Can controversy on Vande Mataram finally end?

India? Symbols of national pride and struggle shouldn’t be seen from a religious prism as they transcend such limited boundaries.The uninitiated should know that Vande Mataram is not just a film song. Bengali author Bankim Chandra Chatterjee penned it in 1875. Later he included the song in his famous novel “Anand Math”.

Orders of Hindu religious sects that rose against the British used it as their war cry. It sparked their intellectual, physical uprising. In 1905 when Lord Curzon partitioned Bengal, the same song became the bedrock of Bengali unity.Whenever the British tried to silence the people, revolutionaries would electrify the air by singing Vande Mataram.

At that time Vande Mataram was not a Hindu religious symbol but a rallying point of national resistance. Frustrated, the British banned it. But they were feeble attempts at crushing the rising revolutionary spirit.

The British finally saw a ray of hope in the statement issued by Muslim League leader Syed Ali Imam in 1909. Imam and his handful of followers felt it was a heretic song and the Muslims should stay away from it. The slogan that represented Bangla unity and played an important role in the National Movement became a victim of communal conspiracy hatched by the British.The Congress party needed a national anthem.

It formed a committee to select one. Jawaharlal Nehru, Subhash Chandra Bose and Rabindranath Tagore were the members of the panel. On Tagore’s recommendations, the first two paragraphs of Vande Mataram were picked as National Song.

These paragraphs sang praise to the nation’s land, rivers, gardens etc. The panel left out the rest of the paragraphs as there was mention of Hindu deities.All the three men astutely judged the pulse of the moment. By