'Vande Mataram' flashpoint: Bjp, Congress trade fire in LS

Congress in the Lok Sabha, accused Modi of repeatedly invoking Nehru to score political points.

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He said it was the Congress that had given Vande Mataram the status it held today. He cited the 1896 Calcutta session where Rabindranath Tagore first sang the song, and the 1905 Banaras session where Sarala Devi Chaudhurani adapted its lyrics to reflect the country’s rising aspirations. The Congress, he said, had resisted pressure from both the Muslim League and the Hindu Mahasabha in 1937 by deciding to sing the first two stanzas at national gatherings.

Outside Parliament, Congress MP Jairam Ramesh escalated his criticism, calling Modi the “master distorian” and accusing him of distorting Tagore’s legacy. He posted extracts from Tagore’s authorised biography to argue that the Prime Minister had misrepresented history. Ramesh hit back at the BJP’s charges of appeasement by invoking Syama Prasad Mookerjee’s 1940s coalition with Fazlul Haq in Bengal, and LK Advani and Jaswant Singh's past praise of Jinnah.