By Gurpreet Singh
Renewed debate around the so-called Indian national song has heated up in recent months. Although it isn’t the first time that Indian society is divided on this issue, the attempts by the ruling Hindu chauvinist BJP government in New Delhi to make it mandatory to sing “Vande Mataram” in its entirety has evoked sharp reactions from the minority groups, especially Muslims.
The song that literally means “I bow to the mother” has become a sort of prayer offered to the embodiment of the Indian motherland as a goddess. Time and again, BJP supporters try to test the loyalty of minorities by asking them to recite it. Even after renowned music composer AR Rahman produced a very popular version of “Vande Mataram”, this wasn’t enough to satisfy the Hindu bigots.
Ever since the BJP came to power with a brute majority in 2014, attacks on Muslims and other non-Hindu groups have grown in a country whose diversity was often taken for granted. Emboldened by the popular verdict that the BJP received for the first time, the party has been trying to redefine India and its history and culture. Rewriting history by portraying India as a Hindu nation has always been the part of its agenda.
Interestingly, the Hindu nationalist leadership wasn’t very enthusiastic to drive out British who occupied India for about a century until 1947. Rather, the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), a group of Hindu supremacist stormtroopers, was established in 1925 to establish a Hindu nation where non-Hindus would have no special rights. They began promoting the two-nation theory even before the Muslim League started asking for a separate Pakistani state that came into being after British left in 1947.
The RSS thoroughly rejected the idea of India as a joint home of Hindus and Muslims by simply villainizing the Mughal rule and overlooking its contribution to the development of Indian nation. The BJP is a political wing of the RSS. Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself is an RSS member.
Anti-Muslim characters chant “Vande Mataram” in Anandmath
While Mahatma Gandhi and his Congress party and other radical groups were engaged in the freedom struggle to liberate their country from the British empire, the Hindu nationalists were dreaming of driving out Muslims from the subcontinent. “Vande Mataram” has its roots in a highly controversial novel written by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee in 1882. Anandmath is the story of an ascetic rebellion primarily against Muslim chieftains who were collecting taxes from their Hindu subjects on behalf of the British government.
The novel projects Muslims in a bad light, while remaining neutral toward the British. The characters in the novel rejoice burning down Muslim homes and chant the “Vande Mataram” song repeatedly. Not surprisingly, Modi reveres Chatterjee and so do RSS supporters. After all, the Anandmath story aligns with their political ideology.
It is for these reasons that many Muslims remain reluctant to sing the song. Some of them do so for religious reasons as their faith doesn’t allow idol worshipping, which is also true for practising Sikhs. Unfortunately, the sheer majoritarianism has prejudiced the Congress party too as it adopted some parts of the poem that aren’t heavily religious. So much so, a progressive filmmaker, Prithivi Raj Kapoor, produced a movie based on the novel by glossing over its anti-Muslim content and depicting the ascetic rebels as freedom fighters against foreign rule.
People of my generation who studied in a secular Indian school environment were also taught to chant “Vande Mataram” on the national days on January 26 or August 15. As my interest in history grew and became more critical in the years succeeding Modi’s elevation to the highest office, I ordered a copy of Anandmath to understand the issue behind “Vande Mataram” firsthand.
I now feel fooled by the Indian educational system. Although it wasn’t as bad as today under the BJP, which is unapologetically determined to create divisions among the Hindus and non-Hindus by rewriting a twisted history, it was still compromised. That’s why there was no critical discussion on the freedom struggle and nationalism.
Once read the book of hate, which I have no hesitation to call Anandmath, I refuse to sing “Vande Mataram” even if that means being ostracized or accused of being seditious.
Gurpreet Singh is a B.C. author and co-founder of Radical Desi. In addition, he hosts a daily news and current affairs show on YouTube called Navin Taazi. Follow Gurpreet Singh on Bluesky @gurpreetradical.bsky.social.
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