Congress Limits Singing of National Song Vande Mataram to First Two Stanzas Amid BJP Attacks
The Congress Working Committee (CWC) has decided that only the first two stanzas of Vande Mataram will be sung at party programmes, amid BJP attacks over the National Song’s rendition at its Independence Day programme and later at an event in Goa. The Congress’s highest decision-making body cited a 1937 CWC resolution to back its stand, arguing that the leading lights of the freedom movement, including Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore, had backed limiting the public rendition of Vande Mataram to its first two stanzas. The row comes months after Parliament made intentional attempts to prevent or disrupt the singing or playing of Vande Mataram a criminal offence. Why did the Congress in 1937 distinguish between the first two stanzas and the rest of the song? What do the remaining four stanzas say, and why have they been contentious? The composition Vande Mataram (meaning mother, I bow to thee) was composed in Sanskritised Bengali by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay in 1875. Six years later, it was included in his novel Anandamath , which tells the story of the late-18th century Sanyasi Rebellion — a series of armed uprisings in Bengal in the early decades of East India Company rule against the regional Muslim administrators. Vande Mataram emerged as a rallying cry during the Swadeshi movement (1905–08), becoming closely associated with the freedom struggle. The Muslim League, however, was against some references in the song, and also believed that “bowing to the mother” amounts to idolatry. To give one example, at the Sind Provincial Muslim League Conference meeting in Karachi in October 1938, Muhammad Ali Jinnah said the Congress started Legislatures “with a song of Vande Mataram… which is not only idolatrous but in its origin and substance a hymn to spread hatred for the Musalmans.” The 1937 decision An October 1937 letter from Jawaharlal Nehru to Subhas Chandra Bose expressed apprehension that the song could provoke Muslims owing to its Anandamath background. But he added that the outcry was “manufactured” by “communalists”. Nehru and Bose were among those who sought Rabindranath Tagore’s views on the controversy. Tagore distinguished between the first two stanzas and the rest of the composition: while the complete poem, read in the context of Anandamath , “might wound Moslem susceptibilities”, he said the first two stanzas had acquired “a separate individuality and an inspiring significance of its own”, with nothing in them to offend any community. A Congress Working Committee resolution from October 1937 recommended that whenever Vande Mataram is sung at national gatherings, only the first two stanzas should be sung. It noted that there was nothing in the first two stanzas to which “any one can take exception”, and that the latter stanzas were not well known. Mahatma Gandhi, too, defended the place Vande Mataram had acquired in the national movement while opposing its imposition. Writing in Harijan in July 1939, he recalled the song as a “most powerful battle-cry” among Hindus and Muslims during the agitation against the Partition of Bengal. But he said he would not “risk a single quarrel” over singing it at a mixed gathering, and that if anyone objected even to the Congress-approved version, “the singing should be dropped”. The first two stanzas describe the beauty of the motherland — its fertility, its waters, its greenery. On January 24, 1950, Constituent Assembly president Rajendra Prasad said Vande Mataram, which had “played a historic part in the struggle for Indian freedom”, would be “honoured equally” with Jana Gana Mana. The version of Vande Mataram traditionally accorded the status of the National Song comprises its first two stanzas. Why the later stanzas are contentious The opposition to Vande Mataram from Muslim scholars is rooted in the interpretation that the song’s imagery of “Mother India” as a goddess violates the basic Islamic tenet of strict monotheism, which forbids followers from worshipping anyone other than Allah. The third stanza talks about “crores and crores” of arms ready to bear swords in the defence of the motherland, while the fourth says the motherland’s image is carved out in every shrine, and the fifth likens the motherland to goddesses Durga, Lakshmi and Saraswati. This invocation of Hindu goddesses has sparked objections from Muslim scholars. The latter parts of the song, according to historian Tanika Sarkar, “become a call to war where Muslims are the adversary in the Anandmath, and the motherland here acquires the form of a Hindu goddess that alienates Muslims”. The political debate The controversy was revived during Parliament’s special discussions in December 2025 to mark 150 years of Vande Mataram. In the Lok Sabha on December 8, Prime Minister Narendra Modi accused Jawaharlal Nehru of truncating the song under pressure from the Muslim League. Modi said that when Mohammad Ali Jinnah opposed Vande Mataram in 1937, Nehru had written to Bose agreeing that the context of Anandamath could “irritate Muslims”. Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi countered by quoting other portions of the same letter, in which Nehru said the “outcry against Bande Mataram is to a large extent a manufactured one by the communalists”, and criticised the Muslim League’s “low type of communalism”. Other Opposition MPs focused on the religious imagery in the later stanzas: DMK MP A Raja said parts of the song could be read as being directed against Muslims, while AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi argued that imposing Vande Mataram would amount to turning “nationalism and patriotism into religion”.
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