The song that united India under British rule remains a bitter dividing line in India under self-rule. A law for upholding its dignity was notified little over a week ago. But the song in praise of the motherland has been dragged into squalid political waters. It's not new. For 90-odd years, Vande Mataram has stood at the crossing of reverence and controversy.
The battle over Vande Mataram was simmering since the last winter session of Parliament. A heated controversy broke out during the 150th anniversary of the song.
The NDA government led by PM Narendra Modi had accused the Congress of succumbing to vote bank pressures and removing portions of the song. This was followed up in the just-concluded and largely disrupted monsoon session with the passing of "The Prevention of Insults to National Honour (Amendment) Act, 2026". For the first time, the government issued official rendition guidelines and penal protections against disruptions and disrespect of the complete song.
The Congress cringed
The Congress couldn't prevent the passing of the bill. But it didn't protest outside parliament against it.
Then came a four-and-a-half-minute video shot at the Congress headquarters on August 15. It crystallised the Congress' discomfort, opposition and future strategy against what the party calls "enforced respect".
The law was the provocation. The Congress reaction, the realisation of a political opportunity.
At the national flag hoisting at the Congress Headquarters, Vande Mataram was playing. During the first two stanzas, both party president Mallikarjun Kharge and Sonia Gandhi were seen singing along. Cameras were rolling, and everyone knew that. The moment the third stanza started playing, neither Kharge nor the party's political face, Rahul Gandhi, set the reaction rolling. It was Sonia Gandhi, the matriarch, who displayed the first cringe. She turned towards Kharge. Hand gestures suggested that she was objecting to something. Rahul turned and noticed her discomfort. Later, an animated conversation between the top three ensued.
The Congress later offered a clarification that Sonia Gandhi merely wanted a chair for the octogenarian party president.
But that day history was created. For the first time since 1937, the full version of Vande Mataram played out at a Congress event. The gloves didn't stay on. Come Wednesday, the "chair for Kharge" justification was left with no legs to stand on. The CWC decided that in future only two stanzas of Vande Mataram will be sung or played at Congress events. The law of the land was challenged. Legal opinion by Congressmen like Abhishek Manu Singhvi had highlighted the law and underlined the difference between public and private events.
But politics is a lot about reading between the lines.
The BJP had been baiting the Congress on the Vande Mataram issue for decades.
The Congress reaction proved that the "dog whistle" had worked. This time the BJP hit the political jackpot as a law for protecting the full version's dignity was in place, Sonia Gandhi was in the frame on the issue, and there was an official CWC diktat for just two stanzas of Vande Mataram.
Home Minister Amit Shah on Thursday accused the Congress of reviving its "extreme policy of appeasement", saying that the decision was a repetition of a historical error that had contributed to the partition of India.
The BJP narrative now is that the Congress hasn't changed. For Muslim votes, it truncated Vande Mataram 89 years ago and is still doing it.
The debate from the backyard of history is playing in the present.
The Muslim factor
Vande Mataram is now a polarising plank for both the Congress and the BJP.
Some Congressmen say the issue needed nuanced handling. They say in three Congress-ruled states - Himachal, Karnataka and Telangana - it was sung in entirety. But there is a method visible. The Congress strategy was not born spontaneously on August 15 at the time of flag hoisting.
After all, well before August 15, the Kerala government had ordered that Vande Mataram should not be played at its official Independence Day celebrations led by Chief Minister V D Satheesan. It's a Congress-ruled state. Priyanka Gandhi Vadra is an MP from Wayanad. Rahul Gandhi's man Friday and most powerful general secretary, K C Venugopal, is from Kerala. So I wonder, is it possible that the Kerala government decided to defy the central directive from the Union Home Ministry and the order didn't come from the Congress high command?
So the question - Was the "chair for Kharge" a Kodak moment in a script which was already playing out?
The 1937 CWC resolution
The current BJP vs Congress scramble for a Hindu vs Muslim divide is borrowed from the song's complex past. Ironically, it was the Congress that adopted and promoted the song 130 years ago.
In 1896, Rabindranath Tagore composed its tune and sang it at a Congress meeting. Vande Mataram, after Lord Curzon's partition of Bengal in 1905, was a rallying call for Bengal Swadeshi agitation. Aam Indians were singing it, so in Varanasi, on 7 September, 1905, the Congress formally adopted Vande Mataram for its all-India events. In 1906, in a historic moment in Barisal, over 10,000 Hindus and Muslims marched together, chanting Vande Mataram.
Lala Lajpat Rai started an Urdu weekly in the name of Vande Mataram from Lahore. Bipin Chandra Pal founded a newspaper Bande Mataram in 1905.
Bhikaji Kama unfurled a flag with Vande Mataram painted on it in London.
