‘Vote-bank politics’: What BJP’s new Vande Mataram resolution says about Congress, 6 stanzas

E-PaperSubscribeSubscribeEnjoy unlimited accessSubscribe Now! Get features like The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Saturday passed a resolution to honour the legacy of Vande Mataram and said it would not allow the national song to be compromised for appeasement politics, as it hit out at the Congress for reaffirming its 1937 decision to sing an abridged version of the song at party events. Prime Minister Narendra Modi addresses BJP in a meeting (HT Print)The party will also undertake a nationwide campaign to spread the history, meaning and national significance of Vande Mataram across the country, according to the resolution passed at the first meeting of its new office-bearers. The Congress rejected the ruling party’s charge, with Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge accusing the BJP of indulging in “politics of polarisation”. According to the resolution, the BJP resolved to “uphold the honour, dignity, legacy and national status of the complete Vande Mataram as the National Song of Bharat and as an immortal symbol of India’s national consciousness and freedom struggle”. Also Read | Inside BJP’s 10-point Vande Mataram resolution: ‘No vote bank' politics, cites Mahatma Gandhi’s ‘anti-imperialist cry’ It added that the legacy of Vande Mataram cannot be “reduced to the calculations of contemporary vote-bank politics”, days after the Congress Working Committee (CWC) decided to reaffirm its 1937 resolution on singing only the first two stanzas of Vande Mataram at party functions. “The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) therefore resolves to strongly condemn and unequivocally oppose the Congress Working Committee’s decision of 19 August 2026 to reaffirm its 1937 resolution and restrict Vande Mataram to its first two stanzas at Congress programmes,” the resolution said. It added that the party plans to “expose before the people of Bharat the historical and political context in which the truncation of Vande Mataram took place, including the objections raised by the Muslim League and the subsequent politics of communal and separatist demands”. The Centre earlier this year made the rendition of all six stanzas of the song mandatory, replacing the decades-old practice of singing the first two stanzas that had been adopted as the national song in 1950. In the recently held Monsoon session, Parliament cleared the Prevention of Insults to National Honour (Amendment) Bill, 2026, which makes any obstruction or insult to the national song a criminal offence, proposing a jail term of up to three years and a fine for offenders. The law currently safeguards the national flag, the national anthem and the Constitution. Also Read | BJP passes resolution on 'Vande Mataram', condemns Congress move to sing 2 stanzas “The BJP would oppose any attempt to subject the National Song to communal pressure, political appeasement or narrow vote-bank politics… The British sought to suppress [Vande Mataram’s words] because they awakened resistance. Generations of Indians carried them as a mantra of freedom, sacrifice and national pride. That legacy cannot be reduced to the calculations of contemporary vote-bank politics,” BJP president Nitin Nabin said. Kharge, however, rejected the BJP’s allegation and said the Congress was following the version that had been decided by national leaders, including Mahatma Gandhi and Vallabhbhai Patel. “If you read the history, you would know. Pandit [Jawaharlal] Nehru, Mahatma Gandhi, Subhas Chandra Bose and Vallabhbhai Patel all together decided to reduce it from six to two stanzas, stating that it is better for the country. In 1937, we still had not got freedom, all of them decided together, and all of us have been following it for 90 years now,” he said. He added: “You [Narendra Modi] have been the PM for 11-12 years now; why didn’t you do anything on the issue until now?... They are playing the politics of polarisation in the country.” Also Read | Tagore’s advice, 1937 resolution: The history behind Congress opting to sing 1st two stanzas of Vande Mataram In its resolution, the BJP said that it would disseminate Mahatma Gandhi’s own testimony that Vande Mataram had become an “anti-imperialist cry” and that he associated it with “the purest national spirit” to counter the Opposition’s claims that people of some faiths have reservations about the stanzas with religious imagery. “…To educate and mobilise the people, especially the younger generation, so that the complete six-stanza National Song and its history are not forgotten and future generations understand the sacrifices, struggles and patriotic awakening with which Vande Mataram is inseparably associated,” the resolution added. The party urged citizens to remember that the words “Vande Mataram” were once “powerful enough to frighten an empire”. Smriti covers an intersection of politics and governance. Having spent over a decade in journalism, she combines old fashioned leg work with modern story telling tools.