Controversy over Vande Mataram first, most dangerous outcome of Cong's appeasement politics: Adityanath

Lucknow, Dec 22 (PTI) Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Monday blamed the Congress and Mohammad Ali Jinnah for what he described as India's "cultural division" and the eventual Partition, alleging that the controversy over Vande Mataram was the first and most dangerous outcome of the party's appeasement politics.

Initiating a discussion on Vande Mataram in the state Assembly on the second day of the Winter Session, Adityanath said, the "compromise" made over Vande Mataram was not an act of respecting religious sentiments but the Congress' "first, biggest and most dangerous experiment in appeasement", which, he alleged, gave rise to separatism.

He claimed that as long as Jinnah was in the Congress, Vande Mataram was not a decisive point of contention. "As soon as Jinnah left the Congress, he made it a tool of the Muslim League and deliberately gave the song a communal colour. The song remained the same, but the agenda changed," the chief minister said.

Adityanath recalled that on October 15, 1937, Jinnah raised a slogan against Vande Mataram from Lucknow, when Jawaharlal Nehru was the Congress president.

"On October 20, 1937, Nehru wrote a letter to Subhas Chandra Bose saying the background of the song was making Muslims uncomfortable," he said, calling it a "clear admission of the Congress' appeasement policy".

He alleged that on October 26, 1937, the Congress decided to drop some portions of Vande Mataram in the name of "harmony", which he described as a "sacrifice of national consciousness".

"Patriots protested and took out 'prabhat pheris', but the Congress leadership chose to stand with the vote bank instead of the nation," he said.

The chief minister further said that on March 17, 1938, Jinnah demanded that Vande Mataram be completely changed, but the Congress did not resist.

"This emboldened the Muslim League, sharpened separatist tendencies and marked the first compromise on cultural symbols, which eventually laid the foundation of India's unfortunate Partition," he alleged.

Adityanath asserted that the opposition to Vande Mataram was neither religious nor faith-based but purely political.

He added that from 1896 to 1922, the song was sung at every Congress session without any controversy.

"There was no fatwa and no religious dispute. Even till the Khilafat movement, the song resonated from every platform. Leaders like Maulana Abul Kalam Azad supported it. The problem was not religion, but the politics of a few," he said.

He said that the first opposition to the song at a Congress session came in 1923 from Mohammad Ali Jauhar, which, according to him, was driven by Khilafat politics and not religion. When Vishnu Digambar Paluskar sang the full song, Jauhar left the stage, Adityanath said.

Instead of standing firmly in support of the national song, the Congress formed committees and eventually decided in 1937 that only two stanzas would be sung and that too not mandatorily, which the chief minister termed "national surrender".

Adityanath also said that the truncated version of Vande Mataram recognised by the Constituent Assembly on January 24, 1950, was a result of the same appeasement policy. "The nation adopted the song, but the Congress had already cut it," he alleged.

Calling Vande Mataram the "soul of India", the chief minister said it was not merely a song but the mantra of the freedom struggle, from the anti-Partition movement of Bengal in 1905 to the last breath of revolutionaries. "Rabindranath Tagore called it the soul of India, Aurobindo Ghosh described it as a mantra. Vande Mataram was written on the first tricolour unfurled abroad by Madam Bhikaji Cama, and Madan Lal Dhingra's last words were also Vande Mataram," he said.

Adityanath alleged that compromising on Vande Mataram was not just an insult to the song but a "cruel blow to India's national direction".

He warned that even today, some political forces are trying to revive the same divisive mindset.

He said the Congress, from whose platform Vande Mataram was first sung, "strangled the Constitution" by imposing the Emergency in the country in 1975 during the centenary celebrations of the national song.

Calling the song a "symbol of the nation's soul, struggle and resolve", Adityanath said, When Vande Mataram was celebrating its silver jubilee, the country was still under British rule.

He said the song was composed at a time when the British government, rattled after the First War of Independence, had reached the peak of repression and atrocities, and Indians were being subjected to severe hardships.

At that time, the Congress served as a platform to advance the freedom struggle, the Leader of the House said. In 1896, Rabindranath Tagore lent his voice to Vande Mataram for the first time at a Congress session, and it became a mantra for the entire nation, he said.

However, Adityanath said, when the centenary of Vande Mataram arrived, the same Congress imposed the Emergency and "strangled" the Constitution.

He added that the country is progressing in the direction of fulfilling the dream of Vande Mataram's immortal composer Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay.

Adityanath said that as part of a series of programmes launched from New Delhi to mark 150 years of Vande Mataram under the guidance of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, possibly the Uttar Pradesh Assembly is the first legislature where such a detailed discussion on the national song is taking place. PTI ABN MNK MNK