The Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Hind’s recent resolution at its annual conference endorsing the fatwa of the Darul Uloom, Deoband, that Muslims should not recite Vande Mataram because it is against the principles of Islam, shows how some people can disturb the secular rhythm of India by raking up issues settled long years ago when we adopted the Constitution and chose to become a democratic republic.
Even more annoying is the fact that the arguments now being advanced against the national song are a rehash of the arguments of the Muslim League when it demanded partition. Mohammed Ali Jinnah raised a dispute over the national flag, Vande Mataram and Hindi at the Muslim League conference in 1937. He argued that the flag, the song and the language were all Hindu symbols and, therefore, unacceptable to Muslims.
Anxious to avert partition, India’s political leaders offered to treat only the first two stanzas of Vande Mataram — which describes the bounteous gifts that nature has showered on India — as the national song. Despite this and many other concessions, Jinnah achieved his ambition of vivisecting the country.
However, despite Partition and the creation of a separate Muslim state, secular India’s political leadership, in deference to the religious sensitivities of Muslims who stayed back, decided to retain only the first two stanzas of Vande Mataram as the national song. It is, therefore, sad to see present-day Muslim clerics — all citizens of secular, democratic India — echoing the views of Jinnah.
We need to ask why they object to it. Here is Sri Aurobindo’s translation of the first two stanzas:
Mother, I bow to thee!
Rich with thy hurrying streams, bright with orchard gleams,
Cool with thy hands of delight, dark fields waving
Mother of might, Mother free;
Glory of moonlight dreams,
Over thy branches and lordly streams,
Clad in thy blossoming trees,
Mother, giver of ease, laughing bow and sweet!
Mother, I kiss thy feet, Speaker sweet and low!
Mother, to thee I bow.
This is an ode to our motherland, which talks of the abundant riches that nature has showered on her. Poets in hundreds of languages have, over many centuries, paid such eulogies to nature and to their lands of birth. Shall we all now begin to view the work of every poet through the prism of religion?
India’s founding fathers and Constitution makers had no doubt about the exalted status that the people accorded to Vande Mataram. Just see what transpired in the Constituent Assembly on the day India became independent and its members signed the first copies of the Constitution.
The Assembly met at 11 pm on August 14, 1947. This historic session, which marked the transfer of power from Britain at the stroke of midnight, began with the signing of the first verse of Vande Mataram by Sucheta Kripalani. It concluded with her singing the first lines of Sare Jahan Se Accha and the first verse of Jana Gana Mana.
The Assembly met for the last time on January 24, 1950. It began with a statement by its President, Rajendra Prasad on the national anthem. He said: “The composition consisting of the words and music known as Jana Gana Mana is the national anthem of India...and the song Vande Mataram, which has played a historic part in the struggle for Indian freedom, shall be honoured equally with Jana Gana Mana and shall have equal status with it.”
The Jamiat’s stand may be compatible with an Islamic state, but it is against the tenets of a democracy like India. The Preamble to the Constitution expects all citizens to promote fraternity.
Further, the chapter on fundamental duties says it is the duty of every citizen ‘to promote harmony and the spirit of common brotherhood amongst all the people of India transcending religious, linguistic and regional or sectional diversities’.
National symbols offer a point of convergence in a democracy. When the polity is so diverse, as in India, the flag and the national songs constitute the focal point of unity and act as the secular adhesive that holds the mosaic together. What prevents those who question Vande Mataram from raising a dispute tomorrow about Jana Gana Mana or the flag? If Vande Mataram is ‘unislamic’, is Jana Gana Mana compatible with its tenets? What about the Ashoka Chakra inside the national flag and the tricolour itself?
Shall we now await the verdict of the mullahs on the Ashoka Chakra and on the colours of the flag? We just cannot grant this veto power to Muslim clerics in a secular, democratic country. Nor can we take minority rights to such lofty heights that they begin to dwarf the few secular symbols that unite us all.
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