On Vande Mataram, Congress hasn’t learnt from its past

On Vande Mataram, Congress hasn’t learnt from its past

Nine decades ago, in 1937, the Congress leadership had committed a blunder of surrendering before the communal forces led by Mohammed Ali Jinnah.

Today, the Congress Party wants to present that as a virtue while defending its defiance against singing of Vande Mataram in full. As the saying goes, its defence is more atrocious than its actions.

Before it was truncated in 1937, primarily at the behest of Jawaharlal Nehru, the singing of Vande Mataram in full in all the Congress sessions had a four-decade history. Taken from Bankim Chandra’s Anand Mutt novel, it was first sung at the Congress session in 1896 by Rabindranath Tagore. The song became the mantra for the Swadeshi movement launched by the Congress in 1906 against the partition of Bengal and soon the movement itself came to be called as Vande Mataram Movement. Renowned Hindustani musician Vishnu Digambar Puluskar used to sing the song with music at the Congress sessions every year until his death in 1931. Pandit Omkarnath Thakur, another vocalist, continued that tradition afterwards.

Muslim League leader Maulana Mohammed Ali, who became the Congress president, objected to it for the first time in 1923 at the Kakinada session. Puluskar ignored the objection and went ahead with the singing.

The tradition continued even after that. In fact, Puluskar sang it in full in the historic 1929 session at Lahore, which was presided over for the first time by Jawaharlal himself. Only to pander to the League’s and Jinnah’s obscurantism that Jawahar initiated the debate over the song’s future in 1937.

There was a furore in Bengali circles over the move prompting even Subhash Bose to warn Nehru not to surrender before the communalists. Ramananda Chatterjee, renowned editor of Modern Review published from Kolkata, strongly decried the song’s “trial” by Congress. Anand Bazar Patrika criticised that the Congress had “succumbed to communalism and communal elements”. In fact, there were street protests in Kolkata against the move of the Congress.

Yet, Nehru, who once said that the song was “never sung as a challenge to any group or community” and the outcry against it was “a manufactured one by the communalists”, began to insist that the Muslims have genuine grievances against it. Tagore proposed the truncation of the song on the specious claim that the second part of it was against his and his family’s “monotheistic ideals”. That’s how the song, that had undone the partition of Bengal three decades earlier, itself became a victim of partition.

For Jinnah, it was just an alibi. He continued to argue even after its truncation that the song was “idolatrous” and a “hymn of hatred to Muslims”. Nehru’s argument that it hurt the sentiments of Muslims was facetious because the objection never came from the Muslim Congressmen.

Even Jinnah, in his earlier avatar as a Congress leader, used to rise in reverence when the song was sung in Congress sessions. Tagore’s “monotheism” is not India’s creed. As far as the idolatry complaint is concerned, except for references to Durga, Kamala (Lakshmi) and Vani (Saraswati) in the fourth stanza, the song contains no other names of Hindu gods.

Those references cannot be an objection to any religion just as the slogan “Allahu Akbar” in a Muslim country cannot be objected by the non-Muslims there. Even the argument of idolatry was irrational because the country itself was worshipped as Bharat Mata, a deity by all the freedom fighters. Aurobindo called her as the “Shakti”; Gandhi went to Varanasi to inaugurate a Bharat Mata Mandir in 1936; and Indira Gandhi, as prime minister, inaugurated another Bharat Mata Mandir in Haridwar in 1983, in which Bharat Mata received worship daily.

Primarily, what the Congress leadership is trying to defend today was an act of communal appeasement of its leadership in 1930s and 40s, which resulted in horrible consequences for India, including the partition of the country and emboldening of the communal sections of the minorities.

H V Kamath bitterly complained that in the Constituent Assembly several members had deliberately walked in after the rendering of the song. Major debates took place in the Constituent Assembly over the song with many members arguing in its favour. No voting took place.

Instead, Rajendra Prasad, as Chairman, made a declaration on the last day of the discussions, November 24, 1949, that “the song Jana Gana Mana, composed by the great poet Rabindranath Tagore, is the National Anthem of India”. He also added that Vande Mataram, given its historic role in the freedom movement, would be “honoured equally”.

The Congress always pandered to the communal elements and never stood by the nationalist Muslims, during the freedom movement and after. In his book “India Wins Freedom”, Maulana Azad blames Gandhi for giving undue importance to Jinnah, and by implication, reducing the importance of the nationalist Muslims like him. “Jinnah had lost much of his political importance after he left the Congress in 1920s.

It was largely due to Gandhiji’s acts of commission and omission that Jinnah regained his importance in Indian political life”, he writes grudgingly. Habeebur Rehman, described in the Urdu press as a “Patriotic Muslim leader”, wrote to Gandhi in 1944, saying, “Yesterday, I read your statement. You are again ready to give Pakistan to Jinnah. The fact is that since Jinnah is a Gujarati, you love him and cannot forget him. You want to see him victorious despite his being wrong. This kind of gentle behaviour has strengthened the reactionary forces”.

Biggest repudiation came from Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, known as “Frontier Gandhi”. When Congress surrendered before Jinnah and agreed for partition, he wept uncontrollably, asking why the sturdy Pathans, who had fought for freedom in a united India under Gandhi’s leadership, were being subjected to this punishment. “You have thrown us to the wolves. Which Muslims, who joined you, will ever trust you?”, he agonisingly asked the Congress leadership.

By resorting to similar fallacious actions, the Congress is once again committing the same blunder of supporting the communalist elements as it did during the freedom movement.

Join JK Updates WhatsApp Channel