Opinion The many lives of Vande Mataram: Nationalist icon, contested symbol
Colonial bans to communal mobilisation transformed a literary creation into a national and ideological symbol
Quite unsurprisingly, the League's vehement opposition was matched by an equally vehement support for the song by the Hindu Mahasabha The song Vande Mataram has lived many lives. It was by no stretch of imagination Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay’s best song. It did, however, go on to become his most famous and contentious, for reasons that had less to do with the song and more with the context. The song was written in 1875 and later incorporated into his historical novel Anand Math. Set against the background of the Sanyasi rebellion in Bengal during the second half of the 18th century, it featured Muslim administrators as the main villain.
The song was publicly sung for the first time in 1896 by Rabindranath Tagore at the Congress session in Calcutta. It became a slogan and a symbol of anti-imperialism during the Swadeshi movement (1905-08). In 1905, both singing the song in public and sloganeering were banned by the British. Many people were arrested for violations. Since the song was associated with the anti-imperialist struggle, it spread outside Bengal and was translated into other Indian languages. Subrahmanyam Bharti translated it into Tamil.
The ban was eventually lifted in 1937 with the inauguration of Congress ministries in the provinces. It began to be routinely sung in schools and in provincial legislative assemblies where Congress formed the government. This was the time when the political hostility between the Congress and the Muslim League (ML) was at its height, and the ML resorted to every possible argument to discredit the Congress ministries. Vande Mataram became one such weapon when the ML objected to the song on the ground that it was “anti-Islamic and idolatrous”. ML leaders were quite oblivious to the fact that the song had already been translated into Urdu without any objection from Muslims.
As the ML agitation against the song began to spread, it became imperative for the Congress to take a stand. Nehru recognised that the agitation was “manufactured by the communalists”. But he did feel that its association with the novel Anand Math, given its historical background, was likely to increase Hindu-Muslim animosity in the communally charged atmosphere of the 1930s. The Congress Working Committee thereafter issued a statement denying that Vande Mataram had been adopted as the national anthem. The Congress also instructed that wherever it was to be sung, only the first two stanzas were to be sung. These were the stanzas that sacralised India’s geography in a manner similar to the other two national songs, Sare Jahaan Se Achchha, by Iqbal and Jana Gana Mana, by Tagore. But the agitation did result in imparting a new communal orientation to the song, which had not existed prior to 1937.
Quite unsurprisingly, the League’s vehement opposition was matched by an equally vehement support for the song by the Hindu Mahasabha. This was enough to impart a communal orientation to it. The period 1937-39 was marked by a great increase in communal violence. It was noted in the administrative records that the rioters were inciting people with slogans of Vande Mataram and Allah-o-Akbar. Quite clearly, the real problem with the song was not so much its historical background associated with Anand Math, nor its alleged “idolatrous” character, but the fact that the song had begun to be employed as a rallying cry in cases of communal violence. This tendency increased further in the 1940s. Gandhi noticed it and expressed great sorrow. As instances of communal violence grew, particularly after 1946, so did the use of the two slogans. It was thus that the song Vande Mataram acquired two very different images, a nationalist one symbolising anti-imperialist struggle and a communal one, used in Hindu-Muslim violence.
It was this ambivalence that created a dilemma for the Constituent Assembly, set up to frame the country’s constitution. Rajendra Prasad, president of the Constituent Assembly, ruled that both the songs – Vande Mataram and Jana Gana Mana — would be recognised as the national song and the national anthem respectively and were to have equal status. There had also been some opposition to Jana Gana Mana, on the completely mistaken basis that it had been written not in praise of Mother India, but of King George V. Tagore had denied it most vehemently, but the opposition to the song remained. It was to avoid the needless division between the two songs that Rajendra Prasad took the call.
It has been the unenviable destiny of the song Vande Mataram to be surrounded by controversies from 1905, in 1937, 1950 and now.
The writer is visiting faculty at the BML Munjal University, Manesar
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