Trac­ing the ori­gins of the song, Vande Mataram, which tran­si­tioned from a pro-Bangla praise to a pan-In­dia pa­tri­otic fer­vour, the au­thor ques­tions the logic of en­forc­ing na­tion­al­ism through hooli­gan­ism, po­lit­i­cal rhetoric, ex­ec­u­tive fiat and ju­di­cial or­ders and fears that this does not au­gur well for a plu­ral­is­tic so­ci­ety.

On the hot and sul­try af­ter­noon of July 25, 2017 a sin­gle judge bench com­pris­ing Jus­tice M V Mu­ralid­ha­ran of the Madras High Court passed the fol­low­ing or­der: “Con­sid­er­ing the larger pub­lic in­ter­est and to in­still a sense of pa­tri­o­tism in each and every cit­i­zen of the state, the na­tional song ‘Vande Mataram’ shall be played and sung in all schools/ col­leges/ uni­ver­si­ties and other ed­u­ca­tional in­sti­tu­tions at least once a week (prefer­ably on Mon­day or Fri­day).” He added that Vande Mataram “shall be played and sung in all gov­ern­ment of­fices and in­sti­tu­tions/ pri­vate com­pa­nies/ fac­to­ries and in­dus­tries at least once a month.” “If peo­ple feel it is dif­fi­cult to sing the song in Ben­gali or in San­skrit, steps can be taken to trans­late the song in Tamil,” said the court. It would be in­ter­est­ing to see how the gov­ern­ment im­ple­ments this as the gov­ern­ment is on record in the Ra­jya Sabha to say that, “The gov­ern­ment has not framed any rules for cir­cum­stances in which the ‘Na­tional Song’ may be sung, the Ra­jya Sabha was in­formed to­day.”

Lo and be­hold! The Madras High Court did not have a pe­ti­tion be­fore it for an or­der about singing of Vande Mataram.  The pe­ti­tion that was heard re­lated to an in­jus­tice done to an ap­pli­cant for a gov­ern­ment job, wherein the lan­guage of Vande Mataram was in­cor­rectly given as San­skrit whereas the pe­ti­tioner, one Mr. C. Prakasam had cor­rectly writ­ten as Ben­gali. Adding more grain to the “pa­tri­o­tism cli­mate” in the coun­try, the Madras High Court judge did a clas­sic over­reach but sig­nif­i­cantly with a cau­tion too, which has not been widely re­ported that, “In the event, any per­son/​or­gan­i­sa­tion has dif­fi­culty in singing or play­ing the Na­tional Song, he or she shall not be com­pelled or forced to sing it, pro­vided there are valid rea­sons for not do­ing so.”

The or­der of the Madras High Court came af­ter the 28 De­cem­ber 2016 rul­ing by the Supreme Court of In­dia which states “all the cin­ema halls in In­dia shall play the na­tional an­them be­fore the fea­ture film starts and all pre­sent in the hall are obliged to stand up to show re­spect to the na­tional an­them” as a part of their “sa­cred oblig­a­tion”. In the cli­mate that is build­ing in the coun­try, no­body was sur­prised with the for­mer or­der and some po­lit­i­cal ob­servers and civil so­ci­ety mem­bers have made strong dis­sent­ing noises. In the pub­lic do­main, it is a clas­sic case of “Pop­corn Pa­tri­o­tism ver­sus Con­sti­tu­tional Pa­tri­o­tism”.  We will so more of this when the Supreme Court hears yet an­other pe­ti­tion on Vande Mataram which comes up for hear­ing on 23 Au­gust 2017.

What af­ter all is Vande Mataram and its na­tional im­por­tance? Vande Mataram, which is claimed to be the na­tional song of the coun­try, was writ­ten by Bankim Chan­dra Chat­topad­hyaya and fea­tured in his sem­i­nal work Anan­damath writ­ten in 1882. The broad mean­ing of this song is “I pray/​bow down to thee, Mother” It was Bande Mataram with a “B” be­cause in the Bangla di­alect “V” is al­ways pro­nounced as “B”. It was pro­nounced as such for about 50 years be­fore the song be­came pop­u­lar in the Hindi belt. And just like all things In­dian af­ter 1947, the Hindi belt’s mis­pro­nun­ci­a­tion be­came the of­fi­cial form of the so-called na­tional song of the coun­try.

Over the years, the song has been a source of con­tention be­tween up­per caste Hin­dus, Mus­lims, pre-Par­ti­tion Ben­gal and Pun­jab. It re­mains a con­tro­ver­sial is­sue even to­day and has the po­ten­tial to trig­ger com­mu­nal ten­sion every now and then. Mus­lims con­tend that singing the song, which idol­izes In­dia as the moth­er­land, amounts to wor­ship­ping an en­tity other than what Is­lam holds as the one true God. Hin­dus con­tend that the song is a stand-in for In­dian na­tion­al­ism and any dis­re­spect to it is a sign of dis­loy­alty to­wards the coun­try.  Sikhism goes by the fi­nal edict that Sri Guru Granth Sa­heb is our liv­ing Guru. It is ex­plained in the stanza “Tuhn Mera Pita, Tuhn hai mera mata, Tuhn mera  ban­dahp, Tuhn mera bhrata” which means “You are my Fa­ther, You, my Mother, You are my best friend and my brother.”  There­fore, the ques­tion to de­ify any imag­i­nary mother does not arise.

