Vande Mataram row erupts as Shah, Congress trade barbs
Union Minister for Home Affairs, Amit Shah, on Sunday accused the Congress of insulting the national song, Vande Mataram and demanded that the party apologise to the people and to Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, who wrote the song. The Congress, on their part, hit back at Shah after he demanded the Opposition party’s apology for allegedly insulting “Vande Mataram”, saying he is doing this to divert attention away from “the colossal failures of his and his Sahib’s”.
Addressing a public meeting in Chittorgarh, Shah alleged that during the Independence Day programme at the Congress headquarters, party leader Sonia Gandhi asked Vande Mataram to be stopped midway through the song.
Referring to the Independence Day celebrations held on Saturday, Shah said after 80 years of Independence, Vande Mataram was sung at the Red Fort and all other places where flag hoisting was held. “Thousands of people faced bullets and lathis and were jailed for singing Vande Mataram,” Shah said, referring to the use of the revolutionary slogan during the freedom struggle.
He alleged that during the Independence Day programme at the Congress headquarters, Sonia Gandhi had asked the party president to stop the song midway. “We all saw it on television,” Shah said, adding, “If there is any shame left, you should fold your hands and apologise to Bankim Babu’s immortal spirit and the people.” The home minister alleged that the Congress had forgotten Vande Mataram due to vote-bank politics.
Several other leaders of the ruling BJP also accused Sonia Gandhi of objecting to the singing of the full version of Vande Mataram at the event, a charge that the Congress denied, asserting that there was no attempt to stop the singing of the full version of the national song and she was only asking for a chair for party chief Mallikarjun Kharge as he was standing for a while.
Congress General Secretary Jairam Ramesh slammed Shah as someone who insulted BR Ambedkar on the floor of the Rajya Sabha on December 17, 2024, and who belongs to an ideology that did not see fit to unfurl the tricolour at its organisation’s headquarters till January 2002.
“A man who insulted Dr Ambedkar on the floor of the Rajya Sabha on Dec 17, 2024. A man who belongs to an ideology that did not see fit to unfurl the tiranga at its headquarters till Jan 2002. A man who orchestrated the Delhi Police’s brutalities on peacefully protesting youth. Such a man is now demanding an apology from the Congress to divert attention away from the real issues of the day and away from the colossal failures of his and his Sahib’s,” Ramesh said in a statement.
Congress’s media and publicity department head Pawan Khera said that when lathis rained down for chanting Vande Mataram, it was the Congress that had sounded the bugle of freedom through this song.
