UPA “Secular” Kick To Both National Song
And National Anthem -II

19-1-2010

In these columns yesterday, (Monday, 18-1-2010), I had narrated the shameful story of how the Union Minister of State for External Affairs hashi Tharoor showed his contempt for Bankim Chandra Chatterji’s “heathenish and paganish” National Song ‘Vande Mataram’. Lest Tharoor should shine in solitary splendour, our ‘neutral’ between Neutrals Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh outclassed him within 50 days by dropping the singing of National Anthem ‘Jana Gana Mana’ by Rabindranath Tagore at the official function of the Indian Science Congress held in Thiruvananthapuram in the first week of January 2010. This diktat from the PMO runs counter to long-established tradition of Official Protocol regarding the playing of National Anthem at functions attended by the Prime Minister or the President of India.

When the Muslim clerics in India today dismiss the sacred National Song of Vande Mataram with scorn and contempt, we should not forget the fact that their spiritual and cultural progenitor in this sordid drama was Maulana Mohammed Ali Jauhar (1878-1931) who was the most important Muslim leader in the days of the Khillafat Movement immediately after World War I. Maulana Mohammed Ali Jauhar paid his Islamic tribute to Maha-Kafir Mahatma Gandhi in these immortal words: “However pure Gandhiji's character may be, he must appear to me from the point of view of religion inferior to any Mussalman, even though he be without character. Yes, according to my religion and creed, I do hold an adulterous and a fallen Mussalman to be better than Mahatma Gandhi”. All this he said in 1921. It has to be borne in mind that Mahatma Gandhi was the President of the Khilafat Movement at that time.

1978 Postage Stampof Maulana MohammadAli Jauhar (The Maulanawho ‘loved’Mahatma Gandhi)

Maulana Mohammed Ali Jauhar who had thus politically stabbed Mahatma Gandhi in the back even in the days of the Khillafat Movement was given the supreme honour of presiding over the Kakinada Session of the Congress in 1923. It was in that Session THAT THE FIRST ISLAMIC BLOW WAS STRUCK AT THE NATIONAL SONG OF INDIA, ‘VANDE MATARAM’ BY THE CONGRESS PRESIDENT MAULANA MOHAMMAD ALI JAUHAR HIMSELF. During those years, (particularly from 1917 to 1922) the reputed singer and patriot Vishnu Digambar Paluskar of Maharashtra used to sway the inaugural session of Congress with his deep and resonant singing of ‘Vande Mataram’ song. However, when Paluskar came on the dais to sing at the Kakinada Session in 1923, he was stopped by the President Maulana Mohammed Ali. The Maulana exclaimed that singing of music was taboo in Islam and as such he would not permit it. The entire Assembly was stunned; everyone, including the top leaders and stalwarts adorning the dais like Mahatma Gandhi, Madan Mohan Malaviya, and others sat dumbstruck, unable to think of a proper reply or retort to the Congress President. Paluskar, however stuck to his post of duty. In a voice filled with righteous indignation he retorted to the Maulana: 'The Indian National Congress is not the monopoly of any one particular sect nor is this place a mosque, where singing could be prohibited. You have therefore no authority to prevent me from singing VANDE MATARAM. Moreover, if singing in this place is against your particular religion, HOW IS IT YOU COULD TOLERATE MUSIC IN YOUR PRESIDENTIAL PROCESSION?' This infamous tradition established by Maulana Mohammed Ali Jauhar in 1923 was continued by Pundit Jawaharlal Nehru and his Congress Party and this tradition continues even today.

The next stage in the strenuous and tortured story of ‘Vande Mataram’ was reached in 1937 when Congress Party formed the Government in seven Provinces under the Government of India Act of 1935. In keeping with its past tradition, the Congress Party began commencing the Provincial Assembly proceedings with the singing of VANDE MATARAM. The Muslim League, equally true to its separatist Maulana tradition declared war against it. The League Members in the various Provincial Legislative Assemblies raised a storm of protest and staged walk-outs. The Muslim League conducted its session earlier and denounced Congress-ruled States as 'HINDU STATES'. And the weightiest testimony it adduced was the singing of the VANDE MATARAM in the PROVINCIAL Assemblies!!

The Muslim League condemned the Congress for imposing 'VANDE MATARAM as the national anthem upon the country' and termed it as 'callous, positively anti-Islamic, idolatrous in its inspiration and ideas, and definitely subversive of the growth of genuine nationalism in India'. The MUSLIM LEAGUE further called upon 'MUSLIM MEMBERS OF VARIOUS LEGISLATURES AND PUBLIC BODIES IN THE COUNTRY NOT TO ASSOCIATE THEMSELVES IN ANY MANNER WITH THIS HIGHLY OBJECTIONABLE SONG'.

H V Sheshadri has brilliantly summed up the ideological surrender of the Congress party to the machinations of the Muslim League in 1937: 'When the Congress Working Committee (CWC) met a few days later, it was haunted by the spectre of the Muslim League's opposition and formulated ITS POLICY ON 'MINORITY RIGHTS'. If HINDU-MUSLIM unity “without which the British would not part with power” was to be achieved, the Muslims should not, AT ANY COST (of course only to the Hindus of India!!), be allowed to feel displeased. Their sentiments should never be injured, for whatever reason. Accordingly, the Congress decided to 'cut out' those portions of ‘Vande Mataram' which were likely to offend the Muslim susceptibilities as indicated in the Muslim League's resolution. Only the first two stanzas of the song depicting the physical picture of the motherland-were retained and the rest 'dropped'. INDEED, IT WAS IN THOSE SUBSEQUENT STANZAS THAT THE REAL ESSENCE OF OUR NATIONALISM AND THE SPIRIT OF THE FREEDOM STRUGGLE WERE ENSHRINED.”

