Vande Mataram row
New Delhi, Nov 9: Stepping up its attack on Narendra Modi over the Vande Mataram row, the Congress on Sunday claimed the prime minister has “insulted” the Congress Working Committee of 1937, which issued a statement on the song, as also Rabindranath Tagore.
The opposition party demanded an apology from PM Modi over the issue and asserted that he should fight his political battles on current issues of daily concern.
The Congress’ attack came after the prime minister said on Friday that important stanzas of Vande Mataram were dropped in 1937, which sowed the seeds of partition, and asserted that such a “divisive mindset” is still a challenge for the country.
Modi had made the comments after inaugurating the year-long commemoration of Vande Mataram to mark 150 years of the national song.
Hitting out, Congress general secretary in-charge communications Jairam Ramesh said the prime minister insulting the Congress Working Committee and Tagore is shocking but not surprising “since the RSS had played no role in our freedom movement led by Mahatma Gandhi”.
In a post on X, he said, “The Congress Working Committee met in Kolkata, October 26-November 1, 1937. Those present included Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Patel, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, Rajendra Prasad, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Sarojini Naidu, J B Kripalani, Bhulabhai Desai, Jamnalal Bajaj, Narendra Deva, and others.”
The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi Volume 66, page 46, reveals that on October 28, 1937, the CWC issued a statement on Vande Mataram, and this statement had been profoundly influenced by Rabindranath Tagore and his advice, he said on X.
“Gradually, the use of the first two stanzas of the (Vande Mataram) song spread to other provinces, and a certain national significance began to attach to them. The rest of the song was very seldom used and is even now known by few people. These two stanzas described in tender language the beauty of the motherland and the abundance of her gifts,” the CWC statement of 1937 said.
There was absolutely nothing in them to which objection could be taken from the religious or any other point of view, it said.
“There is nothing in these stanzas to which anyone can take exception. The other 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,” the statement had said.
“Taking all things into consideration, therefore the Committee recommend that wherever the Bande 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 Bande Mataram song,” the statement had said.
But while there can be no question about the place that Vande Mataram has come to occupy in national life, the same cannot be said as to the other songs, the CWC had said in 1937.
On Saturday, Ramesh shared screenshots of pages 110-112 from volume 4 of the authoritative biography in Bengali of Tagore titled Rabindra Jibani by Prabhat Kumar Mukhopadhyay, published by Visva Bharati in 1994.
“The master distorian of a PM must render an apology. He has insulted our founding fathers, and most of all Tagore himself,” Ramesh had said.
The Congress hit back at Modi on Friday after he attacked the party over the dropping of stanzas from Vande Mataram in 1937, saying Tagore himself had suggested that the first two stanzas of the song be adopted, and it was “shameful” of the PM to accuse the Nobel laureate of harbouring a divisive ideology.
Later on Sunday, Ramesh shared an article by Semanti Ghosh in Anandabazar Patrika, which “debunks and exposes the PM’s lies on Nehru and Vande Mataram”.
It explains how and why Rabindranath Tagore was responsible for Vande Mataram becoming the national song, Ramesh said.
“The PM must apologise to the people of West Bengal especially, and to the nation as well. The author herself is a daughter of one of the famous poets of West Bengal, Shankha Ghosh,” the Congress leader said. (PTI)
