Shah targets Congress on Vande Mataram

Union Minister for Home Affairs, Amit Shah on Thursday launched a sharp attack on the Congress, calling the party’s decision to sing only the first two stanzas of the national song Vande Mataram at its events anti-national, an open defiance of a law enacted by Parliament, and an act of vote-bank appeasement. In a resolution passed on Wednesday the Congress Working Committee (CWC) chose to follow its 1937 decision and sing only the first two paragraphs of Vande Mataram, not the full song.

In a statement on X and in comments to the media, Shah said, “The Congress Working Committee’s decision to sing only two stanzas of Vande Mataram instead of the full rendition is not only anti-national but also an open defiance of the law enacted by the Parliament.”

In October 1937, the CWC chose the first two stanzas, which praise the India’s beauty and richness without references to Hindu religion and mythology. Leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Rabindranath Tagore agreed to use only these verses after Muslim leaders objected to later stanzas mentioning Hindu goddesses Durga. 

In 1950, the Constituent Assembly gave first two stanzas of Vande Mataram the same status as the national anthem, Jana Gana Mana, as the national song.

Shah said that in 1937, Congress had “fragmented Vande Mataram into two parts” to appease Muslims. The home minister claimed this move helped the two-nation theory grow, which led to the country’s partition. “When the mistake of fragmenting Vande Mataram occurred once, the nation suffered the consequences.” Shah urged people to stand together against what he called the Congress party’s ongoing politics of appeasement under Rahul Gandhi’s leadership.

The home minister contrasted the Congress stance with the Narendra Modi Government’s recent steps. Marking the 150th anniversary of the song’s composition, the Government decided that the complete version of Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay’s creation should be sung at all Government programmes and accorded legal backing, reportedly through an amendment related to the prevention of insults to national honour. Shah said the Congress had chosen to disregard this initiative, thereby insulting both the immortal work of Bankim Babu and the millions of martyrs who went to the gallows chanting Vande Mataram during the freedom struggle.

Bankim Chandra Chatterjee wrote Vande Mataram, and it first appeared in the novel Anandamath. 

Congress leaders have supported the CWC’s decision to stick with the 1937 position. Party general secretary KC Venugopal said the choice follows the agreement of freedom movement leaders like Gandhi, Nehru, Tagore, Subhas Chandra Bose, and Sardar Patel, and that Congress members will sing only the first two stanzas. Senior leader Jairam Ramesh called the BJP’s criticism a distraction from current issues and said that both the national anthem and the national song remain important to the Congress.

Political observers say this controversy brings back an old debate about cultural symbols and secularism. The BJP sees the full song as key to national unity and a way to fix what it calls a past mistake. 

The Congress views the two-stanza tradition as an inclusive part of the freedom movement, meant to keep the national movement open to all.