Narendra Modi is Misusing Vande Mataram for a Racist Dogwhistle

As the voters are marching to the polling booth in Bihar, where the 20-year rule BJP and JDU is expected to be brought to an end by the electorate, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is experimenting with another dose of communal propaganda making cynical use of the song Vande Mataram.

Modi chose the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the song that was part of the book Anandamath by Bengali writer Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, to raise such a controversy on the song, accusing the Indian National Congress of deleting a few stanzas from the song when it was adopted as national song at the AICC at its session in 1936. He said that the younger generation of the country should understand this history because “the same divisive thinking remains a challenge for the country today.”

Modi is trying to hit two birds with the same stone in this statement. First, he wants to vilify the Congress party for immediate political gains and, secondly, he wants to accuse the Muslim community as anti-national as they had expressed their anguish over the Hindu right-wing propaganda over the song. He expects to reap communal dividends in the ongoing Bihar elections by rasing an anti-Muslim bogey to consolidate majority votes in their favour on communal grounds.

This a familiar pattern in the politics of the Hindutva rightwing and especially the Nanreda Modi- Amit Shah combine. For the past quarter century, both these leaders have been practising this sort of vicious and divisive politics, projecting the indian Muslims as the “hated other.” They have gained political power using this tactic, and every time they feared a setback, they have resorted to it again and again.

Considering the present occasion of Bihar elections to whip up such communal passions, it can safely be concluded that the central BJP leadership and the intelligence agencies serving the Central Government fear a sure defeat for the BJP-JDU alliance in Bihar. Hence the frantic efforts to whip up communal passions.

But this time, Modi is shooting at his own feet. He is absolutely wrong in his allegation that people like Jawaharlal Nehru, who was president of the AICC session in Luckow, were responsible for the deletion of a few stanzas from the song. The fact is, it was none other than poet Rabindranath Tagore, who suggested that the first two stanzas of he poem may be adopted as the national song. It was on the basis of this recommendation that the resolution on the national song was adopted at the session.

Second point to remember is that the AICC at this point was not a political party like the Congress Party or BJP today. It was the party that was leading the Indian nationalist movement, and all sections of India including the conservative Hindu rightwing as well as the Socialist-Communist leftwing were part of the movement. So Modi is now accusing not only Tagore but also the entire Hindu righting leader who were part of the Congress movement at the time.

Narendra Modi also will have to ask himself why his own organization, the RSS, never chose to sing the nationalist songs Vande Mataram and the Jana Gana Mana during their entire 100 years of history. For them, the only song they valorised was the Ganageetam which praises their own organization and not the Indian nation. So, for the younger generation of india today, the real question to ask is why the RSS chose not to sing the national song of India and what exactly is their vision of India?

Mohammad ElyasThumbe,
National General Secretary
Social Democratic Party of India