropriateness of the symbolism contained in the Vande Mataram song in the context of the genre of nationhood that India has adopted and is continuing to adhere to — civic nationalism.
The anthropomorphic depiction of the Indian nation that Vande Mataram evokes — Bharat Mata, with its allusions to Durga — is more suited to a context of cultural nationalism. It is important to recall that the new Indian nation that came into being in 1947 was the product of a mass struggle of people of diverse identities, belonging to different communities and regions. This recognition brought forth an open acknowledgment from the makers of modern India that the national ethos that would power the new nation would be only civic and territorial in nature, with civic identity rather than any affiliation being given primacy in the new structure. It was acknowledged that all communities were equal stakeholders in the new democratic republic. It was therefore clear that symbols such as Vande Mataram that had strong overtones of cultural nationalism could not have a place among the official symbols of India's nationhood.
It is in this spirit that the Vande Mataram song needs to be viewed as the UPA Government strives to banish the unpleasantness of the polarising politics of the past few years in which Hindu cultural nationalism sought to stage a comeback, valiantly resisted and overcome by the mass of Indian citizens committed to a diverse and pluralist view of Indian nationhood. While it would be fair to pay homage to the historic importance of the Vande Mataram song and its role in mobilising people in the nationalist struggle decades ago, it is equally important to remember that at best it is a souvenir of the nationalist awakening. It is not and cannot be an emblem of contemporary Indian nationhood.
September 05, 2006
Vande Mataram - The song and the non-singer
(Daily Times
September 05, 2006)
HUM HINDUSTANI: The song and the non-singer
by J Sri Raman
The appeal of the song is certainly not Muslim-proof.
The Vande Mataram of music wizard and devout Muslim AR
Rahman, with its rousing 'Maa Tujhe Salaam' refrain,
is proof enough. It is the religious-communal fascism
of the BJP and the 'parivar' that has made the Indian
Muslim today a resolute non-singer of the song. He
won‚t sing under the baton of the Islam-baiting
impresario
It is yet another 'cultural' crusade by India's far
right, but one with a striking difference. We are used
to campaigns by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and
its parivar (or ideological Œfamily‚) calling for bans
or boycotts of unacceptable cultural products -
whether books of objective history, films considered
hostile to 'Hindutva' or MF Husain's paintings.
The unholy warriors are now up in arms over a song.
But their aim is not to stifle it but to make its
singing mandatory - especially for the country's
largest minority.
Vande Mataram (Salute to Mother) has long enjoyed the
status of the Œnational song‚ - as distinct from the
national anthem (Jana Gana Mana) - but remained a
subject of recurring political controversy even
longer. It has been revived once again with a move by
the Human Resources Development Ministry for
observance of a centenary of the song on September 7.
The proposal has come as an answer to the prayer of
the far right, which had failed to draw the
anticipated mileage from the Mumbai serial blasts,
with the people preferring concerted relief operations
over a religious-communal riposte to the terrorist
strike. The BJP and the parivar have responded to the
move with the assertion that the best way to observe
the occasion is to make the singing of Vande Mataram
mandatory in educational institutions - especially
Œmadrassas‚.
Scholars differ on the choice of the date for the
centenary. The ministry‚s proposal is based on a
mistaken notion that the singing of Vande Mataram at a
session of the Indian National Congress in Calcutta in
1906 lent the song its revered status. It has been
pointed out that the status was conferred on it only
in 1937, when the Congress discussed the import of the
doubtless inspiring song of the freedom struggle - and
decided to adopt only the first two stanzas. These,
Congress leaders - including Jawaharlal Nehru -
concluded, were the lines devoted to the land while
the rest of the song was addressed to Hindu deities
and caused unease to the minority beginning to
encounter an emergent majoritarian communalism. This,
notably, was done at the suggestion of Rabindranath
Tagore, who had set the song to a tune that was to
become widely popular.
What turned growing sections of Indian Muslims against
the song? The most frequently heard argument centres
on the original context. Written in 1875 by pioneering
Bengali writer Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, it was part
of his classical novel, Anandamath. The work dealt
with a movement of wandering Hindu ascetics against a
"tyrannical Islamic rule", and contained passages that
today sound highly communal.
The contextual argument, however, can be carried too
far. The incipient Indian movement against colonial
rule was bound to begin with a Hindu-religious hue,
but it evolved into modern nationalism. As it did so,
the slogans - and the songs - also acquired a content
beyond their original context.
