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BJP, it seems is becoming increasingly devoid of issues.
Chhattisgarh government has issued a circular to all educational institutions in the state including madarsas to ensure recital of Vande Mataram on September 7 to mark the centenary celebrations of the national song.
Vande Mataram issue is one of those issues that can always be banked upon for anti-Muslim propoganda in India. It is one of those tricks that politicians conjure up once in a while and it always works. It has dutifully served its proponents for the past 60 years and has been able to portray Indian Muslims (with varying degree of success) as being ‘not patriotic enough’.
What is the problem with Vande Mataram?
Muslims don’t bow their heads to anyone except the creator and it is difficult for them to imagine nation as a deity (to which they should bow). Then there is whole historical background of the song and the text and context in which it was used in.
Written in 1876, the song first appeared in 1882 in Bankim Chand Chatterjee’s novel Anand Math. The theme of the novel is an armed struggle against Muslim rulers of Bengal. The novel is more anti-Muslim than it is anti-British. The venerable Nirad C. Chaudhuri writes, “The historical romances of Bankim Chatterjee and Ramesh Chandra Dutt glorified Hindu rebellion against Muslim rule and showed the Muslims in a correspondingly poor light. Chatterjee was positively and fiercely anti-Muslim. We were eager readers of these romances and we readily absorbed their spirit.” Here is a sample from the novel:
Jivananda with sword in hand, at the gate of the temple, exhorts the children of Kali: “We have often thought to break up this bird’s nest of Muslim rule, to pull down the city of the renegades and throw it into the river – to turn this pig-sty to ashes and make Mother earth free from evil again. Friends, that day has come.”
Chatterjee uses Vande Mataram in his novel for a very specific context:
‘Our religion is gone, our caste is gone, our honour is gone. Can the Hindus preserve their Hinduism unless these drunken Nereys (a term of contempt for Muslims) are driven away?’… Mahendra, however, not convinced, expresses reluctance to join the rebellion. He is, therefore, taken to the temple of Ananda Math and shown a huge image of four-armed Vishnu, with two decapitated and bloody heads in front, “Do you know who she is?” asks the priest in charge, pointing to an image on the lap of Vishnu, “She is the Mother. We are her children Say ‘Bande Mataram’” He is taken to the image of Kali and then to that of Durga. On each occasion he is asked to recite ‘Bande Mataram’. In another scene in the novel some people shouted ‘kill, kill the Nereys’. Others shouted ‘Bande Mataram’ ‘Will the day come when we shall break mosques and build temples on their sites?
The original song was composed of five stanzas out of which only first two are approved to be sung as national song but the remaining three are not. A. G. Noorani puts is aptly when he says, “A poem which needs surgical operation cannot command universal acceptance“.
As an Indian Muslim it is difficult to imagine my nation as a deity to which I should bow my head. Does that makes me any less patriotic?
Suggested Reading: How secular is Vande Mataram? by A. G. Noorani.
