TWO essential components of any song are its tune and its words. Most Indians can’t sing the lines of Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay’s 19th-century nationalist song Vande Mataram in tune; and an equal number, or possibly even more, would struggle to divine the meaning of its heavily Sanskrit verses. But Prime Minister Narendra Modi still staged a 10-hour debate on the 19th-century song in parliament, wasting time and treasure to the tune of Rs250,000 per minute needed to run a House in session. It can’t be too different with Pakistan’s predominantly Turko-Persian national anthem, which may be beyond the ken of the country’s ordinary Balochi, Sindhi, Punjabi or Pashto-speaking people. It is said that the only purely Urdu word in Pakistan’s anthem is ‘ka’, meaning ‘of’. All other words are of Persian or Turkic origin. A Bangladeshi or a Sri Lankan is less likely to not know what their national songs mean. National songs or anthems are often imposed from above, in which case they tend to exclude the diversity of the masses they purport to represent. On the flip side, the songs can be constructed to celebrate the cornucopia of plurality that faithfully describes a people. South Africa’s post-liberation anthem is composed and sung in five languages to reflect the nation’s alluring cultural mix. For another example, take New Zealand. Its national anthem God Defend New Zealand is sung in both Maori and English, typically with the first verse in native Maori followed by the same verse in English, acknowledging the nation’s bicultural heritage. Rabindranath Tagore first selected Vande Mataram from Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay’s novel Anandmath and set it to tune in R aag Desh , an evening melody. By the time it travelled to Maharashtra, Vishnupant Pagnis sang it in another alluring composition in Raag Miyan ki Saarang , a late morning melody. The novel’s theme is a biased and divisive depiction of an anti-colonial rebellion by Hindu sanyasis and Muslim fakirs, two ascetic communities in undivided Bengal. Bonding with Bengali peasants, the fakir-sanyasi rebellion was triggered by the Great Bengal Famine of 1770 for which they held the East India Company accountable. When Bankim wrote Anandmath a century later, a totally communalised narrative had crept in. National songs or anthems are often imposed from above, in which case they tend to exclude the diversity of the masses they purport to represent. In historical accounts of the revolt, the main enemy was the East India Company and its economic policies. In the Bankim version, the Muslim nawabs of Bengal, emasculated stooges of British rulers, and British administrators were projected as the dual oppressors. In truer history, the triggers were exploitation, famine and mass displacement. In Bankim’s version, religious nationalism was invoked to a holy motherland. He also airbrushed Muslim ascetics and peasants, portraying the Hindu ‘santaans’, or children of the motherland alone as having revolted. Anandmath thus turned a secular socioeconomic struggle into a proto-nationalist war for a Hindu nation. Moreover, the invectives Bankim reserved for Muslims were no different from the ones in vogue today under Narendra Modi’s watch. Though the novel by the highly regarded literary figure of his time is perplexing in its anti-Muslim vitriol, the poem/song is harmless. For, if the objection is to a song praising Hindu deities, then Mohammed Rafi, Naushad Ali, Shakeel Badayuni and many other Indian musicians would be seen as guilty of abandoning their beliefs to sing Hindu bhajans. Their songs have bequeathed an aura of spirituality to a genre of music that appeals to India’s secular timbre in the same way as Hindu singer Kamla Jharia praises Islam’s leading figures or Lata Mangeshkar renders religiously framed verses of Allama Iqbal. It’s the context of the novel in which the poem is situated that makes the song controversial. Let’s say ‘Jai Shri Ram’ is a fine incantation but it becomes terrifying when it’s arbitrarily imposed or used to attack minority communities, be they Muslim, Christian or Sikh. Bankim initially wrote the first two stanzas to extol the beauty of Bengal, which he saw as his motherland. The poem describes Bengal’s soothing air and clear water streams, both of which have become a rare commodity in Bengal and in much of India. In fact, as Delhi was choking with record high AQIs around the time of the Bankim poem discussion last week, the government released a paper in parliament claiming that no deaths were recorded as linked to the murderous air quality in India’s capital. There’s also an old video clip circulating of Modi misleading schoolchildren about global warming. “As we get old, we begin to feel hot and cold a little more,” he claimed. Instead of discussing similarly urgent issues pla­­guing the country, Modi as is his wont, cynically preferred a meaningless discussion to hurl some more invectives on his bête noire, Jawaharlal Nehru, claiming he excised the religious part of the song to appease Muslims, a claim not supported by history. The song, which is hardly an issue in large swathes of India — for instance in Nagaland, Kerala or Tamil Nadu — was used to test its polarising efficacy ahead of the crucial West Bengal assembly elections due in March 2026. While Indian Muslims scarcely care about the controversy today, the entire corpus of Arya Samaji Hindus also shuns worship of any deity in the traditional way that many Hindus do. Their belief system is based on a monotheistic interpretation of the Vedas, which prohibits the worship of multiple deities. Also, Dalits converted to Buddhism under Bhimrao Ambedkar’s oath that severely forbade them from worshipping Hindu deities, including those eulogised in the Bankim song. The Vande Mataram controversy is being rekindled by right-wing Sanatani Hindus as another arrow in the communal quiver to devise cynical electoral strategies. The question remains though as to how many Indians really care beyond the two igniting words — ‘Vande Mataram’, praise be to the motherland — that had once become a clarion call in India’s freedom struggle but also played a role in its partition. The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi. jawednaqvi@gmail.com Published in Dawn, December 16th, 2025