I have carefully scrutinized the pro-Islamic and patently anti-Hindu 1937 Congress Working Committee Resolution on ‘Bande Mataram’. I am quoting below the relevant excerpts from that Resolution to prove my point:

“A controversy having recently arisen about the Bande Mataram song, the Working Committee desire to explain the significance of this song. … During the past thirty years, innumerable instances of sacrifices and suffering all over the country have been associated with “Bande Mataram” and men and women have not hesitated to face death even with that cry on their lips. The song and the words thus became symbols of national resistance to British imperialism in Bengal especially and generally in other parts of India. The words “Bande Mataram” became a slogan of power which inspired our people, and a greeting which ever reminds us of our struggle for national freedom.”

“Gradually the use of the song spread to other provinces and a certain national significance began to attach to them. The rest of the song was very seldom used and is even now known by few persons. These two stanzas described in tender language the beauty of the motherland and the abundance of her gifts. There was absolutely nothing in them to which objections could be taken from the religious or other point of view. The song was never sung as a challenge to any group or community in India and was never considered as such or offending the sentiments of any community. Indeed the reference in it to thirty crores of Indians makes it clear that it was meant to apply to all the people of India. … The Working Committee feel that past associations, with their long record of suffering for the cause, a well as popular usage, have made the first two stanzas of this song a living and inseparable part of our national movement and as such they must command our affection and respect. There is nothing in these stanzas to which any one can take exception. The other stanzas of this song are little known and hardly ever sung. …”

“The Committee recognize the validity of objections raised by Muslim friends to certain parts of the song. While the Committee have taken note of the objection in so far as it has intrinsic value, the Committee wish to point out that the modern evolution of the use of the song as part of national life is of infinitely greater importance than its setting in a historical novel before the national movement had taken shape. …”

“But while there can be no question about the place that “Bande Mataram” has come to occupy in the national life, the same cannot be said as to the other songs. …”

Thus the Congress party laid the cultural, religious and ideological foundation for the communal partition of India as early as in 1937, by abjectly surrendering to the black-mailing tactics of the Muslim League in 1937 by tearing apart the ‘Vande Mataram’ Song on communal grounds and dishonouring Bharat Mata with pseudo-secular fervour and passion. This task begun in 1937 was completed by Jinnah, Gandhi and Nehru in 1947. Today the Imam of Jamma Masjid and the other Muslim Clerics are asking the Congress Party to give up even the so called 'secular portions' of Vande Mataram as identified by the Congress Party in 1937.

I have already referred to the abusive language used by Maulana Mohammed Ali Jauhar against Mahatma Gandhi in 1921. The British Government at that time rightly viewed him as an international Islamic terrorist and jailed him. Such a back-stabbing Muslim fanatic who heaped his Islamic abuse on Mahatma Gandhi was honoured by the Government of India by the issue of a postage stamp on the occasion of his Birth Centenary in 1978. I have presented this postage stamp above.

On 24th January 1950, Dr Rajendra Prasad declared "The National Song of Vande Mataram is equal in status to our National Anthem of Jana Gana Mana.." When he made this declaration on 24 January, 1950, all the Muslim Members of the Constituent Assembly including Maulana Abul Kalam Azad also gave their full approval to the proposal. It is not now open to anyone in India to question the constitutional or the legal status of this great National Song of Bankim Chandra Chaterjee. If they are given that freedom or latitude, that means they are questioning the Constitution of India. Petty and self-seeking men like Arjun Singh and Priyaranjan Dasmunsi dressed in brief authority till April 2009 were creating a communal wedge between Jana Gana Mana and Vande Mataram only for reasons of sordid Muslim Minority vote-bank politics and narrow political reasons. The eunuch Minister of State for External Affairs Sashi Tharoor (shameless page-boy of Sonia Gandhi), is carrying on the same anti-national traditions of yesterday's comic page boys like Arjun Singh The pernicious Anti-Majority political philosophy of the Sonia Congress Party in general and Sonia Gandhi in particular on this vital issue can only be summed up in a laconic limerick:

Vande Mataram is not mandatory

Even Jana Gana Mana need not be involuntary

Vande Mataram can be secularly mandatory

Vande Mataram can be communally non-mandatory.

In our official Non-Government

Sacred things often become sacrilegious

And sacrilegious things become sacred

Things sublime will be viewed as subversive

Things subversive will shine as jewels sublime.

Pray don't dismiss us as dubiously dilatory

By temperament and training, we are suavely soaked in Sonia sophistry

We are not steeped in 'communal' stupidity

No doubt we are soaked in 'Secular' Scoundrelism

Is it not almost a National Pity?

Nobody understands our poor pseudo-secular ditty

That we often sing with Sonia-reverence alacrity

With such non-constitutional clarity

And with known and authentic Anti-Hindu acerbity!!

With total dedication to absolute communal minority!!!