Those who would want to force Vande Mataram down the throats of every­one need to pon­der over what the Supreme Court of In­dia has said on the is­sue. On 17 Feb­ru­ary 2017 a Supreme Court bench headed by Jus­tice Di­pak Misra said “There is no con­cept of a na­tional song”, de­clin­ing to en­ter­tain a plea to di­rect the Cen­tre to frame a na­tional pol­icy to pro­mote Vande Mataram. “Ar­ti­cle 51A (fun­da­men­tal du­ties) of the con­sti­tu­tion re­quires to pro­mote and prop­a­gate the Na­tional An­them and the Na­tional Flag. The Ar­ti­cle does not re­fer to Na­tional Song. It only refers to Na­tional Flag and Na­tional An­them. There­fore, we do not in­tend to en­ter into any de­bate as far as the Na­tional Song is con­cerned” said the bench, re­ject­ing the prayer of pe­ti­tioner Ash­wini Upad­hyay, a BJP spokesper­son.

To un­der­stand what Bankim Chan­dra Chat­topad­hyaya wanted to ex­press in his song Bande Mataram one has to go through the Eng­lish trans­la­tion of the song and it be­comes quite ev­i­dent that this song has noth­ing to do with In­dia and has every­thing to do with Ben­gal. One needs to go through the last lines of this song as trans­lated by Au­robindo Ghose or Sri Au­robindo, the anti-colo­nial rev­o­lu­tion­ary turned mys­tic who made Pondicherry his abode in the lat­ter part of life:

“Who hath said thou art weak in thy lands
when the swords flash out in sev­enty mil­lion hands
and sev­enty mil­lion voices roar
Thy dread­ful name from shore to shore?
With many strengths who art mighty and stored,
To thee, I call Mother and Lord!
Thou who savest, arise and save!
To her, I cry who ever her foe­man drove
back from plain and Sea
and shook her­self free.”

The very fact that 70 mil­lion peo­ple have been men­tioned in the song goes on to prove the point. Ac­cord­ing to the 1871 cen­sus, the pop­u­la­tion of Ben­gal (in­clud­ing British ad­min­is­tered ar­eas) was roughly 65 mil­lion, which was re­ferred to as 70 mil­lion and which Bankim Chan­dra Chat­topad­hyaya has men­tioned as sap­takoti or 7 Crores in Ben­gali. The pop­u­la­tion of the In­dian Em­pire at that time stood at 30 Crores and Bankim Da could have men­tioned Troyo Bing­shokoti or 30 Crores in­stead of sap­takoti or 7 Crores. It is quite ev­i­dent he was not writ­ing about In­dia, he was writ­ing about Ben­gal.

In due course of time, Bande Mataram be­came the war cry of Ben­gali rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies with Au­robindo Ghose be­ing a key fig­ure of this rev­o­lu­tion. Their hero­ism made this slo­gan easy for adop­tion by the In­dian Na­tional Con­gress. The “Bande Mataram” slo­gan spread across In­dia in­clud­ing the Hindi belt and in the process, be­came Vande Mataram.

An­other di­vi­sive con­cept, again in­volv­ing ap­pro­pri­a­tion to a so called na­tional fig­ure has a strik­ing sim­i­lar­ity. The idea of Mother In­dia or Bharat Mata is at­trib­uted to Ben­gali painter Abanin­dranath Tagore, nephew of Ra­bindranath Tagore. His 1910 paint­ing of a fe­male fig­ure with four hands has been con­cep­tu­al­ized as Bharat Mata. No im­age of Bharat Mata ex­isted prior to this work. The painter him­self de­picted this cre­ation as Banga Mata or Mother Ben­gal which was con­ve­niently ap­pro­pri­ated as Bharat Mata.

The coun­try is clearly di­vided over the is­sue. Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans have never had a uni­form opin­ion about Vande Mataram.

Au­robindo Ghose’s lawyer C R Das, in the Ali­pore bomb blast case, where many Ben­gali rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies were put on trial in 1908 re­peat­edly refers to the “Ben­gali na­tion”. Clearly, their con­cept of Ben­gal was that of a na­tion unto it­self.

There­fore, In­dia was never One Na­tion or Two na­tions. The mul­ti­ple na­tion­al­i­ties, re­gional iden­ti­ties, re­li­gious de­nom­i­na­tions, abo­rig­i­nal peo­ples that dot the In­dian sub­con­ti­nent need to be ac­cepted for what they are with­out chal­leng­ing their be­liefs and way of life, their holis­tic sys­tems and with­out foist­ing a mono­lithic cul­ture through hooli­gan­ism, po­lit­i­cal rhetoric, ex­ec­u­tive fiat and ju­di­cial or­ders. This does not au­gur well for plu­ral­ism and peace­ful co-ex­is­tence.