Author: Kanchan Gupta
Publication: The Sunday Pioneer
Date: August 27, 2006
The two of them walked into the moonlit night.
Mahendra was grieving, but also strangely curious.
Suddenly Bhabananda became a different person.
He was no longer a calm and patient sanyasi; nor did he look like a bloodthirsty
warrior. In the stillness of this full moon night, amid the verdant forest
and its rippling brooks, he became joyous. Bhabananda repeatedly tried to
draw Mahendra into a conversation, but finding no response he burst into song:
Vande maataram
Sujalaam suphalaam
Malayajashiitalaam
Sasyashyaamalaam
Maataram
Mahendra was surprised by the lyrics, partly
because he could not follow the words. Sujalaam... Suphalaam... Malayajashiitalaam...
Sasyashyaamalaam... "Who's maata?" he asked Bhabananda. Without
answering the question, Bhabananda continued the song:
Shubhrajyotsnaa pulakitayaaminiim
Pullakusumita drumadalashobhiniim
Suhaasiniim Sumadhurabhaashhiniim
Sukhadaam varadaam maataram
Mahendra said, "This is desh (my country),
this is not maata!"
Bhabananda replied, "We recognise no
other mother - our mother is our motherland... We have no mothers, fathers,
brothers, friends... we don't have wives, children, homes. All that we have
is this sujalaa suphalaa, malayajashiitalaa, sasyashyaamalaa..."
With realisation dawning, Mahendra said, "Do
continue with your song."
Bhabananda began to sing again:
Vande maataram
Sujalaam suphalaam malayaja shiitalaam
Sasyashyaamalaam maataram
Shubhrajyotsnaa pulakitayaaminiim
Pullakusumita drumadala shobhiniim
Suhaasiniim sumadhura bhaashhiniim
Sukhadaam varadaam maataram
Koti koti kantha kalakalaninaada karaale
Dwisapta koti bhujaidhrat kharakaravaale
Abalaa keno maa eto bale
Bahubaladhaariniim namaami taariniim
Ripudalavaariniim Maataram
Tumi vidyaa tumi dharma
Tumi hridi tumi marma
Tvam hi praanaah shariire
Baahute tumi maa shakti
Hridaye tumi maa bhakti
Tomaara i pratimaa gadi
Mandire mandire
Tvam hi Durgaa dashapraharanadhaarinii
Kamalaa kamaladala vihaarinii
Vaanii vidyaadaayinii namaami tvaam
Namaami kamalaam amalaam atulaam
Sujalaam suphalaam
Maataram
Vande Mataram
Shyaamalaam saralaam susmitaam bhuushhitaam
Dharaniim bharaniim Maataram
Mahendra saw tears streaking down an emotional
Bhabananda's face. Amazed, Mahendra asked, "Who are you?" Bhabananda
said, "We are santaan (children of the motherland)."
(Free translation from Bankim Chandra Chatterjee's
Anandamath)
Contrary to popular belief, Bankim Chandra
Chatterjee wrote the lyrics of Vande Mataram, or at least the first two stanzas
of the song, much before he penned Anandamath, his novel celebrating the sanyasi
uprising against the tyrannical rule of Bengal's Muslim subedars. The original
version was written sometime in the early 1870s - probably 1875 - and was
later expanded into its full version and incorporated in Anandamath in 1881.
Much later, when Vande Mataram became the
rallying cry of India's freedom movement, after it was set to music by Gurudev
Rabindranath Tagore and adopted as the National Song at the Varanasi session
of the Congress on September 7, 1905 (it was accorded this status, bringing
it at par with the National Anthem, officially by the Constituent Assembly
on January 24, 1950), leaders of what was then incipient Muslim separatism
began to raise the bogey that Bankim Chandra Chatterjee's creation was "idolatrous"
and, therefore, unIslamic. In time, this became, and continues to remain,
the chant of those sections of the clergy and community who remain hopeful
of setting the clock back by 150 years, if not more, when much if not all
of India was ruled through firmans issued from the masnad of Delhi, more specifically
Lal Qila.
There is little reason for either surprise
or anguish over the ulema's whiplash response to Union Human Resource Development
Minister Arjun Singh's letter to Chief Ministers, in which he said, "The
year-long commemoration of 100 years of adoption of Vande Mataram as the National
Song started on September 7, 2005 and will be coming to a close on September
7, 2006. As a befitting finale to the commemoration year, it has been decided
that the first two stanzas of the National Song Vande Mataram should be sung
simultaneously in all schools, colleges and other educational institutions
throughout the country..."
In Hyderabad, Maulana Syed Shah Badruddin
Qadri, president of the Sunni Ulema Board, issued a fatwa, instructing Muslims
not to sing the National Song and added that Muslims should not send their
children to schools where Vande Mataram is sung. In Allahabad, India's all-weather
Islamist and Shahi Imam of Delhi's Jama Masjid Syed Ahmed Bukhari turned apoplectic
with rage and described any attempt to make Muslims sing the National Song
as "oppression of Muslims".
