Citing the 1937 letter written by India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru to Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, Priyanka Gandhi said, “The so-called objection against the remaining stanzas of Vande Mataram was manufactured by the communalists.” She went on to say that PM Modi did not mention this part in his speech.
The discussion on the 150th anniversary of India’s national song Vande Mataram on Monday resulted in a fierce faceoff between Congress MP Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who had earlier in the day accused Jawaharlal Nehru of truncating the original version after being influenced by Muslim League leader Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s stance in 1937.
Responding to PM Modi’s charge, Priyanka Gandhi dismissed Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s claim that Jawaharlal Nehru had written to Subhash Chandra Bose saying the origins of Vande Mataram may incite Muslims, stating that the Prime Minister had selectively quoted from her great-grandfather’s letter during his address in the Lok Sabha earlier.
Citing the 1937 letter written by India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru to Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, Priyanka Gandhi said, “The so-called objection against the remaining stanzas of Vande Mataram was manufactured by the communalists.” She went on to say that PM Modi did not mention this part in his speech.
Earlier in the day, PM Modi, citing Nehru’s letter to Subhash Chandra Bose, said that the first Indian Prime Minister had accepted Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s sentiments on Vande Mataram. PM Modi went on to quote Nehru as saying that he had communicated to Bose that the background of Vande Mataram might end up instigating Muslims.
Prime Minister Modi pointed out that on October 15, 1937, Jinnah had drummed up opposition to Vande Mataram in Lucknow. Five days later, PM Modi said, Nehru wrote to Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose expressing his concerns about the song’s Anandamath backdrop.
“On October 20, Nehru wrote to Netaji, informing him that he accepted Jinnah’s sentiments regarding Vande Mataram. He noted that the song’s Anandamath association could instigate Muslims. ‘I have read the background of Vande Mataram, and I believe this context may indeed offend Muslims,’ Nehru wrote to Bose,” PM Modi had said in the Parliament.
“Nationalists across the country took out prabhat pheris against it when the Congress Working Committee decided to inspect Vande Mataram,” PM Modi said, pointing out that the Grand Old Party’s decision eventually prevailed. PM Modi further accused Nehru of giving in to Jinnah’s demand and, in turn, questioning the song itself.
PRIYANKA GANDHI’S RESPONSE
Lashing out at PM Modi, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, later in the day, highlighted the chronology of events, and also mentioned another exchange between Rabindranath Tagore and her great-grandfather Jawaharlal Nehru.
She said that Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay wrote the song in 1875, composing the first two stanzas. Then, in 1882, Priyanka said, Bankim Chandra wrote the remaining four stanzas in his historical novel Anandamath. After nearly a decade and a half, Rabindranath Tagore sang it for the first time in 1896 at a Congress session, she added.
Priyanka further said that by the 1930s, the song had acquired a political hue amid growing communal tensions. She then turned her attention to PM Modi’s mention of Nehru’s letter to Netaji, slamming him for selectively quoting. She pointed out that Netaji wrote to Nehru on October 17 ahead of the 1937 Congress convention in Kolkata. In his reply to this letter, Nehru said that the four stanzas added later “can be misconstrued as communal,” she said.
“Let me share an excerpt from the letter in which Gurudev (Rabindranath Tagore) says that the two stanzas that were always sung were so significant that he had no difficulty in separating them from the rest of the poem and the passages in the book.”
She then said that the Congress Working Committee declared the first two stanzas of Vande Mataram as the national song on October 28, in the presence of Nehru, Tagore, Mahatma Gandhi, and Sardar Patel.
“He (Tagore) said the same two stanzas were always sung during the freedom struggle and to honour the hundreds of martyrs who sacrificed their lives. While singing them, it would be appropriate to sing them as they were. He also said that the stanzas added later could be interpreted as communal and their use would be inappropriate in the atmosphere of that time. Subsequently, on 28 October 1937, the Congress Working Committee, in its resolution, declared Vande Mataram as the national song,” she said.