To cite a religion-free example, Tagore's Jana Gana
Mana was originally written as a welcome song for
visiting British royalty. It evolved, however, into a
song of independence-seeking India, just as the poet
himself evolved from a knight of the empire into a
militant nationalist. No Indian has had a problem with
its adoption as the national anthem.
Another argument, now heard mostly from Muslim
clerics, is that the Holy Quran enjoins upon the
Muslims not to worship anyone or anything but Allah,
and they cannot pray to India as the 'mother' or a
landmass. This, too, misses the main point of the
Muslim objection to the song or its mandatory singing.
Ask the Muslims in the southern state of Tamilnadu,
where I live. They have no problem accepting Mother
Tamil as a metaphor or the state anthem that deifies
Tamil and Tamilnadu.
And Vande Mataram did not strike a chord only in
communal hearts. I was a rapt and rapturous listener
as I heard the song for the first time as a boy, after
reading the Tamil translation rendered by great Tamil
poet Subramania Bharati. I am sure I was not the only
one to respond so to the lines. The appeal of the song
was also, certainly, not Muslim-proof. The Vande
Mataram of music wizard and devout Muslim AR Rahman,
with its rousing Maa Tujhe Salaam refrain is proof
enough.
No, all these arguments are only so many alibis for
the real culprit. It is the religious-communal fascism
of the BJP and the parivar that has made the Indian
Muslim today a resolute non-singer of the song. He
won‚t sing under the baton of the Islam-baiting
impresario.
As Lal Krishna Advani and his associates loudly
command him to sing, he hears (as my friend Badri
Raina points out in an article) the menacing voice of
Guru Golwalkar, a former chief of the Rashtriya
Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the patriarch of the
'family'. In 1938, a year after the Congress adopted
Vande Mataram as the Œnational song‚, the Guru said:
"The foreign races in Hindustan must either adopt the
Hindu culture and language, learn to respect and hold
in reverence Hindu religion, entertain no idea but
those of the glorification of the Hindu race and
culture, i.e. of the Hindu nation and lose their
separate existence to merge in the Hindu race, or may
stay in the country, wholly subordinated to the Hindu
Nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far
less any preferential treatment - not even citizen's
rights."
Advani does not convey a very different message, when
he says there can be "no compromise" on the song as an
issue of "cultural nationalism". Which is why the
Indian minorities cannot accept the parivar idea of a
singing India any more than the Indian voters the BJP
slogan of a Œshining India‚.
The writer is a journalist based in Chennai, India. A
peace activist, he is also the author of a sheaf of
poems titled 'At Gunpoint'
September 05, 2006)
HUM HINDUSTANI: The song and the non-singer
by J Sri Raman
The appeal of the song is certainly not Muslim-proof.
The Vande Mataram of music wizard and devout Muslim AR
Rahman, with its rousing 'Maa Tujhe Salaam' refrain,
is proof enough. It is the religious-communal fascism
of the BJP and the 'parivar' that has made the Indian
Muslim today a resolute non-singer of the song. He
won‚t sing under the baton of the Islam-baiting
impresario
It is yet another 'cultural' crusade by India's far
right, but one with a striking difference. We are used
to campaigns by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and
its parivar (or ideological Œfamily‚) calling for bans
or boycotts of unacceptable cultural products -
whether books of objective history, films considered
hostile to 'Hindutva' or MF Husain's paintings.
The unholy warriors are now up in arms over a song.
But their aim is not to stifle it but to make its
singing mandatory - especially for the country's
largest minority.
Vande Mataram (Salute to Mother) has long enjoyed the
status of the Œnational song‚ - as distinct from the
national anthem (Jana Gana Mana) - but remained a
subject of recurring political controversy even
longer. It has been revived once again with a move by
the Human Resources Development Ministry for
observance of a centenary of the song on September 7.
The proposal has come as an answer to the prayer of
the far right, which had failed to draw the
anticipated mileage from the Mumbai serial blasts,
with the people preferring concerted relief operations
over a religious-communal riposte to the terrorist
strike. The BJP and the parivar have responded to the
move with the assertion that the best way to observe
the occasion is to make the singing of Vande Mataram
mandatory in educational institutions - especially
Œmadrassas‚.
