The Congress insulted Vande Mataram on Independence Day, and should apologise to the people, Union home minister Amit Shah said at a rally in Chittorgarh, Rajasthan, on Sunday, August 16.
This came as leaders from Shah’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) lodged a formal complaint against Congress leader Sonia Gandhi at the Urwa police station in Karnataka on Sunday, following a controversy during the recitation of the national song Vande Mataram at the Congress headquarters in New Delhi on Independence Day. The controversy erupted after visuals from the Independence Day programme at the Congress headquarters showed senior party leaders speaking among themselves while Vande Mataram was being recited. BJP leaders have criticised their conduct, alleging that it amounted to disrespect towards the National Song. However, the Congress asserted that Sonia Gandhi’s actions had nothing to do with the national song played at the venue. The party maintained that she was merely trying to ensure that the correct arrangements for Vande Mataram were sung properly in the event. The Alwar detentions come against the backdrop of a wider pattern of preventive detentions ahead of Shah’s public engagements in recent weeks, as well as a sustained Opposition demand for the home minister’s resignation over the police action against student protesters in the national capital in July. Those protests led to the resignation of senior BJP leader Dharmendra Pradhanas education minister in PM Narendra Modi’s government.
Because the latter stanzas, which are devoted to idol worship and Hindu goddesses, went against the Constitution’s secular spirit, congress’ and other parties’ leader, as well as some academicians, on the other hand, have argued that the Constituent Assembly adopted only the first two stanzas as the national song on January 24, 1950,. BJP leaders said the Centre has shown respect to Bengal’s literary icon Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay whose 1870’s composition in Sanskritised Bengali became the driving spirit of the freedom movement.
“The Congress forgot Vande Mataram out of greed for vote banks,” Shah alleged.
