This controversy was entirely unnecessary. At a time when Rahul Gandhi has, for some time, appeared to be moving ahead with a better political strategy against Narendra Modi, to be dragged along on the ideological terrain chosen by the Bharatiya Janata Party [BJP] is akin to a suicidal step. Due to the mismanagement of this entire episode, the Congress once again got trapped in the same old net of the BJP, where the agenda is set by the BJP and opposition parties expend all their energy merely in offering clarifications.
The Surrender of Nationalism: Interpretation vs. Reaction
The country's principal opposition party, which has a long list of burning issues to raise, should not waste its valuable time in debating whether six stanzas of the national song should be sung or two. It is not at all necessary for the BJP that the Congress agrees with its agenda; it only needs the Congress to start reacting to the subjects decided by it. As soon as that happens, the BJP wins half the battle. This is one of the many ways in which the Congress has left a large symbolic field of nationalism vacant for the BJP. The Congress could have given a simple message - it could have owned this song and signalled that it does not weigh patriotism on the basis of stanzas.
The Context of 1937 and Today's Reality
There was a clear historical context behind the decision of the Congress Working Committee [CWC] in 1937 to sing only the first two stanzas. At that time, the party felt that the later stanzas contained religious vocabulary and imagery that could cause discomfort to other religious groups. Hence, the tradition of singing only the first two stanzas in national conferences began.
But after almost a century has passed, should this still be a test of secularism today? Does singing a poetry that mentions a Hindu goddess make a citizen less secular? After all, in a country we call 'Bharat Mata', how did invoking Maa Durga become an act of religious allegiance? In a secular republic, no one - whether Hindu or Muslim - should be forced to sing any song. But to say that singing this song in its entirety takes someone outside the secular tradition is a completely different and weak argument.
This ideological gatekeeping is in a way also insulting to Indian Muslims, because it assumes that they are so fragile that a mere mention of a Hindu goddess in the national song will make them feel alienated. It makes our version of secularism so timid that it starts demanding that parts of its own cultural heritage be amputated to prove its inclusivity. The Congress must understand that it cannot defeat the BJP and the Hindu Right by anxiously sticking a 'secular label'; it can win only by reclaiming its right over Indian culture.
Bankim Chandra: A Modern Creator of His Time
Like every great personality in history, Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay too was a product of his time. He had many theories of his own, which perhaps even those who consider themselves the biggest protectors of this song today would not like. His famous novel 'Anandamath', from which 'Vande Mataram' is taken, does not end the way many "nationalists" would like to believe. At the end of the novel, British rule is seen as a 'divine dispensation'.
According to Bankim's translator Alo Shome, Bankim Chandra had accepted a reader's view on Anandamath as a "wise assessment", which said that the English are profound scholars of physical science and they are also good teachers, so let them become kings. English education will give us material knowledge with which we will be able to solve the problems of our inner nature. Does this make Bankim "anti-national"? No, he was merely reflecting the sentiments of the culture of that time, which believed that the British government in Bengal was a 'necessary evil'.
The Deification of the Nation: A Modern Conception
Now comes the question of the "Hinduisation" of the later stanzas. Here we need to understand why Bankim felt the need to transform the country into a 'Mother' and then a 'Goddess'. Bankim Chandra had understood the modern idea of the nation from the West and then gave that idea an Indian [and naturally Hindu] cultural form. For him, the nation did not remain merely a geographical area, but it became a mother and its land a body. Before the mother, the citizen becomes a 'child', thereby establishing a deep emotional connection.
As Meenakshi Mukherjee mentioned in one of her essays: "It was for the first time that the Hindu concept of Shakti was linked with the idea of the country as a political entity, and the symbolic power of this fusion was far-reaching." The nation, which European political thought had defined in terms of territory, citizenship and sovereignty, Bankim turned into a mother who could be worshipped and for whom lives could be sacrificed. The genius of 'Vande Mataram' lies in this transformation. In Anandamath, the sanyasis are asked to leave aside their ordinary attachment to home and family and have attachment for this 'Bigger Mother' [the nation]. Here the nation becomes not just geography, but something 'sacred'. That is why trying to resolve the controversy by separating the first two stanzas from the later ones is intellectually futile, because this process of making the nation sacred is woven into the very structure of the entire song.
A Modern Product and a Symbolic War
It is an irony that the song which is today being forced to carry the burden of Hindu nationalism is in fact a product of modernity. It should be seen as an attempt by a 19th-century writer to construct national consciousness. The leftist and liberal reaction often remains limited to the argument that the later stanzas are Hindu and therefore unsuitable for public use. This argument may attract those who have allegiance to constitutional principles, but it leaves the real history of the song untouched. It hands over the symbolic terrain of the song to the Right without any struggle.
The Congress has repeatedly allowed itself to be pushed onto the wrong fronts. Instead of searching for the logic behind why a 19th-century writer crafted the idea of the motherland in this form, the party gets entangled in the foolish debate of stopping a national song midway. This song has been a source of inspiration for generations of freedom fighters and revolutionaries. The Congress only reacts to the Right's demand that patriotism be displayed through ritual. Instead of saying that our nation is so vast that it can accommodate disagreement over an old song, the party lets that disagreement itself become a referendum on patriotism.
Loyalty Test vs National Imagination
The BJP wins this argument even before the debate begins because it gets the right to decide what the debate will be about. Through this unfortunate exercise, 'Vande Mataram' has been turned from a fascinating and paradoxical work of nationalist imagination into a 'loyalty test'. The Congress must understand that in this battle of symbols, it will be able to survive only when it learns to take pride in its heritage and accepts it in its totality instead of viewing it through a particular lens. Dividing the national song into stanzas is actually limiting the very imagination of the nation.