Vande Mataram’s recent controversy presented as a conflict between the belief systems of the idolatrous Hindus and the monotheist Muslims and hence construed that the song hurts the sentiments of the latter and therefore must be of great satisfaction to the former since India must be the legitimate land of the Hindus only to the exclusion of the people of any other faiths, is at best a mirage created by the RSS.  

We say that the effort to push the case for Vande Mataram is an illusion because the real intent is not to establish the National song as the National Anthem, but to displace the national anthem, namely Jana Gana Mana and disable it from being sung with the flag. Vande Mataram is the weapon of the Hindu right wing to attack and even assassinate Jana Gana Mana, the anthem that represents the quintessential Indian spirit as it has evolved, as it has evolved into and as it is perceived to be further evolving as plural, inclusive, absorbing and accommodating diversities in its growth.

Vande Mataram was opposed on the grounds that it was clearly idolatrous and that too by mentioning goddesses as Durga and Saraswati, it veered into a particular sect, namely the Shakta and even the tantric sect of the Hindu religion. Though evidence was never collected but it was construed that many Indians would have problems with invoking the nation as a Goddess. Brahmos and Arya Samajis, Vaishnavs and Shaivas, followers of the Guru cults, Sikhs and Gurkhas, Buddhists and Jains, Sikhs and Christians and the large section of people who followed sects and guru cults of Gorakhnath, Gangnath, Nirmohi aakhras and others. Bankim Chandra wrote the song for the context of Bengal and even his linking the Sanyasis to tantrics as in the worship of Mother India as Durga seems to be a fiction because factually, it is erroneous.

Jana Gana Mana, is a spiritually different song; it is realistic as it invokes real people with real histories, the cultural diversity and plurality of the land and its past, places its politics of pluralism at the heart of its spiritual realization and in this intertwines the lived-in present with both a long past and an optimistic future. It speaks of actors and agents who works through her times, who struggles and attains, who labours and profits, sowing with his resources and reaping for his soul.

Vande Mataram, on the other hand, is seeking shelter from the mother, both promising her protection by her children with crores of eyes and double the number of arms and yet invoking her as the Protector. The song is ahistorical, does not represent the Indian as a historical agent, provides no future map for engaging in work, cannot sustain the flavour of a free people and instead arouses the victimhood in the cries of helpless children, hurt and defeated, lost and exiled. While the slogan Vande Mataram and the tune of Jadu Bhatta, the maestro of classical music in India appealed to the numerous young men and women engaged violently against the British, it can easily be seen to be failing when it has to raise children of an autonomous land into responsible adults in a free country.

Jana Gana Mana is an anthem of free people, of people who can command their destinies, who can genuinely seek to raise India from the rubbles of ruins into the fine future of opportunities, of humans coming together in an organic solidarity, a la Emile Durkheim rather than of humans, as Vande Mataram invokes, huddled together as sheep, oppressed and chained, without hope of redemption when only prayers can help you out. Vande Mataram is the song of the enslaved, Jana Gana Mana is the song of the sovereign. Composed on the occasion of George V’s visit to India, the song rises to the level of the king, to speak back to him as an equal and not as his subjects, just as Tagore would express this sentiment in his earlier composition, Amra Sobai Raja, Amader ei rajar Rajotte, noile moder rajar sone bonbe ki sotte. (We are all kings in the kingdom of kings, lest how would we even converse among ourselves and with the king?)

We must never allow Vande Mataram’s attempt to assassinate Jana Gana Mana, because if not, a victim will be allowed to get the better of the sovereign human, the flavour of the enchained will be favoured over the freer and the more creative spirit. Vande Mataram is a lyrical poetry set to the most mellifluous tune, and it was sung profusely across the country during its Freedom Struggle. It is thus a coming together of many geniuses, Bankim Chandra, Jadu Bhatta, Aurobindo Ghosh and later Chittaranjan Das and so many of our leaders who made the Indian Freedom Struggle to be a wonder among the world’s social and political movements. The best way to respect Vande Mataram is to allow it its sanctity, for any attempt to weaponize it for the sake of vindictive and authoritarian politics based on majoritarian religion based communal fascism is to degrade its nobility and disrespect the place in India cultural history that it truly deserves.