The song united Indians in the freedom struggle. Today, however, its legacy risks becoming another fault line in a deeply divided political discourse

On August 13, all six stanzas of Vande Mataram were sung inside the Lok Sabha for the first time in parliamentary history, as the Monsoon Session drew to a close. Two days later, from the ramparts of Red Fort, the full song was heard for the first time at an Independence Day ceremony - the 80th since 1947. The timing was crucial: 2025-26 marks 150 years since Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay composed the song, later woven into his novel Anandamath, and it comes days after a new law made insulting or disrupting Vande Mataram a criminal offence, on par with the National Anthem.

Few songs carry this kind of........

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