Romit Bagchi
Vande Mataram, a hymn taken from Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s historical novel Ananda Math, never ceases stirring controversies since it first erupted in the 1930s. A section of the Muslims then opposed the idea of the ‘Hindu’ hymn being made the national song of India, dubbing it as idolatrous- an evocation of Hindu goddess Durga- and thus anti-Islam. The Hindu nationalists, left in the Congress and elsewhere, on the other hand, claimed that no song other than Vande Mataram could fit as the national song of India, given the fact that it had inspired many to kiss the gallows and suffer alien rule’s inhumane tortures. The Muslim clerics, by and large, stuck to this view, issuing fatwas now and then against Muslim participation in its collective singing. Now again, when the nation is celebrating 150 years of the hymn it has sparked a major controversy when the Prime Minister hit out at the Congress on its deleted stanzas. Let us look back.
Setting it to tune, Rabindranath Tagore sang Vande Mataram for the first time during the Calcutta Congress session in 1896. Later, when Bengal became aflame with anger against the British regime’s decision to partition the province on communal lines, Tagore along with a galaxy of others led the Swadeshi movement from the front, professing an ideology not much different from that of Hindu nationalism.
However, by the time Vande Mataram stoked the fierce controversy, threatening to deepen the communal fissures further, Tagore seemed to have moved far away from what he considered a hide-bound concept of sectarian, divisive nationalism. Tagore explained his stand on the controversy in a letter written to Subhas Chandra Bose. He wrote that the Muslims were justified in raising objection to Vande Mataram which was doubtless a hymn dedicated to a Hindu goddess. It might be in full harmony with the theme of Ananda Math, but it could never be the national song of the great Indian assembly, he observed. “We get impatient when we see bigotry in a section of the Muslims. But when we tend to imitate them it becomes a matter of shame. It amounts to our defeat. There is a need to shed such narrowness to build up national unity on a strong foundation. We cannot afford to pawn unity on the altar of such divisive rigidity,” Tagore wrote to Bose.
Earlier, stung by criticism from the radical Hindu section of the nationalists, an embittered Tagore wrote to his son Rathindranath: “I have embraced the world as my country. I am happy I have been able to express my feelings to the world at large before I depart…May the message of Bengal be one of oneness of the world, international fraternity. Ideally, Vande Mataram should be an evocation of the World-Mother…”
Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru along with others arrived in Calcutta in October 1937 to attend the important Congress working committee meeting. Gandhi talked to ailing Tagore on the festering Vande Mataram row. Tagore had, however, made his point clear to Nehru a few days before CWC sat. He said that the song if taken in the context of Ananda Math might hurt the Muslim susceptibility. “But how can we forget that the song epitomises the sacrifice of thousands of our friends? We feel the Mantra must still be evoked to take the ongoing struggle to its consummation. If we take the first two stanzas, it would not remind the Muslims of the rest of the novel or the history it is accidentally associated with. They can stand independent of the rest. They contain an inspirational element which cannot hurt any religion or community,” Tagore wrote.
The resolution of the Congress working committee echoed Tagore’s view, saying that despite accepting the reservation raised by a section of the Muslim brethren as justified, they were of the view that the first two stanzas inspired their reverence, given the saga of sacrifice it embodied. However, at the same time, it gave full freedom to the people to go for another song if that proved to be a ‘communally innocent’ one as compared to the communally sensitive Vande Mataram.
This resolution left Bengal seething with rage with the intelligentsia accusing Congress leadership of abjectly surrendering before fundamentalism by deciding to vivisect the original song to appease a section of a community.
Significantly, around this time, the eminent Irish poet and theosophist, J H Cousins, who had settled in and worked for India, sent a proposal from erstwhile Madras, recommending Tagore’s ‘Jana Gana Mana’ as the perfect national song of India. “My suggestion is that Dr Rabindranath’s own intensely patriotic, ideally stimulating and, at the same time, world-embracing Morning Song of India (Jana-gana-mana) should be confirmed officially as the true National Anthem of India….It has a tune and rhythm that make it singable with definiteness, unity and vigour, whereas the Vande Mataram tune can never be given a satisfactory mass-rendering, as its twists and turns are only possible in individual singing,” he wrote.
Now, let us see how Aurobindo, whose birth anniversary significantly falls on Independence Day, viewed the emotive matter.
After he had left politics and settled in Pondicherry in 1910-his political career spanned over nearly five years-many regretted his retirement, as they could not see any external activity on his part which could be regarded as ‘public’. About his retirement, he himself wrote that his retirement did not mean, as most people supposed, that he had retired into some height of spiritual experience, devoid of any further interest in the world or in life…In his retirement, he kept a close watch on all that was happening in the world and in India and actively intervened, whenever necessary, but solely with a spiritual force and silent spiritual action.
Around two years after Congress had cleared its stand on the Vande Mataram controversy, a disciple asked Aurobindo (December 30 1939) about his view of the matter. “There are some people who object to Vande Mataram as a national song and some Congressmen support the removal of some parts of the song,” a disciple said. Aurobindo replied: “In that case, the Hindus should give up their culture.” The disciple went on: “The argument is that the song speaks of Durga and that is offensive to the Muslims.” Aurobindo remarked: “But it is not a religious song. It is a national song and the Durga spoken of is India as the Mother. Why should not the Muslims accept it? In the Indian concept of nationality, the Hindu view would naturally be there. If it cannot find a place there the Hindus may as well be asked to give up their culture.”
Aurobindo was convinced that appeasement of fundamentalism would further whet its hunger for more. He stood for a deeper solution of the Hindu-Muslim tangle. “…Hindu-Muslim unity cannot be effected by political adjustments or Congress flattery. It must be sought deeper down…but we must cease to approach him falsely or flatter out of a selfish weakness and cowardice,” he noted.
