Key Vande Mataram stanzas dropped in 1937, says Modi
Commemoration of the 150th anniversary of Vande Mataram on Friday was marked by a political slugfest with Prime Minister Narendra Modi linking the Congress’s 1937 move of dropping its last stanzas with India’s Partition and the Opposition party hitting back at Modi.
The Prime Minister said, “The spirit of Vande Mataram illuminated the nation during the freedom struggle. But in 1937, significant verses of Vande Mataram — its very soul — were removed. The song was torn apart. This division sowed the seeds of Partition.”
“Today’s generation must understand this history because the same divisive mindset continues to pose a challenge to the nation even today,” he said, while reciting the full poem, including stanzas that had references to Goddess Durga, and were dropped in 1937.
The PM was referring to the October 29, 1937, Congress Working Committee resolution that adopted only the first two stanzas of Vande Mataram, dropping others that contained salutations to Goddess Durga.
He made the above remarks while inaugurating the government’s year-long commemoration of 150 years of the national song, written by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee on November 7, 1875.
In yet another masked barb at Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, who has been urging Gen Z to take note of his ‘vote theft’ allegations, the Prime Minister cautioned the youth against believing “negative forces trying to sow seeds of doubt”.
“We have to make the 21st century a century of India. We need self-belief to realise this resolve. On this journey, we will encounter those who will seek to mislead us and those with negative mindsets who will attempt to sow doubts and hesitations. In such moments, the nation must recall the episode from Bankim Babu’s Anandamath, which celebrates the power of resolve,” said the PM.
The Anandmath episode that he mentioned involved Bhavanand singing Vande Mataram and another character questioning what one person alone could achieve.
“India possesses the world’s largest demographic advantage. Today, India has 140 crore children and 280 crore hands — 60 percent of them are the youth. What can possibly stop us from fulfilling the original dream of Vande Mataram and the way Bankim babu envisioned our motherland,” he said.
The PM said, “People who consider the nation a geo-political entity could not fathom how the motherland is worshipped.” This remark was a reference to Rahul’s frequent claim that “India is a Union of states”.
Recalling Vande Mataram’s history and roots, the PM said the song was timeless and remained relevant across eras.
Responding to the PM’s disguised jibe at Nehru, AICC general secretary Jairam Ramesh reproduced extracts from Sabyasachi Bhattacharya’s biography of Vande Mataram. Presenting the background to the October 1937 CWC Resolution, Jairam said, “Three days before the meeting of the CWC, on October 26, 1937, Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore wrote to Nehru on the issue. It was Gurudev himself — with his own special relationship to Vande Mataram — who suggested that the first two stanzas of the song be adopted. His letter in fact profoundly influenced the resolution in its entirety.”
Noting that the PM was accusing Tagore of harbouring a ‘divisive ideology’, the Congress leader demanded “an unconditional apology from the PM on the issue”.
India