A new political controversy erupted in the Lok Sabha, on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the national song “Vande Mataram”. The Prime minister asserted in strong and clear terms that Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s original song was truncated to appease the Muslims and it is this partition of the national song that led to the partition of India. Nehru was accused of bowing to the Muslim League and did a “tukde-tukde” of the national song. The debate on the Vande Matram continues in the one day special session in the Rajya Sabha.
Let us examine these strident claims in the light of historically proven facts as per the article titled : “Was Vande Mataram broken up to appease Muslims? Here are the facts.”, in India Today by the News Desk dated 8 December 2025.
The first two stanzas of the song were written by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee in 1875 and later expanded in his novel Anandamath (1882) by adding six stanzas. The song’s original two stanzas celebrate the motherland. Congress, led by MK Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Rajendra Prasad, recognised the song’s symbolic power and contribution to the freedom struggle and adopted it as the song of the Congress Party. Later, it was officially declared India’s national song in 1951.
Freedom fighter and then congress leader, Subhash Chandra Bose wanted the full song to be adopted by the party. Nehru feared alienating Muslims and mentioned this in a letter written to Bose in 1937 as the expanded version of the Vande Mataram pays obeisance to Hindu idols.
Nehru then turned to Tagore. Tagore appreciated the opening lines as consisting of gentle devotion and the celebration of the land’s beauty and blessings and it can be adopted as India’s national song as there is nothing to object. However, Tagore conceded that the entire song Vande Mataram as given in Bankim’s Anandamath “might wound Moslem’s susceptibility”. Tagore also wrote back to Nehru in October 1937 that the first two stanzas of the song “has acquired a separate individuality and an inspiring significance of its own in which I see nothing to offend any sect or community,”
Mahatma Gandhi, on July 1, 1939 wrote in Harijan “It (Vande Mataram) was an anti-imperialist cry…. It had never occurred to me that it was a Hindu song or meant only for Hindus. Unfortunately, now we have fallen on evil days… I would not risk a single quarrel over singing Vandemataram at a mixed gathering.”
Regarding the charge in Lok Sabha that Nehru sided with the Muslim League to divide the Vande Mataram song, which was a precursor to the division rather partition of the nation in 1947, the facts state otherwise. Neither Nehru nor the Congress sided with the Muslim League. It was rather the Hindu Mahasabha, the predecessor of the Jan Sangh and later the Bhartiya Janta Party, which allied with the Muslim league to form provincial governments in Sindh and NWF Province in the 1940s. (as written in the article “Yes, Hindu Mahasabha allied with Muslim League, but…” in India Today) In addition, Syama Prasad Mukherjee, the freedom fighter, allied to the Hindu Mahasabha, was a member of the coalition government formed in alliance with the Muslim league in Bengal in 1941.