With Vande Mataram debate, Modi fails to score in history, Bengali culture

If, while initiating the discussion to commemorate the 150the anniversary of Vande Mataram in Lok Sabha on Monday (December 8), Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s intention was to reap political dividends in West Bengal ahead of next year’s assembly polls, while simultaneously assailing the Congress party and the late Jawaharlal Nehru, yet again, the attempt didn’t quite land.

Rather, the Prime Minister seemed to have been done in as much by his distorted view of history and perennially evident contempt for Nehru as by his inadequate understanding of Bengali ethos.

That the Opposition had a field day punching holes in the narrative Modi sought to weave in his nearly 55-minute-long submission was but a natural corollary of the Prime Minister’s selective rendition of historical accounts surrounding the song composed by Bengali author Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, which, in 1950, became India’s national song.

Opposition gives PM history lessons

From Gaurav Gogoi and Priyanka Gandhi of the Congress to Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar and Mahua Moitra of the Trinamool Congress and from A Raja of the DMK to Akhilesh Yadav of the Samajwadi Party, Opposition MPs pilloried Modi in quick succession for twisting historical facts to suit his political convenience.

Also read: Vande Mataram debate in Parliament: Historian questions Modi govt | Capital Beat

Akhilesh reminded the Prime Minister that Vande Mataram wasn’t merely a song to be sung but an anthem to live by and quoted incidents under BJP rule that are anathema to the spirit of Vande Mataram. Raja quoted extensively from publicly available archival material to expound how and when Vande Mataram turned from a nationalistic war cry against the British to a controversial hymn with Hindu overtones that even Rabindranath Tagore felt was “liable to be interpreted in ways that might wound Muslim susceptibilities”.

Modi’s speech, in which he waxed eloquent about the BJP being the only real adherent of the ideals espoused in Vande Mataram, came across as a poorly researched and grossly inaccurate account of history that was handed to him straight out of a Wikipedia page.

Priyanka recounted the entire chronology of the song’s journey from a two-stanza hymn in 1872 to it being sung by Tagore at the 1896 Calcutta Session of the Congress to its evolution as a rallying call for Indians during the Swadeshi Movement in 1905 and the eventual adoption of its truncated version by the Congress at its 1937 session following an elaborate intra-party debate on its more controversial stanzas.

Also read: PM Modi says Congress split Vande Mataram stanzas in line with Muslim League

Quoting from the same letters that Modi had sought to weaponise against Nehru while alleging that the Congress had, under the influence of the Muslim League, “betrayed” and “broken” Vande Mataram, Priyanka also pointed out the portions of the same correspondence that the Prime Minister conveniently skipped, reading the parts that had Nehru defending the same song while decrying the campaign against it by “communalists”.

“Cheap politics” over national song

Even Arvind Sawant of the Shiv Sena (UBT) slammed Modi’s bid to “play cheap politics” over the national song and dared the BJP to “point out a single instance where Hegdewar and Golwalkar (RSS founder KB Hegdewar and MS Golwakar, the Sangh’s second chief) have mentioned Vande Mataram in their books or speeches”.

Not just Priyanka but even non-Congress Opposition MPs made it a point to sting Modi with the obvious historical factoids – that the Vande Mataram was first sung publicly by Tagore at a Congress session, that it was the Congress that had adopted its stanzas as the party song in 1937, and that it was the Congress again that, in 1950, ensured that Vande Mataram was adopted as free India’s national song, despite the fact that Chattopadhyay’s hymn was quite clearly written with undivided Bengal, and not all of India, in mind.

Also read: Modi refers to Vande Mataram creator as ‘Bankim da’; TMC up in arms

Modi’s speech, in which he waxed eloquent about the BJP being the only real adherent of the ideals espoused in Vande Mataram and accused the Congress of “doing politics of appeasement even on Vande Mataram”, came across as a poorly researched and grossly inaccurate account of history that was handed to him straight out of a Wikipedia page.

Blowing it to smithereens was, thus, an easy bid for the Opposition, which by now has, perhaps, acclimatised fully to the predictable course Modi’s rhetoric follows on issues wherein the predominant theme is Nehru-bashing and jingoism. That the Opposition turned Modi’s arguments on their head to illustrate how his government had, over the past decade, practised a politics that fostered communal polarisation, Centre-state conflicts, economic inequities, trampling individual freedoms and exploitation of natural resources was par for the course.

Lack of knowledge of Bengali culture

Another glaring—rather, comic—lapse by Modi was to refer to Chattopadhyay as “Bankimda”, only to be called out midway through his speech by a visibly horrified Sougata Roy, the veteran Trinamool Congress MP from Dum Dum. Clearly, no one had informed the Prime Minister that while “da” is an endearing and acceptable suffix used among Bengalis while speaking to their contemporaries, the correct suffix to be used for more reverential figures, as Chattopadhyay is for Bengalis, is “Babu”.

Also read: Modi trying to rewrite ‘Vande Mataram’ history, can’t blot Nehru’s legacy: Congress

Roy’s exasperated interruption marked one of the rare instances in Modi’s 11-year parliamentary stint when he was practically forced to apologise for hurting sentiments and switch to referring to the Bengali icon as Bankimbabu thereon.

Much later in the debate, Union Minister for Culture Gajendra Singh Shekhawat did the Prime Minister no favour when he stammered through the author’s name, calling him “Bankim Das”, “Bankimda”, “Chatterjee” and “Chattopadhyay” before finally settling for “Bankimbabu”, ironically all while making a brief intervention to ‘factually’ correct Priyanka Gandhi.

Icon vs icon?

What Modi and his BJP also clearly failed to understand was that his constant refrain of Vande Mataram being “given a secondary status” (obviously in comparison to Tagore’s Jana Gana Mana) is unlikely to convert any Bengali voters to the BJP’s cause.

The attempt may be to exalt Chattopadhyay as an icon whom the BJP can perhaps appropriate for electoral gains, but by raking up the question of why the Congress “forced” Vande Mataram out of contention from being chosen as the national anthem is, by extension, expected to be seen in Bengal as an affront to Tagore and Jana Gana Mana.

Modi may have refrained from directly pitting Tagore against Chattopadhyay but this is exactly the intent that his and his party’s crusade for ‘restoring’ Vande Mataram’s prestige signals towards. But for Bengal, both Tagore and Chattopadhyay are literary and cultural icons of the highest order, and no Bengali would like to see the two “pitted” against each other in any manner whatsoever.

Golden opportunity

Expectedly, the Trinamool, with its feisty leader and Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, did not let slip by such a golden political opportunity to scorch the BJP ahead of next year’s polls.

Also read: How Rajnath rewrites Ayodhya, twisting Nehru-Patel’s role in 1949

“For years, these BOHIRAGOTO [outsider] interlopers have tried to dishonestly appropriate Bengal’s cultural icons, hoping that borrowed reverence might compensate for their utter political bankruptcy in the state. Each attempt has only exposed how grotesquely alien they are to Bengal’s cultural consciousness, history, and vocabulary,” the party posted on X.

“…No, Modi ji, Bengal does not casually slap the suffix “da” onto figures it venerates. Only a CULTURAL ILLITERATE would think that sounds respectful. Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay belongs to Bengal’s moral and intellectual spine, not to the BJP’s damage-control toolkit. You are not inheritors, you are IMPOSTORS. You are not admirers, you are APPROPRIATORS who can’t even fake sincerity properly,” it lashed out.

And with the Bengal assembly elections just round the corner, the party won’t let this faux pas be forgotten in a hurry.