‘Those who oppose Vande Mataram are opposing Bharat Mata’: UP CM Yogi

On Monday, the CM had also announced that singing Vande Mataram will be made compulsory in all schools and colleges of the state.

While dedicating development projects worth Rs 1,734 crore to the people of Barabanki, the CM in his speech on Tuesday addressed the ‘opposition’ to the national song.

“We must understand their intentions clearly. Singing Vande Mataram is not a compulsion; it is an expression of gratitude, of love, of reverence toward our Bharat Mata.”

Adityanath further said that Vande Mataram is not about any individual, community, region, deity, or mode of worship. “It is a song to the motherland, a heartfelt expression of devotion to the soil that nurtures us all. Our strength as a nation comes from the worship of the three divine forms — Mahadurga, Mahalakshmi, and Mahasaraswati, symbolising power, prosperity, and wisdom. And in Vande Mataram, when we sing ‘Shasya Shyamalam Mataram’, we invoke that same spirit of a bountiful, sacred, and ever-living Bharat Mata,” he said.

Therefore, he added, every citizen “must unite in this chant of Vande Mataram to strengthen the nation and the spirit of Indianness. There must be no place in India for opposition to Vande Mataram”.

He also said, “The Britishers policy was to divide and weaken us, to sow discord, to pit brother against brother, and to break the unity that had held our civilisation together for millennia. This divisive strategy was not new; it was used by foreign rulers during the Mughal era and perfected by the British. A once united and eternal India was fragmented, piece by piece, until the most tragic division occurred on August 14, 1947, when India was partitioned. The British left us with a wound that sought to convince us that India could never remain one.”

Referring to a nearby township in Kursi — Mohammadabad — he alleged, “Right beside you lies Mohammadabad… Tell those who have been misled in the name of secularism that it was the Nawab of Mohammadabad who, as the treasurer of the Muslim League, financed the creation of Pakistan. India’s own wealth was used to divide India, to weaken India, to strike at its unity. Mohammadabad — just 5 km away — witnessed that betrayal. He, too, fled to Pakistan.”

“His descendants who stayed behind are struggling within India,” he added. “The property once owned by those who betrayed the nation is now recognised as enemy property. And let it be remembered, enemy property does not belong to the enemy; it belongs to the people of India, to the Government of India, to every citizen of this great nation,” the chief minister added.