7th November 2025 marks 150 years of India’s National Song, “Vande Mataram.” On this historic day, Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated a year-long nationwide commemoration of the song at the Indira Gandhi Indoor Stadium in New Delhi. The ceremony aimed to remind citizens of the song’s deep emotional connection with India’s freedom struggle and its lasting presence in public memory.

Exactly 150 years earlier, Bankimchandra Chatterji—also known as Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay—wrote Vande Mataram on the auspicious day of Akshay Navami, which fell on 7th November 1875. The song was first published in 1882 in the literary journal Bangdarshan as part of Bankim’s iconic novel Anandamath. It described the motherland as a powerful presence, full of strength, unity, prosperity and divine grace. This portrayal made the song instantly beloved among readers, and over time it became a symbol of devotion to Bharat.

Bankim’s composition gradually moved beyond its literary setting. As India entered a more aggressive phase of resistance against British rule, Vande Mataram became an emotional rallying cry. For many freedom fighters, it was nothing less than a national anthem during the independence movement. Long after India became free, the song was officially recognised as the national song of the country, linking Indians of the present generation with those who had fought for freedom decades earlier.

In 1896, Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore famously performed the song at the Kolkata session of the Indian National Congress. This marked its first major public rendering. The Constituent Assembly later adopted Vande Mataram as the national song on 24th January 1950. During this session, Dr. Rajendra Prasad stated that the song must be shown equal respect as the national anthem Jana Gana Mana.

Bankim’s novel Anandamath is set during the devastating Bengal famine of 1770, a tragic event that claimed nearly 10 million lives. The story portrays Bengal as a land devastated by exploitation, hunger, death and destructive foreign rule. Within this setting, Vande Mataram appears as a lyrical and spiritual tribute to the motherland. It presents India as a divine feminine force, similar to Goddess Durga—strong, protective and sacred. Tagore’s performance in 1896 further strengthened its cultural presence at a time when nationalism was rising sharply.

Vande Mataram and the Revolt of the Sanyasis and Fakirs

At the core of Anandamath and Vande Mataram lies the real historical event known as the Sanyasi-Fakir Rebellion of the 18th century. This movement, which lasted from 1763 to 1800, is considered one of the first serious revolts against British power in India. It brought together Hindu Sanyasis and Sufi fakirs (also referred to as Derveshis) who fought together in guerrilla-style resistance against the East India Company and its allied Nawabs in Bihar and Bengal.

These rebels attacked British outposts, raided Company treasuries and disrupted revenue collection systems. Their uprising was motivated by economic hardship created by the Company’s ban on pilgrim taxes, tolls and the old system of land grants given by zamindars to wandering ascetics. When the Company took over Diwani rights—the authority to collect taxes—zamindars were squeezed for revenue. As their financial stress increased, they could neither meet the British tax demands nor offer support to Sanyasis and Fakirs as they had done earlier.

Tensions rose sharply in 1771 when more than 150 Hindu Sanyasis were killed without cause, leading to violent backlash in Natore—today located in Bangladesh. The British labelled these ascetics as plunderers because they collected funds from villagers and zamindars while travelling to pilgrimage centres. Among the many Hindu groups that participated in this resistance were the Dasanami Naga Sadhus, known for their martial tradition.

Bankim Chandra drew extensively from these events while writing Anandamath. He reimagined the Sanyasis as disciplined warrior-monks living in a sacred forest monastery known as “the abbey of bliss.” In the story, these monks rise against the horrors of famine-struck Bengal suffering under two oppressive powers—British commercial exploitation under Governor Warren Hastings and the harsh governance of Nawab Mir Qasim. Their war cry was Vande Mataram, which later became synonymous with India’s broader freedom movement.

How Vande Mataram Was Given a Communal Colour Because It Criticised the Nawab’s Misrule

Anandamath was written during a time when Bengal had suffered three back-to-back famines in the early 1770s. The tragedy unfolded alongside the Sanyasi-Fakir Rebellion. Interestingly, the novel placed much of the blame for these terrible conditions on Nawab Mir Qasim, arguing that the state’s collapse happened because he silently allowed the East India Company to dominate the region.

Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay did not hold back in showing the Nawab—modelled on Mir Qasim—as a deeply corrupt and unjust ruler. His policies worsened the 1770 famine, while his troops looted grain stocks and mistreated peasants. Because these scenes portrayed a Muslim ruler in a negative light, a section of Muslims later criticised the novel and the song, arguing that it portrayed Muslims as oppressors.

