Vande Mataram at 150: When a National Song Became a Political Battlefield 

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s parliamentary speech marking 150 years of Vande Mataram framed the national song as a symbol for resurrecting India’s “glorious past” while launching a sharp political critique against the Congress party. He accused historical Congress leadership, particularly Jawaharlal Nehru, of fragmenting the song and surrendering to the Muslim League’s objections in 1937, calling it a symptom of “appeasement politics.” Opposition leaders countered that Congress had wisely preserved the song’s unifying, secular stanzas for national use and accused Modi’s BJP of politicizing a cultural icon to rewrite history and fuel its ideological project, with the debate’s timing seen as strategically linked to upcoming elections in Bengal, the song’s birthplace.

Vande Mataram at 150: When a National Song Became a Political Battlefield 

The 150th anniversary of India’s national song, Vande Mataram, was meant to be a moment of solemn remembrance and patriotic unity. Instead, a 10-hour parliamentary debate laid bare the deep ideological and political rifts that continue to define the nation’s discourse. What began as a discussion on a revered symbol of the freedom struggle quickly escalated into a charged battle over history, legacy, and political identity. 

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech, which set the tone, framed the song not merely as cultural heritage but as an ideological project—one tied to resurrecting India’s “glorious past” and critiquing historical decisions made by the Congress party. The opposition countered by accusing the government of politicizing a sacred national symbol to rewrite history and distract from pressing issues. 

The Historical Flashpoint: Nehru, Jinnah, and the 1937 “Compromise” 

At the heart of the debate was a contentious historical interpretation. Prime Minister Modi centered his argument on events from 1937, accusing the then-Congress leadership, particularly Jawaharlal Nehru, of “surrendering” to pressure from the Muslim League led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah. 

Modi cited a historical letter from Nehru to Subhas Chandra Bose, written days after Jinnah voiced opposition to the song. In it, Nehru reportedly stated that after studying the background of Vande Mataram in Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s novel Anandamath, he felt the song “might provoke and irritate Muslims”. For Modi, this was not pragmatic statesmanship but a fundamental “betrayal” and a symptom of “appeasement politics”. He drew a direct line from this decision to fragment the song to the Congress’s later stance during the Partition of India. 

The Congress’s rebuttal, led by Deputy Leader Gaurav Gogoi, presented a starkly different narrative. Gogoi argued that the Congress, not its opponents, was the true guardian of the song’s legacy. He highlighted that it was the Congress that first gave Vande Mataram a national platform—Rabindranath Tagore sang it at the 1896 Calcutta Congress session. Furthermore, when faced with objections from the Muslim League, the Congress, under the guidance of leaders including Mahatma Gandhi and Nehru, made a conscious and inclusive decision. They adopted only the first two stanzas as the national song for public gatherings. 

These opening stanzas are a purely secular ode to the motherland’s physical beauty, free from the later religious imagery referencing Hindu goddesses like Durga. Gogoi emphasized that Congress leader Maulana Abul Kalam Azad himself had “no problems with Vande Mataram,” contrasting this with Jinnah’s outright boycott call. In this view, the 1937 decision was not a surrender but a strategic and unifying compromise to keep the song as a national symbol for all Indians. 

The table below summarizes how key political figures framed the debate: 

The Unspoken Agenda: Setting the Stage for the Bengal Elections 

While the debate was framed in historical terms, its timing and content were deeply rooted in contemporary electoral politics. Multiple opposition leaders pointed out that the extensive parliamentary discussion coincided with the run-up to crucial assembly elections in West Bengal in 2026. 

West Bengal is not just any state in this context; it is the birthplace of Vande Mataram. The song was penned by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee in Bengali and Sanskrit and first published in his novel Anandamath in 1882. By initiating a high-profile national debate on this symbol, the BJP was seen as making a direct play for Bengali pride and identity, a domain traditionally dominated by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress (TMC). 

PM Modi’s speech was laced with Bengal-centric imagery. He recounted how the British used Bengal as a “laboratory” for its divide-and-rule policy through the 1905 Partition, against which Vande Mataram “stood like a rock”. He invoked the intellectual legacy of Rabindranath Tagore. This was widely interpreted as an attempt to appropriate Bengal’s cultural and historical legacy for the BJP’s political project in the state. TMC MP Mahua Moitra bluntly accused the government of “butchering the soul” of the song for electoral advantage and challenged the BJP to fight on the issue in Bengal. 

The Ideological Project: Resurrecting a “Glorious Past” 

Beyond immediate politics, the debate revealed a deeper ideological project. Modi described Vande Mataram as being about “resurrecting the glorious past of India”. This framing ties the song directly to the cultural-nationalist vision of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which has long promoted it as a key symbol. 

In his speech, Modi connected the song to a continuous civilizational spirit. He argued it revived an ancient ideology, transforming the freedom struggle from a mere political battle into a “pious task to free Mother India”. He linked the song’s spirit to overcoming the Emergency in the 1970s, winning wars, and now, driving the mission for a “self-reliant” and “developed India by 2047”. This narrative seeks to weave Vande Mataram into a seamless thread connecting a venerable past, a heroic freedom struggle, and a future of national resurgence under the current leadership. 

The opposition challenged this narrative on the grounds of present-day realities. They argued that the government was using historical debates to divert attention from current failures—”unemployment, inflation,” and issues of public security. For them, true respect for the song lay in upholding its unifying spirit and constitutional values in the present, not in refighting historical battles. 

From Literary Work to Global Battle Cry: A Journey of Resistance 

The political debate often obscured the remarkable journey of Vande Mataram itself. Born as a literary work in the 1870s, it was rapidly adopted by the freedom movement. It became a crime to sing it in public under British rule, a ban that only fueled its popularity as an act of defiance. The cry of “Vande Mataram” was on the lips of martyrs like Matangini Hazra and was emblazoned on one of the first versions of the Indian national flag created by Bhikaiji Cama in 1907. 

Its resonance was not confined to India. As historical accounts note, the song became a “global symbol of Indian nationalism”. For Indian revolutionaries and students abroad, particularly at centers like the India House in London, Vande Mataram was a potent “message of resistance, identity, and hope”. Figures like Vinayak Damodar Savarkar used it as a rallying cry in exile, demonstrating how the freedom struggle had vibrant international dimensions. 

This rich, complex history of the song—as a literary masterpiece, a banned anthem of resistance, and a global symbol—stands in contrast to the flattened, partisan version often presented in political arenas today. 

The Enduring Divide: Symbolism vs. Substance in Modern India 

The 150th-anniversary debate over Vande Mataram ultimately transcended the song itself. It became a proxy war for larger conflicts: between competing interpretations of history, between majoritarian and pluralist visions of nationalism, and between symbolic politics and governance-focused agendas. 

One side views the song’s history as a story of dilution and compromise that must be corrected to restore national pride in its full, unadulterated form. The other sees that same history as a story of pragmatic inclusion that successfully forged a unifying symbol for a diverse nation—a spirit it accuses the current political discourse of undermining. 

As India moves forward, the challenge remains: can a national symbol born in anti-colonial resistance find a role that unites rather than divides in an independent, democratic, and diverse republic? The parliamentary debate provided no easy answers but made it clear that the meanings of Vande Mataram, like the idea of India itself, remain vigorously contested.