The parliamentary debate marking the 150th anniversary of ‘Vande Mataram’ has revived an 88-year-old controversy, casting the Congress into a quandary (as the BJP doubtless intended). The grand old party can either stand by the 1937 and 1950 decisions to truncate the song and keep it out of the constitutional ambit or revisit the issue in light of the shift in Indian sensibilities and political culture.

For PM Modi, his championing of Vande Mataram, ‘I bow to you, Mother’, is part of what he dubbed the “psychological renaissance” of India, a shedding of the colonial mindset and reclamation of its civilisational heritage. For Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, questioning the status of the song amounts to an attack on her great-grandfather, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. Both approaches are subjective, but neither is disingenuous.

Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s cri de coeur, which became the anthem of the world’s largest mass movement, enjoys a high emotional quotient. It inspired millions and was the rallying cry of the anti-Partition protest in 1905. Banned by the British Raj as seditious, it became a cause célèbre for students of the Hyderabad state in 1938. Many a martyr died with the song on their lips. On the eve of Independence, Sucheta Kriplani commemorated their sacrifice by singing the first stanza of the song. Given its intimate association with the freedom struggle, the fading out of Vande Mataram is distressing.

So, Modi was expressing a national sensibility when he advocated........

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