Congress's latest CWC resolution to restrict Vande Mataram to its first two stanzas is not merely a dispute about a song. It raises a larger question: can a political compromise adopted by the Congress in the intensely communal circumstances of 1937 now be placed above the constitutional and statutory framework of the Republic of India?
The answer has to be no.
And Congress should perhaps revisit what one of its own tallest leaders, C. Rajagopalachari, wrote in 1939, before repeating the very mistake he had warned against.
In January 1939, Rajaji wrote to Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel about the concessions being made over Vande Mataram: “These concessions will not save the situation… If we set them forth as concessions they will only become points for further agitations and will make no gain for peace. On the other hand, the concessions may give rise to a weakening of Hindu psychology and produce depression all around.” The passage is reproduced in Sabyasachi Bhattacharya's Vande Mataram: The Biography of a Song (2013) and in the Selected Works of C. Rajagopalachari.
Rajaji was not writing with hindsight. He was watching the communal politics of the time unfold. His warning was simple: concessions made under communal pressure would not necessarily produce peace; they could become the starting point for further demands.
The chronology matters.
In 1937, Muhammad Ali Jinnah and the Muslim League made Vande Mataram a political issue. Congress leaders were themselves divided over how to respond. Jawaharlal Nehru, writing to Subhas Chandra Bose that October, acknowledged that the Anandamath background of the song “may provoke Muslims”. There were also genuine concerns among some Congress leaders about the religious imagery in the later verses, and Tagore and Gandhi had reservations about their use in mixed political gatherings.
Congress consequently decided in 1937 that only the first two stanzas would be sung at its national gatherings.
But that was a political accommodation in a particular historical circumstance. It was not a constitutional amendment. It was not an Act of Parliament. And it certainly was not a permanent veto over how independent India would honour its National Song.
Indeed, Rajaji's 1939 warning demonstrates that even within Congress there was a serious understanding of the danger of allowing such concessions to become precedents.
The broader history is equally instructive. The Muslim League's objections did not end with Vande Mataram. The song became part of a larger catalogue of allegations against Congress governments - over the Congress flag, language, education and other matters. Congress disputed these charges, and Rajendra Prasad even challenged Jinnah to have them independently examined by a judicial committee headed by Sir Maurice Gwyer, Chief Justice of the Federal Court.
The lesson is not that every Muslim objection should have been ignored. The lesson is that communal veto cannot become the organising principle of national life.
Independent India subsequently made its own decision.
On 24 January 1950, Dr Rajendra Prasad, presiding over the Constituent Assembly, declared that Jana Gana Mana would be the National Anthem and that Vande Mataram, “which has played a historic part in the struggle for Indian freedom, shall be honoured equally with Jana Gana Mana and shall have equal status with it.” The Assembly responded with applause.
That is the constitutional-era settlement Congress should respect.
And now there is an even more important development that Congress cannot simply wish away.
In 2026, Parliament amended the Prevention of Insults to National Honour Act, 1971, to extend statutory protection to the National Song, Vande Mataram, on par with the National Anthem. The amended law makes intentionally preventing its singing or causing disturbance to an assembly engaged in its singing punishable under the Act. Parliament passed the amendment in July 2026.
The Government has also prescribed an official protocol for the rendition of the National Song, including its full six-stanza version at specified official occasions. The full Vande Mataram was consequently sung at the Red Fort on Independence Day this year.
So the Congress cannot now decide that its party functions will adhere to a different rendition of the National Song when Parliament has legislated differently.
A CWC resolution cannot be placed above the constitutional pronouncement of 1950 and the 2026 amendment to the Prevention of Insults to National Honour Act.
Congress is, of course, free to debate history. It is free to have political opinions. But it cannot elevate a 1937 party resolution above the subsequent constitutional and statutory framework of the Republic.
And Congress's present argument becomes even more curious when one applies its alleged principle consistently.
If the objection is genuinely to religious or Hindu civilisational imagery in public songs, why is Vande Mataram singled out?
Karnataka's state anthem, Jaya Bharata Jananiya Tanujate, invokes Raghava and Madhusudhana, the Vedas, Kapila, Patanjali and Gautama, besides Shankara, Ramanuja and Madhvacharya, and invokes Karnataka Maate - Mother Karnataka.
Tamil Nadu's Tamil Thai Vazhthu is an invocation to Tamil Thai - Mother Tamil, and is officially designated as the state song.
Andhra Pradesh's Maa Telugu Talliki literally means “To Our Mother Telugu”, personifying Telugu as a mother and celebrating the region's civilisational and historical inheritance.
Will Congress now demand that Karnataka's anthem be shortened because it contains Hindu civilisational references?
Will it demand that Tamil Nadu remove the invocation to Mother Tamil?
Will it ask Andhra Pradesh to rewrite Maa Telugu Talliki?
Or does this supposedly non-negotiable “secular” veto apply only to Vande Mataram?
India has never understood its public culture through such a narrow lens. Tamil Thai, Telugu Talli, Karnataka Maate and Vande Mataram all belong to a civilisational vocabulary in which the motherland and mother tongue are personified and revered.
If Congress has a principled objection, let it apply that principle uniformly.
But if it remains silent when comparable imagery appears in state anthems and discovers its “principle” only when confronting Vande Mataram, Indians are entitled to ask whether this is really about secularism or about expedient Muslim appeasement and vote-bank politics.
There is another historical fact Congress cannot erase.
Vande Mataram acquired a life far larger than the literary context in which Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay wrote it. It became one of the great battle cries of India's freedom struggle. Madam Bhikaji Cama carried “Vande Mataram” on the flag she displayed at Stuttgart in 1907. Madan Lal Dhingra reportedly uttered “Bande Mataram” before his execution in 1909. The cry became inseparable from the anti-colonial struggle.
One can acknowledge the religious and literary context of the later verses without pretending that this is the whole history of Vande Mataram.
The question before Congress today is therefore much larger than which two stanzas it chooses to sing.
It is whether it will continue to treat a 1937 political accommodation as a permanent article of faith, even after the Constituent Assembly of independent India accorded Vande Mataram equal status with Jana Gana Mana, and Parliament in 2026 extended statutory protection to the National Song.
Rajaji understood the danger in 1939. He warned that concessions could become “points for further agitations”.
Congress should not repeat the politics he cautioned against.
A CWC resolution is not the Constitution of India.
A 1937 party compromise cannot override the 1950 constitutional settlement.
And a political party cannot place its own historical resolution above legislation enacted by Parliament in 2026.
If Congress believes that religious imagery must be removed from public songs, let it apply that standard everywhere.
If it does not, then it should have the honesty to admit that its problem is not really with religious imagery.
Its problem is with Vande Mataram.
And that is why Indians are entitled to ask whether the issue is principle or the old politics of appeasement dressed up as secularism.
Vande Mataram is not a Congress song.
It is not a BJP song.
It belongs to India.
वन्दे मातरम्।
Malviya is the Sah Prabhari of West Bengal and member of the BJP's national executive
Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author
