Controversy Over India’s National Song ‘Vande Mataram’ – Analysis

Muslims oppose the compulsory singing of the song as it deifies the mother thus violating monotheism. And Anandamath, the novel in which song is found, is anti-Muslim while being patriotic.  

India is officially holding year-long celebrations of the country’s National Song Vande Mataram to mark the 150th birth anniversary of Bakim Chandra Chatterjee, the renowned Bengali writer, poet and nationalist.  

Though celebrated as an expression for India’s nationhood and its people’s devotion to their motherland, Vande Mataram (Mother I Bow to Thee) became controversial over time. Muslims oppose the compulsory singing of the song as it deifies the mother thus violating monotheism. And Anandamath, the novel in which song is found, is anti-Muslim while being patriotic.  

It’s personification and deification of the nation as a “mother” clashes with the Islamic belief in one God. Therefore, many Muslims refuse to sing it, though in the early of the struggle against British rule, Muslims and Hindus participated in singing the song at nationalist meetings. 

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government’s recent move to make the singing of Vande Mataram compulsory in schools in Muslim-majority Kashmir revived Muslim opposition. On November 5 the Mutahida Majlis-e-Ulema (MMU), an alliance of leading Islamic scholars and religious organisations in Jammu and Kashmir led by Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, denounced the order. 

The MMU described the move as an attempt to impose an “Rashtriya Swayam Sewak Sangh-driven Hindutva ideology” on the Muslim-majority region under the guise of a cultural celebration. It said that the order was “coercive, unjust, and un-Islamic” and urged Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha and Chief Minister Omar Abdullah to revoke it immediately. 

“The directive has caused deep anguish among Muslims of the region, who are reaching out to the religious leadership to take up this serious matter,” the MMU statement read. 

“Forcing Muslim students or institutions to engage in acts that conflict with their faith is both unjust and unacceptable. Reciting or singing Vande Mataram involves devotional acts not permissible in Islam. Islam teaches love for one’s nation through service, compassion, and moral integrity not through rituals that compromise faith.”

It alleged that the order reflected a larger ideological campaign aimed at reshaping the cultural and religious identity of Kashmir.  

On November 6, political parties in Kashmir stayed away from the Vande Mataram anniversary celebrations. Chief Minister Omar Abdullah said the Jammu and Kashmir cabinet did not decide to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Vande Mataram in schools, and that Education Minister Sakina Itoo had not signed the government’s order. 

Song in Novel Anandamath 

Vande Mataram is a Sanskrit song in the Bengali historical novel, Anandamath. Its story, set in Birbhum district during the 1770 Bengal famine, ignores the Muslims, barring Mir Jaffar, the Muslim ruler of Bengal, who is the villain in the narrative.  

The story is about a group of militant Hindu mendicants (Sanyasins) rising in revolt against the British who were collecting taxes under the aegis of Mir Jaffar. Ironically, at the end, the British are let off the hook being portrayed merely as the middlemen of Mir Jaffar. They were seen as potential liberators of India from Muslim tyranny. 

Anandamath’s theme fits in perfectly with Hindutva’s characterization of the 800-year long Muslim rule in India as “foreign and devastating”. The BJP government recently deleted from school textbooks, the Muslim period in Indian history.   

In ‘Anandamath‘ the Sanyasins known as Santans, meaning children, dedicate their lives to the cause of their motherland. They venerate the motherland as a mother goddess. In their temple, the Sanyasins had three images of the mother representing the motherland. The first was a mother who was great and glorious (representing India’s past). The second mother was wretched and grovelling in the dust (representing India’s present); The third was defiant (representing India’s future).  

Researcher Sukriti Deswal in her paper entitled Reimagining the Nation – ACritical Study of Anandamath points out that the Sanyasi rebellion as presented in the novel does not mention the participation of Muslim fakirs in the revolt. 

Explaining this lacuna, Deswal says  that Muslim fakirs did not fit into the mould of a Hindu movement that Chatterjee sought to revive.  

“The very act of re-creation of history is a political one. Chatterjee re-creates a new ‘Truth’ about a past event in order to fit the narrative into a mould that was popular and acceptable with the Bengali Bhadralok.” 

“Anandamath is a tale of bravery, machismo and violence, attempting to synchronise Dharma– duty– and militant form of nationalism into one discourse that would later find strong expression in Aurobindo Ghosh’s views on nationalism, when he states in his speech in 1908, “Nationalism is not a mere political programme; Nationalism is a religion that has come from God; Nationalism is a creed which you shall have to live.”  

Satyananda, one of the Sanyasins, justifies the violence that the children indulge in saying, “the mark of the authentic Vaishnava practice is subduing the evildoer and rescuing the world. For is not Vishnu himself the protector of the world?… It was he who destroyed the demons!”  

Deswal points out that the children in Anandamath are all Hindus. There does not seem to be any place for any other religion in the Motherland. 

“In this land Matribhumi, only a Hindu could have the luxury of being a Child and the rest have to flee to save their lives. As soon as the battle is won over by Captain Thomas, the Children begin the process of amassing the wealth for the ‘Cause’ by plundering and looting the Muslim villages and killing any Muslim they can lay their hands on,” Deswal points out. 

The ‘Cause’ as defined by Jnanananda was “to raze the city of these Muslim foreigners, and throw it into the river.” 

Casteism, another element of Hindu way of life and society, also forms a part of the discourse of nationalism as propagated by Satyananda. 

“To ensure unity among the Children, the caste system is negated by him. The common cause of nationalism requires all practicing Hindus to come together and work for a common goal disregarding their caste barriers. And yet, all the Children in the novel belong to the upper castes,” Deswal points out.  

“The subalterns of the society who had no place in the active politics of representation at the time, also find no representation, no voice even in the fictional annals of history about the nation. It is only the centre of the society that asserts itself and claims its space.”

“The tribal revolts against the British, which had been quite significant and loud by the time Chatterjee was writing Anandamath, find no mention in the text. The narrative which takes place most of the time in the jungles and forests of Birbhum, does not account for the indigenous population of the forests. This vision of the nation as it should be, is based on the feudal social setup of the past, with the leader taking on the role of the feudal patriarchal lord.” 

At the end of the novel, a mysterious sanyasi called the “Great One” endorses British rule to Satyananda. His advocacy of English rule captures the attitude of the Bengali Bhadralok in the 1880s. It was believed that British rule in India was a necessary evil until the Indians were in a position to manage their own affairs, Deswal says. 

However, Anandamath and Vande Mataram had a lasting impression upon generations of Hindus inspiring the fight against the British Imperial power. Rabindranath Tagore in his conversation with writer Mulk Raj Anand said, “This novel is a legend of the struggle for freedom, and the passion behind it seems to reflect Bankim’s vision of free India”

In the Constituent Assembly, there was unanimity over adopting both Jana Gana Mana and Vande Mataram as National symbols. On 24 January 1950, Dr. Rajendra Prasad, addressing the Constituent Assembly, stated that Vande Mataram, due to its significant role in the freedom movement, should have the same status as the National Anthem, Jana Gana Mana, and be honoured equally.