Scholars differ on the choice of the date for the
centenary. The ministry‚s proposal is based on a
mistaken notion that the singing of Vande Mataram at a
session of the Indian National Congress in Calcutta in
1906 lent the song its revered status. It has been
pointed out that the status was conferred on it only
in 1937, when the Congress discussed the import of the
doubtless inspiring song of the freedom struggle - and
decided to adopt only the first two stanzas. These,
Congress leaders - including Jawaharlal Nehru -
concluded, were the lines devoted to the land while
the rest of the song was addressed to Hindu deities
and caused unease to the minority beginning to
encounter an emergent majoritarian communalism. This,
notably, was done at the suggestion of Rabindranath
Tagore, who had set the song to a tune that was to
become widely popular.
What turned growing sections of Indian Muslims against
the song? The most frequently heard argument centres
on the original context. Written in 1875 by pioneering
Bengali writer Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, it was part
of his classical novel, Anandamath. The work dealt
with a movement of wandering Hindu ascetics against a
"tyrannical Islamic rule", and contained passages that
today sound highly communal.
The contextual argument, however, can be carried too
far. The incipient Indian movement against colonial
rule was bound to begin with a Hindu-religious hue,
but it evolved into modern nationalism. As it did so,
the slogans - and the songs - also acquired a content
beyond their original context.
To cite a religion-free example, Tagore's Jana Gana
Mana was originally written as a welcome song for
visiting British royalty. It evolved, however, into a
song of independence-seeking India, just as the poet
himself evolved from a knight of the empire into a
militant nationalist. No Indian has had a problem with
its adoption as the national anthem.
Another argument, now heard mostly from Muslim
clerics, is that the Holy Quran enjoins upon the
Muslims not to worship anyone or anything but Allah,
and they cannot pray to India as the 'mother' or a
landmass. This, too, misses the main point of the
Muslim objection to the song or its mandatory singing.
Ask the Muslims in the southern state of Tamilnadu,
where I live. They have no problem accepting Mother
Tamil as a metaphor or the state anthem that deifies
Tamil and Tamilnadu.
And Vande Mataram did not strike a chord only in
communal hearts. I was a rapt and rapturous listener
as I heard the song for the first time as a boy, after
reading the Tamil translation rendered by great Tamil
poet Subramania Bharati. I am sure I was not the only
one to respond so to the lines. The appeal of the song
was also, certainly, not Muslim-proof. The Vande
Mataram of music wizard and devout Muslim AR Rahman,
with its rousing Maa Tujhe Salaam refrain is proof
enough.
No, all these arguments are only so many alibis for
the real culprit. It is the religious-communal fascism
of the BJP and the parivar that has made the Indian
Muslim today a resolute non-singer of the song. He
won‚t sing under the baton of the Islam-baiting
impresario.
As Lal Krishna Advani and his associates loudly
command him to sing, he hears (as my friend Badri
Raina points out in an article) the menacing voice of
Guru Golwalkar, a former chief of the Rashtriya
Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the patriarch of the
'family'. In 1938, a year after the Congress adopted
Vande Mataram as the Œnational song‚, the Guru said:
"The foreign races in Hindustan must either adopt the
Hindu culture and language, learn to respect and hold
in reverence Hindu religion, entertain no idea but
those of the glorification of the Hindu race and
culture, i.e. of the Hindu nation and lose their
separate existence to merge in the Hindu race, or may
stay in the country, wholly subordinated to the Hindu
Nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far
less any preferential treatment - not even citizen's
rights."
Advani does not convey a very different message, when
he says there can be "no compromise" on the song as an
issue of "cultural nationalism". Which is why the
Indian minorities cannot accept the parivar idea of a
singing India any more than the Indian voters the BJP
slogan of a Œshining India‚.
The writer is a journalist based in Chennai, India. A
peace activist, he is also the author of a sheaf of
poems titled 'At Gunpoint'
August 27, 2006
BJP will make Vande Mataram compulsory
(Hindustan Times
August 26, 2006)
BJP will make Vande Mataram compulsory
Press Trust of India
Pilakhwa, Uttar pradesh, August 26, 2006
The BJP, which has vowed to take up Vande Mataram as one of its main election issues in Uttar Pradesh, on Saturday announced it would make singing of the national song compulsory if voted to power in the state.