However, these accusations did not match the historical reality of that period. Bengal’s Muslim elite had been placed in power first by the weakening Mughal administration and later controlled by the British. Many among these elites cooperated with the East India Company and played a role in exploiting the local population.

Another source of objection came from some orthodox Muslim groups who felt uncomfortable with Vande Mataram invoking Maa Durga and featuring Hindu temple imagery. They argued that this was inconsistent with Islamic monotheism and therefore objected to public singing of the song.

Renowned historian Tanika Sarkar explained the situation clearly in her work “Birth of a Goddess: Vande Mataram, Anandamath and Hindu Nationhood.” She wrote, “The East India Company was then calling the shots from behind the facade of a puppet Muslim Nawab. It was rack-renting peasant surplus to augment revenues from which the Company extracted a massive tribute. The drive was so relentless that three successive droughts produced a famine of catastrophic proportions in 1770. Much of the land returned to waste and approximately one-third of the population starved to death.”

She further added that the narrative “held the Nawab responsible not just for widespread death and starvation, but also for a deliberate and total destruction of Hindus, of their honour, faith, caste and women. In other words, it forces a split between the agents and victims of the famine: the agents are Muslims and the starving and dying people are always identified as Hindus.”

How Vande Mataram Was Branded ‘Anti-Muslim’: From the Muslim League to Jinnah

When Rabindranath Tagore first sang Vande Mataram in 1896, it was simply a patriotic poem celebrating the motherland. But during the 1905 partition of Bengal, the song quickly turned into a powerful slogan of resistance against British rule. It echoed across rallies, marches and public gatherings, becoming one of the most emotional expressions of the freedom struggle. However, despite its nationalistic spirit, many Muslim leaders of that period refused to accept the song with an open mind. They viewed it narrowly through a religious lens, arguing that praising the motherland was equal to worshipping someone other than Allah. According to them, chanting Vande Mataram was against the “tenets of Islam” and amounted to “sacrilege against Allah” because a Muslim could bow only to Allah.

Unfortunately, this hardline viewpoint has survived even today. A section of Muslim clerics and Islamists still resist singing Vande Mataram, treating it not as a patriotic song but as a religious offence.

In British India, several Muslim leaders who rejected the song as ‘anti-Muslim’ were also the ones who pushed for a separate nation based on religion. These leaders insisted that the deification of the motherland was ‘shirk’, meaning a sin of associating partners with Allah. They portrayed the song as a Hindu symbol rather than a national one.

At the second session of the All India Muslim League in December 1908, its president Syed Ali Imam declared, “I cannot say what you think, but when I find the most advanced province of India put forward the sectarian cry of ‘Bande Mataram’ as the national cry, and the sectarian Rakhi-Bandhan as a national observance, my heart is filled with despair and disappointment; and the suspicion that, under the cloak of nationalism, Hindu nationalism is preached in India becomes a conviction.”

Nearly three decades later, Mohammed Ali Jinnah repeated the same argument. In his article published on 1st March 1938 in The New Times of Lahore, he stated, “Muslims all over India have refused to accept Vande Mataram or any expurgated edition of the anti-Muslim song as a binding national anthem.” Jinnah and his supporters later used the controversy to deepen divisions and mobilise communal sentiment.

The main objection centred around one of the later stanzas of the song, which mentions Hindu goddesses. The contested portion reads:
“त्वंहिदुर्गादशप्रहरणधारिणीकमलाकमलदलविहारिणीवाणीविद्यादायिनी, नमामित्वाम्नमामिकमलांअमलांअतुलांसुजलांसुफलांमातरम् (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 gleams, 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.)

How Nehru Shortened Vande Mataram to Appease Jinnah and Other Islamists

The Congress party’s approach of trying to please Muslim leaders at the expense of Hindu cultural symbols did not begin after independence. It had already started decades earlier, and the controversy over Vande Mataram is one of the clearest examples. Since some Muslim groups objected to the stanza mentioning Maa Durga, Congress chose not to defend the song’s cultural roots. Instead, it gave in to the pressure.

As a result, the original six-stanza song was cut down, and only two stanzas were allowed to be sung. This major alteration was done simply to satisfy those who, only a few years later, supported ideas that led to the partition of the country.

Mohammed Ali Jinnah’s political strength came not only from hardline Islamists but also from the sympathetic attitude he received from Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. Gandhi’s deep concern for Muslim opinions and his consistent attempts to keep Jinnah involved in political negotiations gave Jinnah more leverage.

