NEW VIRTUES MEET OLD FICTION

THE Union home ministry has chosen a striking moment for a cultural reminder.

- C P SURENDRAN

With the West Bengal assembly polls expected in April-May 2026, it issued a directive on January 28 that ‘Vande Mataram’ be sung in its original six stanzas at all government functions, effective immediately.

The ‘national song’, a position conferred by a Constituent Assembly resolution on January 24, 1950, is to be sung before the national anthem at all government functions. That the decisions of the Constituent Assembly itself is not deemed sacrosanct seems apparent since the Assembly never decreed that ‘Vande Mataram’ should precede ‘Jana Gana Mana’.

On the face of it, the directive to honour the 150th anniversary of the national song, written by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay in 1875 and finding cultish currency when sung by Bhavananda, a character in his novel Anandamath, published in 1882. Do note: fiction changes facts.

That the novelist gave the song to Bhavananda is an interesting detail. Bhavananda falls in love with Kalyani, the wife of protagonist Mahendra, and, in “expiation” of his sin, later falls fighting enemies.

Bengal, in the novel, is under the wayward administration of the “traitor” Mir Jafar, “a bad Mussalman”. Then again, in the novel, all “Mussalmans” are “bad”.