At a party rally at Pilakhwa, BJP chief Rajnath Singh attacked the Congress-led UPA government for declaring there would be no compulsion on schoolchildren to sing Vande Mataram on September 7 to mark its centenary.
As part of party efforts to woo core RSS vote-block ahead of UP elections, Singh's comments indicate that Hindutva would be BJP's main poll plank in the state.
"Those who want to live in India have to sing Vande Mataram," he said referring to opposition by some Muslim clerics to a Central directive on singing of the song on September 7.
He described the nation Union HRD Minister Arjun Singh's remarks in the wake of Muslim opposition that nobody would be forced to sing Vande Mataram as a 'cruel joke'.
The BJP, he said, would make its singing compulsory if voted to power in the state.
Singh, who demanded the state elections be held under the President's rule, also set out to woo the farmers community promising four-per cent interest on farm loans.
The BJP leader also spoke about a crack down by the Indian Army on cross-border terror camps.
"President Pervez Musharraf should destroy those terror camps. But if he is not able to do that, he should ask for India's support and then our Army should go there and destroy those camps," he said.
August 26, 2006)
BJP will make Vande Mataram compulsory
Press Trust of India
Pilakhwa, Uttar pradesh, August 26, 2006
The BJP, which has vowed to take up Vande Mataram as one of its main election issues in Uttar Pradesh, on Saturday announced it would make singing of the national song compulsory if voted to power in the state.
At a party rally at Pilakhwa, BJP chief Rajnath Singh attacked the Congress-led UPA government for declaring there would be no compulsion on schoolchildren to sing Vande Mataram on September 7 to mark its centenary.
As part of party efforts to woo core RSS vote-block ahead of UP elections, Singh's comments indicate that Hindutva would be BJP's main poll plank in the state.
"Those who want to live in India have to sing Vande Mataram," he said referring to opposition by some Muslim clerics to a Central directive on singing of the song on September 7.
He described the nation Union HRD Minister Arjun Singh's remarks in the wake of Muslim opposition that nobody would be forced to sing Vande Mataram as a 'cruel joke'.
The BJP, he said, would make its singing compulsory if voted to power in the state.
Singh, who demanded the state elections be held under the President's rule, also set out to woo the farmers community promising four-per cent interest on farm loans.
The BJP leader also spoke about a crack down by the Indian Army on cross-border terror camps.
"President Pervez Musharraf should destroy those terror camps. But if he is not able to do that, he should ask for India's support and then our Army should go there and destroy those camps," he said.
August 24, 2006
Five lives of Vande Mataram
Indian Express
August 24, 2006
Five lives of Vande Mataram
Sabyasachi Bhattacharya
The history of the national song has imbued it with diverse symbolism
Sabyasachi Bhattacharya
The appropriation of cultural creations for political purposes may be inevitable, but it should not happen in a state of arrogant ignorance. The low level of knowledge now on display in the statements and actions of many political parties in respect of the song, Vande Mataram, is surprising. It is surprising because the song has been part of the language of Indian politics for over a century. At this moment we see a rerun of an old series of actions and reactions intended to stage an enactment of identity assertions.
The traditional appeal of the captivating lyric, celebrating the beauty of the motherland, remains as strong as ever so far as the general public is concerned. One evidence of this is its popularity set to music composed by A.R. Rahman. And yet political squabbles over the song continue. Coverage in the electronic media provides entertainment in juxtaposing the so-called Hindu and Muslim points of view, a mode of presentation which allows no other reading of the song. Actually the meanings read into the poem have differed widely in the 130 years since it was written. In terms of the meanings thus attributed there are about five different phases.
In the beginning were just the words. Reportedly one of the leading defenders of the song and of Hindutva has said that the song was written by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee to honour those who sacrificed their lives for the country. To defend the truth about the song from such defenders it needs to be said that when Bankim first wrote it in the early 1870s it was just a beautiful hymn to the motherland, richly-watered, richly-fruited, dark with the crops of the harvests, sweet of laughter, sweet of speech, the giver of bliss. For several years these first two stanzas remained unpublished. In 1881 this poem was included by Bankim in the novel, Anandamath, and now it was expanded to endow the motherland with militant religious symbolism as the context of the narrative demanded.
