(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'
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