Such resistance and refusal has been registered
by the ulema earlier too. Maulana Abul Hasan Ali Nadvi, aka Ali Mian, who,
while he was alive, came to represent theological fanaticism and practised
it with unabashed gusto as chairman of the All-India Muslim Personal Law Board,
often raved and ranted against Vande Mataram while rubbishing all suggestions
that the National Song defines the idea of Indian nationhood as something
sacred and divine.
Nor is it surprising that the same Ali Mian,
in his stirring address to a gathering of Indian and Pakistani Muslims in
Jeddah on April 3, 1986, should have exulted, "Cow slaughter in India
is a great Islamic practice, (said) Mujadid Alaf Saani II. This was his farsightedness
that he described cow slaughter in India as a great Islamic practice. It may
not be so in other places. But it is definitely a great Islamic act in India
because the cow is worshipped in India."
Hence the renewed rage against Vande Mataram
because it symbolises the motherland India worships; it must be profaned because
we associate with the "ode to the motherland", to quote Mohandas
Karamchand Gandhi, "the purest national spirit"; it must be denigrated
because, as Bipin Chandra Pal (a "terrorist" in the present UPA
regime's jaundiced eyes) put it, "The new nationalism which Vande Mataram
reveals is not a mere civic or economic or political ideal. It is a religion."
It is this religion of nationalism and patriotism, and not merely India's
National Song, which is once again under attack from those who hawk Islamic
revanchism and preach bigotry and separatism in the guise of protecting the
identity of India's Muslims.
The fresh fatwa against Vande Mataram is not
without history and can be traced to the Congress's capitulation in the face
of Islamic opposition. In 1923, the Congress met at Kakinada and Maulana Mohamed
Ali was brought to the venue in a procession led by a raucous band. As was
the practice, the session was scheduled to begin with a rendition of Vande
Mataram by Pandit Vishnu Digambar Paluskar. When Pandit Paluskar rose to sing
what had by then become the anthem of India's freedom movement, Maulana Mohamed
Ali protested, saying that music was taboo to Islam and, therefore, singing
Vande Mataram would hurt his religious sensitiveness. Pandit Paluskar snubbed
the maulana, pointing out that the Congress session was an open gathering
and not a religious congregation of any one faith. For good measure, he added
that since the maulana had not found the band that led his procession a taboo
to Islam, he could not object to the singing of Vande Mataram.
Maulana Mohammed Ali may have been stumped
on that occasion, but by the time India became independent from foreign rule,
the Congress had conceded ground to those who today have the temerity to scoff
at the National Song or refuse to sing the National Anthem as activists of
the Students Islamic Movement of India or members of the Jehovah's Witness
sect do. By 1937, Vande Mataram had become a "Muslim grievance"
and Ali Sardar Jafri convinced fellow-traveller Jawaharlal Nehru that the
song which had inspired the freedom movement and sent martyrs like Khudiram
Bose to the gallows without any trace of regret, was actually "idolatrous
in spirit". Nehru went a step further and described the mantra of Indian
nationalism and patriotism as "out of keeping with modern notions of
nationalism and progress."
The Muslim League was quick to take its cue
from Nehru and a month later, on October 17, 1937, passed a resolution at
its Lucknow session, condemning the Congress for "foisting Vande Mataram
as the national song upon the country in callous disregard of the feelings
of Muslims." When the Congress Working Committee met in Calcutta later
that year with Nehru as president, it officially recognised "the validity
of the objections raised by the Muslims to certain parts of the Vande Mataram
song" and "recommended that at national gatherings only the first
two stanzas of the song should be sung."
But appeasement does not have any limit -
the Muslim League was not reassured either by Nehru's action or his promise
that Vande Mataram in "future (will) become less important." The
Pirpur Committee, which was set up by the Muslim League to compile a list
of "atrocities against Muslims", submitted its report on November
15, 1938. Among the "atrocities against Muslims" was listed Vande
Mataram.
As September 7, 2006 approaches, we hear a
similar refrain from the League's legatees: "Asking us to sing Vande
Mataram is oppression of Muslims." The Pirpur report is being written
all over again.
Before independence, the Congress sacrificed
the cultural and civilisational content of Vande Mataram, which even in its
truncated form is nothing but a hymnal tribute to an idyllic Mother India,
on the altar of the Muslim League's separatist politics. We see a similar
capitulation today with the Congress declaring, in response to the ulema's
rant against Vande Mataram, that it is not compulsory to sing the National
Song.
Soon, it will be the turn of the National
Anthem, and then the idea of India as a nation and a nation-state. No price,
it would seem, is too high to pay in order to keep the ulema in good humour.