By 1937, Gandhi openly suggested that only the first two stanzas of Vande Mataram should be used since they did not refer to Hindu imagery. At the Faizpur Congress Session that year, only those two stanzas were sung. Prime Minister Narendra Modi also mentioned this historical fact in his recent address.

To understand how Congress leaders responded to Jinnah’s objections, one must look at the letters written by Jawaharlal Nehru. In a letter to Urdu poet Ali Sardar Jafri, Nehru wrote that the song had no real connection with the Congress and was “not suitable as a national anthem.”

Nehru explained further, “The Congress has not officially adopted any song as a kind of national anthem. In practice however the Bande Mataram is often used in national gatherings together with other songs. The reason for this is that 30 years ago this song and this cry became a criminal offence and developed into a challenge to British imperialism.”

Even though Nehru admitted the song’s importance in the freedom struggle, he tried to distance it from Hindu associations. He wrote, “I do not think anybody considers the words to have anything to do with a goddess. That interpretation is absurd. Nor are we concerned with the idea that the author of the book, which contains this song, had in his mind when he wrote it, because the public does not think on these lines.”

Nehru added yet another objection, saying the song had complicated words and ideas that did not match modern nationalism. He argued, “It contains too many difficult words which people do not understand and the ideas it contains are also out of keeping with modem notions of nationalism and progress. We should certainly try to have more suitable national songs in simple language.”

He repeated the same concern in a letter to Subhash Chandra Bose on 20th October 1937, saying the song could “irritate the Muslims.” He wrote, “I have managed to get an English translation of Ananda Math and I am reading it at present to get the back- ground of the song. It does seem that this background is likely to irritate the Muslims…There is no doubt that the present outcry against Bande Mataram is to a large extent a manufactured one by the communalists. At the same time there does seem some substance in it and people who are communalistically inclined have been affected by it. Whatever we do cannot be to pander to communalists’ feelings but to meet real grievances where they exist.”

This tendency to modify Hindu songs for Muslim acceptance was not new. Gandhi had earlier changed the Hindu bhajan Raghupati Raghav Raja Ram by adding “Ishwar Allah tero naam, sabko sammati de Bhagwan” even though the original hymn from Sri Nama Ramayanam contained no reference to Allah.

Original lines included:
Raghupati raghava rajaram, patita paavana sitaram,
Sundara vigraha meghashyam, Ganga tulasi shaligram,
Bhadra girishwara sitaram, Bhagat janapriya sitaram,
Janaki ramana sitaram, Jaya jaya raghava sitaram.

Whether it was shortening Vande Mataram or modifying Raghupati Raghav Raja Ram, these actions showed how Congress leadership repeatedly adjusted Hindu traditions to meet Muslim demands, even though such gestures brought no goodwill in return. The same leaders did not object to Islamic scriptures that considered idol worship a sin, nor did they criticise the violent consequences of the Khilafat movement or Jinnah’s Direct Action Day in 1946.

Nehru also opposed rebuilding the Somnath Temple, calling it an example of “Hindu revivalism.” Over time, history has shown that when Hindu leaders gave up their cultural ground, extremist forces only strengthened themselves further.

Vande Mataram: India’s National Song That Still Faces Rejection

On 24th January 1950, the Constituent Assembly adopted Vande Mataram as India’s national song based on a proposal from Dr. Rajendra Prasad. Today, it is sung in schools, at Independence Day celebrations and in countless cultural programmes. But the stanzas removed back in 1937 are still unfamiliar to many Indians—a lasting effect of political appeasement.

Even in 2025, resistance continues. In Jammu and Kashmir, organisations like Mutahida Majlis-e-Ulema (MMU) and Anjuman-e-Ahl-e-Hadith opposed the government directive asking schools to mark the 150th anniversary of the song. They repeated the old argument of religious restrictions, saying the order went “against our religious beliefs.” They also claimed the celebration was “a deliberate attempt to impose an RSS-driven Hindutva ideology on a Muslim-majority region under the guise of cultural celebration.”

Such objections are not new. Many Islamists continue to oppose singing Vande Mataram or raising the slogan Bharat Mata ki Jai, claiming it violates their religious doctrines. As India observes 150 years of this national song, it must remember how it was targeted, criticised and communalised by extremist groups. Repeating the same mistakes that Congress leadership made in the past—by yielding to unreasonable demands—will not create harmony. Instead, it only weakens national unity.