India Restores Original Version of National Song Vande Mataram Amid Controversy

You couldn’t miss the irony even if you wanted to. Vande Mataram , the anthemic hymn that roused a nation to demand its freedom, was fettered by political hesitation in independent India. Its full-throated ode to Bharat Mata was abridged by the Congress party, eager to placate a line of argument that questioned the very civilisational imagination of India. And so, since 1937, when Muhammad Ali Jinnah took offence, Indians have only ever sung the first two stanzas of their National Song. Now, marking the National Song’s centenary year, the Modi government has decided to restore it to its original glory. Through a long-debated and awaited government order, singing all six stanzas of Vande Mataram has been permitted. If sung in sequence at an official function, it will precede the National Anthem. It is important to underline what this order does and does not do. The Constitution of India does not mandate the singing of Vande Mataram, nor does it compel any citizen to participate in any patriotic song against their conscience. Article 19 protects freedom of expression, and Article 25 guarantees freedom of religion. The restoration merely removes a political restriction that had survived from a different era. The announcement, however, has been met with derisive outbursts from Opposition ranks. Several leaders of the Congress, the Samajwadi Party, and others have attacked the government. The accusations levelled against the BJP are familiar. That it is fanning the flames of Hindu assertion. That it is rewriting the grammar of secular constitutionalism. That it is attempting to polarise upcoming elections. But the most consequential accusation is the one made with the express purpose of stoking Muslim insecurity. The Opposition is reviving an old argument. That this is a deliberate insult to Muslim religious sensitivities. One Congress leader even urged Muslims to take to the streets, claiming that the hymn invokes Hindu deities that Muslims cannot be asked to invoke. But this argument collapses under historical scrutiny. Before Independence, Muslims sang Vande Mataram in full. They even sang it from Congress party platforms. At least till 1908, when the then President of the All India Muslim League, Syed Ali Imam, derisively branded the hymn a “sectarian Hindu cry". Over the next three decades, Imam’s jaundiced view spread rapidly. In 1937, the then president of the Muslim League, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, declared that India’s biggest minority community would not sing the hymn unless those stanzas were dropped. The song evidently was weaponised. From a unifying symbol, it was recast by Jinnah as a sectarian test of loyalty, used to question Muslim commitment to the idea of Pakistan. But Jinnah lost. Many Muslims rejected that bigoted call. They remained in India. They saluted the tricolour and they swore by its Constitution. For these Muslims, Bharat was Mata. In its hurry to politicise, has the Opposition forgotten this simple fact?