Vande Mataram: Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge said that his party has been the proud flag bearer of ‘Vande Mataram’, which awakened the collective soul of the nation and took the form of a slogan for freedom.
Vande Mataram: Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge on Friday said his party has been the proud flag bearer of ‘Vande Mataram’, which awakened the collective soul of the nation and took the form of a slogan for freedom. On the 150th anniversary of India’s national song, Kharge said ‘Vande Mataram’ composed by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay symbolizes the spirit of Mother India and celebrates the unity and diversity of India. Indian National Congress has been the proud flag bearer of Vande Mataram. Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore sang Vande Mataram publicly for the first time under the leadership of the then Congress President Rahmatullah Sayani during the Congress session in Calcutta in 1896. That moment breathed new life into the freedom struggle. Congress understood that the divide and rule policy of the British Empire was designed to break the unity of India by misusing religious, caste and regional identities.
Vande Mataram united everyone
He said that Vande Mataram emerged as a song of indomitable power, which united all Indians in devotion to Mother India. The Congress President said that from the partition of Bengal in 1905 till the last breaths of the brave revolutionaries of the country, ‘Vande Mataram’ kept resonating in the entire country. He said that it was the title of Lala Lajpat Rai’s publication, which was inscribed on the flag of Bhikaji Cama hoisted in Germany and is found in Pandit Ram Prasad Bismil’s Kranti Gitanjali. Kharge said that fearing its popularity, the British banned it because it had become the heartbeat of India’s freedom struggle. He said that Mahatma Gandhi had written in 1915 that ‘Vande Mataram’ had become the most powerful battle cry between the Hindus and Muslims of Bengal during the days of partition. This was an anti-imperialist slogan. The Congress President said that the country’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had said in 1938 that this song has been directly linked to Indian nationalism for more than 30 years. Such ‘people’s songs’ are neither made as per anyone’s wish nor can they be imposed on the minds of the people. They touch heights on their own.
Question raised on BJP-RSS
Kharge claimed that the Uttar Pradesh Assembly had started reciting ‘Vande Mataram’ in 1937, when Purushottam Das Tandon was the speaker. The same year, the Indian National Congress formally recognized ‘Vande Mataram’ as the national song, confirming its status as a symbol of India’s unity in diversity. He said that it is very ironic that people from RSS and BJP today claim to be self-proclaimed protectors of nationalism. RSS and BJP have never sung ‘Vande Mataram’ or the national anthem ‘Jana Gana Mana’ in their branches or offices. Instead they continue to sing ‘Namaste Sada Vatsale’, a song that glorifies their organisations, not the nation. Since its inception in 1925, the RSS has avoided ‘Vande Mataram’ despite its universal reverence.
Also read: Why did Congress not raise the flaws earlier? Election Commission targets Rahul Gandhi’s press conference
The post Congress President Kharge’s attack on BJP-RSS: Said- never sang ‘Vande Mataram’ or ‘Jana-Gana-Mana’ first appeared on Live Times.