But by 1908, Muslim leaders started their chant against it. The target was the Congress. On December 30, 1908, at the 2nd All India Muslim League session in Amritsar, Syed Ali Imam said, "Under the cloak of nationalism, Hindu nationalism is being preached in India". "Bande Mataram" was termed a sectarian cry.
Still, in 1915, a meeting in "Madras" addressed by Mahatma Gandhi started with the singing of the full version of Vande Mataram.
At the 25th session of the Muslim League in Lucknow, a resolution in Mohd Ali Jinnah's presence was adopted dubbing "Bande Mataram" as " positively anti-Islamic and idolatrous in its inspiration and ideas".
K Fazlul Haq, the then chief minister of Bengal, on 17 October 1937 said, "The Congress is trying to establish a Hindu raj in India."
The Hindutva charge against it meant the Congress could lose Muslim votes to the League.
It decided to rethink its strategy. On October 20, 1937, Jawaharlal Nehru, in a letter to Subhas Chandra Bose from Allahabad, outlined the "Muslim factor".
Nehru claimed that after reading Chattopadhyay's "Ananda Math" he understood the song's background. He wrote, " It does seem that this is likely to irritate the Muslims. There is no doubt that the present outcry against Bande Mataram is to a large extent a manufactured one by the communalists. At the same time there does seem some substance in it, and people who are communalistically inclined have been affected by it."
Nehru met Tagore in "Calcutta" later in the month. Then came the Congress Working Committee's carefully calibrated resolution in December 1937. Gandhi, the Intellectual giant, admitted his deficient understanding and amended his position. The CWC resolution restricted the national use of Vande Mataram to the first two stanzas only to balance the song's emotional significance with communal sensitivities.
Constituent assembly's verdict
Exactly 10 years later, "Vande Mataram" came up in the Constituent Assembly. On July 31, 1947, ICS officer turned freedom fighter H V Kamath pushed for the inclusion of "Vande Mataram" in its official agenda.
On the tryst with destiny night of August 14, 1947, at the Assumption of Power ceremony, Sucheta Kripalani sang the first verse of "Vande Mataram" as the opening item. Interestingly, in a cabinet note in 1948, Nehru is said to have written, "Vande Mataram for all its beauty and history is not an easy tune for orchestral or band rendering. It is rather plaintive and mournful and repetitive."
Members of the constituent assembly like Seth Govind Das, Biswanath Das and Satish Chandra backed the song as the National Anthem. Members from Bengal like Shyama Prasad Mukherjee expressed particular pride in "Vande Mataram". Lawyer and freedom fighter Rohini Kumar Chaudhuri asserted that India's freedom movement started with an invocation to the goddess.
Eventually, two days before India's constitution came into play in January 1950, President Rajendra Prasad accorded "Vande Mataram" equal status to the National Anthem. But the official use was restricted to two stanzas based on the CWC resolution of 1937.
The debate never ended
The fault line over Vande Mataram kept alive. The rise of Hindu identity politics and the BJP reignited it. Municipal Corporations, and school administrations in states like UP made singing of the song mandatory. Political war cries like "Hindustan mein rahna hoga, Vande Mataram kahna hoga' became popular.
During political calls and communal strife, Vande Mataram began to be the provocative war cry similar to the use of "Allah-o-Akbar".
Things boiled over. Polarisation escalated. The BJP rule from 1998-2004 at the centre worried the Muslim clergy.
Ahead of the centenary celebration of the national song in 2006, the Fatwa department of the Islamic seminary Darul Uloom issued a reply describing recitation of Vande Mataram as "anti-Islamic".
On November 30, 2009, a resolution by the Jamait-Ulema-e-Hind during its 30th General Session in Deoband asked Muslims not to sing the national song. The Fatwa and the resolution became the benchmark less for the followers of Islam and more for parties out for their votes.
In 2013, the BSP's MP Shafiqur Rahman walked out of the Lok Sabha when Vande Mataram was being sung.
The current build-up
The Congress has clear and present reasons to stick to its 1937 decision.
Its diminishing presence across India is linked to its decline among Muslim voters. The party is heading for a series of crucial assembly polls, especially UP where it competes with the SP and the BSP for minority votes.
An upswing in its popularity among muslims can help the party bargain for more seats in alliances.
Between 2027 and 2029, there will be one-to-one Congress vs BJP battles in Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Karnataka. And in all these states, the Muslim votes can make a difference.
If the Congress and its allies try to mobilise minority votes in the name of Vande Mataram, the BJP gets to add to its saffron charge.
Foot note
It can be inferred from the history of Vande Mataram that the support and the opposition to the song have been sectarian and opportunistic.
The question arises: How must India address its diversity and ensure all citizens feel invested and represented? Can the citizen, instead of getting herded into political chambers, forge a compromise on such issues? It needs to be done, as since the 1900s each generation has been forced to navigate past divides on a unifier called Vande Mataram.
