PM’s call to sing Vande Mataram is an invitation, not an imposition

PM's initiative was not about rewriting history but reopening it so that Indians can decide for themselves what their heritage means. That is democracy at its purest essence.

- SANTISHREE DHULIPUDI PANDIT

In a democracy, symbols are sacred, but their interpretations, adoptions, and usage are human and therefore political. India’s national song, Vande Mataram, embodies that paradox.

It is not just a melody of devotion, but the spirit of a civilisation that has always revered the land as its mother, and Indians as her children. Yet, for decades, the Left and the Congress establishment have sought to decide who may speak of that reverence, who may interpret it, who must stay silent, and especially, who should forget about it.

What is unfolding today is not “dirty” politics, as some Left outlets claim, but the long-overdue democratisation of conversations about our country and our past. For too long, Congress has monopolised not only the instruments of power but also the vocabulary of nationalism itself. It claimed the right to define what was patriotic and what was not, what could be sung and what must be censored. It exalted its own decisions as sacrosanct while branding all alternative voices as divisive.

Although composed and sung for decades, it was under Jawaharlal Nehru’s presidency in 1937 that Vande Mataram was adopted by the Congress Working Committee (CWC). Yet, it was also declared that only the first two stanzas should be sung, while others should be quietly forgotten. The song that stirred revolutionaries and inspired countless martyrs was suddenly severed, with stanzas invoking Maa Durga, Maa Lakshmi, and Maa Saraswati, deemed “unsuitable.” Later, in his correspondence with Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, Nehru argued that the song's “background” might “irritate Muslims.” So, a song that united millions under the banner of freedom was suddenly regarded as potentially communal.