However, the icon of the motherland, “terrible with the clamour of seventy million throats”, likened to “Durga holding ten weapons of war” etc, entered the public imagination much later. This was from the beginning of Bengal’s Swadeshi agitation in 1905. It was sung in the Congress session in Benaras in 1905 (music composed by Tagore), in anti-Partition processions in Calcutta led by Tagore, in meetings addressed by Aurobindo Ghose. The latter hailed Bankim as the rishi of nationalism and translated the poem into English. Many translations were made, including one by Subramaniya Bharathi in 1905. Likewise, far away from Bengal, Mahatma Gandhi took note of the song as early as 1905. What is more, Vande Mataram became a slogan for the common man, to the extent he participated in anti-British agitations. Many of the militant nationalists faced bullets or the gallows with that slogan on their lips. Thus Vande Mataram became sanctified as an intrinsic part of the memories of the fight for freedom.
A third phase in the life of the song began in the 1930s when objections began to be raised against the song on two grounds: first, its association with Anandamath, which depicted the Muslims of the Nawabi era of the 1770s in Bengal in a poor light; second, the religious imagery and idolatry implicit in the stanzas of the poem following the first two. (Today those innocent of any knowledge of the song and the novel probably mistake the part for the whole). M.A. Jinnah, as well as a number of Muslim legislators in the provincial assemblies elected in 1937, became vociferous against the recitation or singing of Vande Mataram, a practice introduced by provincial Congress governments. In response to this, as well as pressure of Congress members, Jawaharlal Nehru in October 1937 wrote to Tagore asking for his opinion regarding the suitability of the song as a national anthem. The judgement Nehru received was that the first two stanzas of Vande Mataram should be accepted; as for the later part of the verse, Tagore thought it might offend monotheists, but the song was inextricably associated with the freedom movement and “the sacrifices of the best of our youths” since 1905.
Acting upon this advice the Congress Working Committee recommended that “wherever the Vande Mataram is sung at national gatherings, only the first two stanzas should be sung”. Jinnah wrote to Nehru in March 1938 that the decision was not to his satisfaction but the Congress stuck to it; in any event, there was a proviso that any one who wished not to participate was free to do so. From then on the song was a dividing line between those who doubted the wisdom of this compromise (C. Rajgopalachari) and those, led by Nehru, who were opposed to making the song obligatory. In 1939 some provincial governments — like Bihar and Central Provinces — issued specific instructions to education departments clarifying that the song was not obligatory. A fallout was that the slogan ‘Vande Mataram’ acquired special connotation to those who valued the Hindu symbolism in the song and by 1946-47 in some parts of India it became in inter-communal conflicts the battle cry of the Hindu community. The earliest instance of Hindu Mahasabha support to the sanctification of the song is perhaps the ‘Vande Mataram Day’ organised by the party in 1937.
The fifth and most recent phase in the life of the song commenced in the Constituent Assembly on January 24, 1950, when it was sung at the end of its deliberations. It was resolved that while Jana Gana Mana was identified as the national anthem, equally with it Vande Mataram was to be recognised. It was a motion from the chair, moved by Rajendra Prasad himself, and unlike other parts of the Constitution it was never debated upon in the Constituent Assembly. But the matter continues to be debated until today. This is not unexpected, given the eventful history of this song. Judging by various erroneous statements which are now being made, it is vitally important to bear in mind what happened in the past. That is because the memories of the past, rightly or wrongly, constitute our present.
The writer, a former VC of Visva Bharati University, Santiniketan, is the author of ‘Vande Mataram: The Biography of a Song’ (Penguin)
August 24, 2006
Five lives of Vande Mataram
Sabyasachi Bhattacharya
The history of the national song has imbued it with diverse symbolism
Sabyasachi Bhattacharya
The appropriation of cultural creations for political purposes may be inevitable, but it should not happen in a state of arrogant ignorance. The low level of knowledge now on display in the statements and actions of many political parties in respect of the song, Vande Mataram, is surprising. It is surprising because the song has been part of the language of Indian politics for over a century. At this moment we see a rerun of an old series of actions and reactions intended to stage an enactment of identity assertions.
The traditional appeal of the captivating lyric, celebrating the beauty of the motherland, remains as strong as ever so far as the general public is concerned. One evidence of this is its popularity set to music composed by A.R. Rahman. And yet political squabbles over the song continue. Coverage in the electronic media provides entertainment in juxtaposing the so-called Hindu and Muslim points of view, a mode of presentation which allows no other reading of the song. Actually the meanings read into the poem have differed widely in the 130 years since it was written. In terms of the meanings thus attributed there are about five different phases.
