Posted on 08/29/2006 2:02:01 AM PDT by CarrotAndStick
Senior citizens who lived through the traumatic days of partition must be feeling a sense of déjà vu when they hear Muslim clerics launching a shrill attack on our National Song Vande Mataram, 56 years after India became a secular, democratic republic. They know that in the past such arguments became the basis of separatist demands. While the Muslim League formally put forth the demand for partition, Mohammed Ali Jinnah prepared the ground for the vivisection of India three years earlier when he raised objections to the singing of Vande Mataram, the tricolour which we adopted as our National Flag and Hindi, our national language. Jinnah told a party conference in Lucknow in 1937 that the song, the tricolour and the language were all Hindu symbols, which ought to be shunned by Muslims.
Muslim clerics like Syed Abdullah Bukhari, the Shahi Imam of Delhi's Jama Masjid, and Maulana Khalid Rasheed who are now saying that Muslims cannot sing Vande Mataram because it is "un-Islamic" are therefore not saying anything new. Jinnah had said this before. His discomfort with Vande Mataram, our National Flag and our national language eventually culminated in the partition of India. The Bukharis and the Rasheeds are the new voices of discord. Emboldened by the pusillanimity of the Congress and the prevarication of many of its leaders on issues pertaining to national symbols and national pride, they have begun to gnaw at the vitals of Indian nationalism. We need to stop them in their tracks if we wish to remain secular, democratic and united.
While prominent Muslim politicians like Ghulam Nabi Azad and Salman Kursheed have as usual remained silent, there are at least a couple of Muslims in our public life like Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi and Mateen Ahmed who have had the courage to raise their voice against the anti-national utterances of Muslim clerics. Mr Naqvi, vice-president of the Bharatiya Janata Party, has said, "Those who oppose our National Song should better leave the country." Their opposition to the song "is a reflection of their separatist mindset", he says. Mateen Ahmed, chairman, Delhi Wakf Board, and an Independent MLA, has said that the Shahi Imam has a "vitiated mind". Vande Mataram is being politicised by Muslim leaders without a political base.
We need more such voices from within the Muslim community if we are to retain our unity, integrity and secular character. Today the Shahi Imam is objecting to Vande Mataram. Tomorrow, like Jinnah in the past, he may raise his voice against our tricolour or against our national language. Those who are unwilling to stand up and be counted must be seen as persons lending silent acquiescence to divisive slogans. The status of Vande Mataram as our National Song and as a song at par with our National Anthem Jana Gana Mana is non-negotiable. The history of this song, which electrified the freedom movement, has been written about.
The Ghulam Nabi Azads may lack the courage to speak of its glory today, but Vande Mataram has been sung at every session of the Congress over the last 100 years and every session of our Parliament ends on this patriotic and mellifluous note. We also ushered in freedom with Vande Mataram when Sucheta Kripalani sang it at 11 pm on the night of August 14, 1947, when the Constituent Assembly met to formalise the transfer of power from Britain to democratic India. Thereafter, Rajendra Prasad addressed the House and spoke of the gigantic tasks ahead. As regards minorities, he said they would be treated in a fair and just manner and in return India would expect from minorities "loyalty to the country... and to its Constitution". After his opening remarks, Prasad invited Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru to address the gathering. That was when Nehru made his famous "tryst with destiny" speech.
Though the British had transferred power after conceding the demand of Muslims for a separate Islamic state, 35 million Muslims preferred to stay back in India. Soon after independence, the Constituent Assembly grappled with the task of writing the country's Constitution and to lay the foundations for a democratic India but even in those days there were Muslim leaders, who for reasons best known to them raised objections to Vande Mataram and much else.
Responding to this invidious campaign against Vande Mataram, Nehru told the Constituent Assembly in August 1948 that Jana Gana Mana had been selected as the National Anthem because a proper musical rendering of that song had been produced. However, "Vande Mataram is obviously and undisputably the premier National Song of India with a great historical tradition; it was intimately connected with our struggle for freedom. That position it is bound to retain and no other song can displace it". Mahatma Gandhi, too, saw Vande Mataram as the most powerful anti-imperialistic battle cry and had declared that he associated the purest nationalist spirit with it.
Rajendra Prasad settled the issue in regard to the status of Vande Mataram in his statement before the Constituent Assembly on January 24, 1950, just before the formal signing of the Hindi and English versions of the Constitution by the members. Prasad said: "The composition consisting of the words and music known as Jana Gana Mana is the National Anthem of India, subject to such alterations in the words as the Government may authorise as occasion arises; 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 record of the proceedings of that day says that the members "applauded" Prasad's announcement.
Today, the Muslim population in India has risen from 35 million in 1947 to over 150 million and though blessed with a secular, democratic environment, all that the community has to show is "leaders" like the Shahi Imam, who are now attacking the symbols of our nationalism. They are targeting Vande Mataram today. They will go after the National Flag tomorrow. These are persons who do not fit into modern, secular, democratic societies. We must coax them to leave for "purer" Islamic pastures like the ones in our neighbourhood because with them around we will be saddled with the feeling "India khatre mein" (India in danger).
Jana Gana Mana Bobana
From Wikipedia:
Mother, I bow to thee!
Rich with thy hurrying streams,
bright with orchard gleams,
Cool with thy winds of delight,
Green 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 low and sweet!
Mother I kiss thy feet,
Speaker sweet and low!
Mother, to thee I bow.
Who hath said thou art weak in thy lands
When the sword flesh out in the 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!
Though who savest, arise and save!
To her I cry who ever her foeman drove
Back from plain and Sea
And shook herself free.
Thou art wisdom, thou art law,
Thou art heart, our soul, our breath
Though art love divine, the awe
In our hearts that conquers death.
Thine the strength that nervs the arm,
Thine the beauty, thine the charm.
Every image made divine
In our temples is but thine.
Thou art Durga, Lady and Queen,
With her hands that strike and her
swords of sheen,
Thou art Lakshmi lotus-throned,
And the Muse a hundred-toned,
Pure and perfect without peer,
Mother lend thine ear,
Rich with thy hurrying streams,
Bright with thy orchard gleems,
Dark of hue O candid-fair
In thy soul, with jewelled hair
And thy glorious smile divine,
Loveliest of all earthly lands,
Showering wealth from well-stored hands!
Mother, mother mine!
Mother sweet, I bow to thee,
Mother great and free!
translated by Sri Aurobindo
Seems the Islamics don't like the pantheism expressed therein. Neither would Christians or Jews for that matter, but we're not hearing anything about that.
God Almighty, is nothing safe from these seething, whining, demanding lunatics?
There are references to Hindu deities. How is that a secular song? The United States at least does not officially recognize itself as secular (or religious), and the only religious reference in the national anthem is at the end.
If by "God Almighty" you mean the she-deity of the country of India...
That's the older version of the song. The one chosen as the national song doesn't have any references to any deities.
Well stated. Good article. Thanks for posting.
"There are references to Hindu deities. How is that a secular song? The United States at least does not officially recognize itself as secular (or religious), and the only religious reference in the national anthem is at the end."
Thats not the national anthem. BTW do the references to Hindu deities offend you?
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