In the beginning were just the words. Reportedly one of the leading defenders of the song and of Hindutva has said that the song was written by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee to honour those who sacrificed their lives for the country. To defend the truth about the song from such defenders it needs to be said that when Bankim first wrote it in the early 1870s it was just a beautiful hymn to the motherland, richly-watered, richly-fruited, dark with the crops of the harvests, sweet of laughter, sweet of speech, the giver of bliss. For several years these first two stanzas remained unpublished. In 1881 this poem was included by Bankim in the novel, Anandamath, and now it was expanded to endow the motherland with militant religious symbolism as the context of the narrative demanded.
However, the icon of the motherland, “terrible with the clamour of seventy million throats”, likened to “Durga holding ten weapons of war” etc, entered the public imagination much later. This was from the beginning of Bengal’s Swadeshi agitation in 1905. It was sung in the Congress session in Benaras in 1905 (music composed by Tagore), in anti-Partition processions in Calcutta led by Tagore, in meetings addressed by Aurobindo Ghose. The latter hailed Bankim as the rishi of nationalism and translated the poem into English. Many translations were made, including one by Subramaniya Bharathi in 1905. Likewise, far away from Bengal, Mahatma Gandhi took note of the song as early as 1905. What is more, Vande Mataram became a slogan for the common man, to the extent he participated in anti-British agitations. Many of the militant nationalists faced bullets or the gallows with that slogan on their lips. Thus Vande Mataram became sanctified as an intrinsic part of the memories of the fight for freedom.
A third phase in the life of the song began in the 1930s when objections began to be raised against the song on two grounds: first, its association with Anandamath, which depicted the Muslims of the Nawabi era of the 1770s in Bengal in a poor light; second, the religious imagery and idolatry implicit in the stanzas of the poem following the first two. (Today those innocent of any knowledge of the song and the novel probably mistake the part for the whole). M.A. Jinnah, as well as a number of Muslim legislators in the provincial assemblies elected in 1937, became vociferous against the recitation or singing of Vande Mataram, a practice introduced by provincial Congress governments. In response to this, as well as pressure of Congress members, Jawaharlal Nehru in October 1937 wrote to Tagore asking for his opinion regarding the suitability of the song as a national anthem. The judgement Nehru received was that the first two stanzas of Vande Mataram should be accepted; as for the later part of the verse, Tagore thought it might offend monotheists, but the song was inextricably associated with the freedom movement and “the sacrifices of the best of our youths” since 1905.
Acting upon this advice the Congress Working Committee recommended that “wherever the Vande Mataram is sung at national gatherings, only the first two stanzas should be sung”. Jinnah wrote to Nehru in March 1938 that the decision was not to his satisfaction but the Congress stuck to it; in any event, there was a proviso that any one who wished not to participate was free to do so. From then on the song was a dividing line between those who doubted the wisdom of this compromise (C. Rajgopalachari) and those, led by Nehru, who were opposed to making the song obligatory. In 1939 some provincial governments — like Bihar and Central Provinces — issued specific instructions to education departments clarifying that the song was not obligatory. A fallout was that the slogan ‘Vande Mataram’ acquired special connotation to those who valued the Hindu symbolism in the song and by 1946-47 in some parts of India it became in inter-communal conflicts the battle cry of the Hindu community. The earliest instance of Hindu Mahasabha support to the sanctification of the song is perhaps the ‘Vande Mataram Day’ organised by the party in 1937.
The fifth and most recent phase in the life of the song commenced in the Constituent Assembly on January 24, 1950, when it was sung at the end of its deliberations. It was resolved that while Jana Gana Mana was identified as the national anthem, equally with it Vande Mataram was to be recognised. It was a motion from the chair, moved by Rajendra Prasad himself, and unlike other parts of the Constitution it was never debated upon in the Constituent Assembly. But the matter continues to be debated until today. This is not unexpected, given the eventful history of this song. Judging by various erroneous statements which are now being made, it is vitally important to bear in mind what happened in the past. That is because the memories of the past, rightly or wrongly, constitute our present.
The writer, a former VC of Visva Bharati University, Santiniketan, is the author of ‘Vande Mataram: The Biography of a Song’ (Penguin)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
