| Muslim Objection to Vande Mataram | |||
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By: Dr.Dipak Basu September 12, 2006 Views expressed here are author’s own and not of this website. Full disclaimer is at the bottom. 
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(The author is a Professor in International Economics in Nagasaki University, Japan) The Background: Vande Mataram was was first printed in Banga Darshan (edited by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee) in 1875. It was written in two languages. The song consisted of 4 stanzas, the first two in Sanskrit and the rest in Bengali. In 1882 when Bankim Chandra included this song in his controversial novel Anand Math. Rabindranath Tagore composed the tune for this song in 1885. In 1905 with Vice-Roy Curzon's announcement of the partition of Bengal on the basis of religion Vande Mataram turned into a national protest song, by no other than Rabindranath Tagore who was marching on the streets of Calcutta singing that song, against the partition of Bengal. Reacting quickly, the British government banned the song or even raising it as a slogan. People of Barisal in East Bengal bore the brunt of police brutality for singing this song. Peasant leader Abdul Rasul was presiding over the Bengal Congress provincial conference session of 1906 when hundreds were struck down and grievously injured by the police for singing Vande Mataram. This brutality at Barisal popularized the song overnight. According to Bengalee, edited by Surendranath Banerjee, of May 23, 1906, "an unprecedented procession of Hindus and Muslims singing national songs and crying Vande Mataram and Allah-o-Akbar passed through all the principal streets of the town. Both Hindus and Mussalmans carried Vande Mataram flags." Muslims of the British India had no objection to the Vande Mataram song until The Muslim League spoiled their minds. Muslim Objections: The objection to that song was raised by the Muslim League, created by the instigation of Vice-Roy Curzon, to destroy the unity of the Indian people against the British rule. Objections of the Muslim League to that song rests on two arguments: (a) Vande Mataram glorified idol worship and against Islam; (b) Vande Mataram was part of the novel Ananda Math, which glorified the annihilation of Muslims and not the British rule in India. Both of these arguments can be refuted. The Congress Working Committee (CWC) appointed a committee consisting of Jawaharlal Nehru (president of the Congress), Mahatma Gandhi, Abul Kalam Azad and Subhash Chandra Bose in its Calcutta meeting (Oct 26-November 1, 1937) to determine the fate of this song as ‘the national song’ of India. That committee issued a statement on October 28, 1937, which indicates that the first two stanzas of the song had no religious allusions and only these were commonly sung even in Bengal. "The use of the first two stanzas of the song [which] 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 objection could be taken from the religious or any other point of view. The other stanzas of the song are little known and hardly ever sung. They contain certain allusions and a religious ideology, which may not be in keeping with the ideology of other religious groups in India.” These can be ascertained if we look at the song itself. It is difficult to translate a song from one language to another. I write below my own translation and the one done by Sri Aurobindo. Translations of the Song: My Own translation of the first two stanzas, written in Sanskrit, is as follows: "Salute to motherland. The land of perfumed and cool air, fertile lands with sweet water, overflowing with ripe harvests. The land with nights full of moonlight, where the grass is decorated with cheerful flowers. The land is smiling, with sweet words, giving blessings." The above translation is ‘word by word’ translation, without trying to infuse poetic spirit, which was done by Sri Aurobindo in his translation of the complete song, which deviates a lot from the original. The translation of the first two stanzas by Sri Aurobindo is as follows: Mother, I bow to thee! Rich with thy hurrying streams, Bright with thy orchard gleams, Cool with thy winds of delight, Dark fields waving, Mother of might, Mother free. Glory of moonlight dreams, Over thy branches and lordly streams, Clad in thy blossoming trees, Mother, giver of ease, Laughing low and sweet! Mother I kiss thy feet, Speaker sweet and low! Mother to thee I bow. The Muslim League and Muslims in India today raise objections Vande Mataram by pointing out the above translation of Sri Aurobindo, which is not exact. There are three other stanzas written in Bengali in the complete song where Hindu deities Durga and Laksmi were mentioned. Muslims can certainly object to those parts. However, no one has asked them to accept the complete song, as only the first two stanzas written in Sanskrit are the components of Vande Mataram as the national song. Ananda Math, is it anti-Muslim? The song was taken from a Bengali novel "Ananda Math" by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee describing the famine of 1770’s, the dire situation of Bengal after it was occupied by the East India Company in 1757, how the motherland was in chains, and the revolt of the Sanyasis (Hindu religious men) against the East India Company. That revolt of the Sanyasis in Bengal was a historical fact. The song, Vande Mataram, is also not originally written by Bankim Chandra but was revised from a popular folk song of the North Bengal, where that revolt took place in around 1770-80. It is believed that the revolutionary Sanyasis actually used to sing a folk version of that song. The famine in Bengal in 1770 lasted for a few years and as a result about 10 million people, one third of the population of the richest province of the Mughal India, Bengal, which means today’s Bihar, Jharkand, Orissa, West Bengal, Bangladesh and south Assam, were wiped out. The cause was the excessive tax collection by the East India Company, which had increased the tax on agricultural holdings by five folds, made the tax independent of actual production of crops and abolished all tax exemptions offered during the Mughal period for the land attached to the educational establishments or religious places. The person in charge of tax collection of Bengal on behalf of the British East India Company was Reza Khan, a Muslim. Thus, sometimes the characters of the Ananda Math could not control their anger against him as a Muslim sucking the blood of the people of Bengal, both Hindus and Muslims. That does not make the book Ananda Math anti-Muslim. The author was accused, by some Muslims, who have never read the complete book, as anti-Muslim. There is indeed a dialogue in that book between a secularist landowner Mahendra and Satyananda, the leader of the Sanyasis. Satyananda in the beginning was against both the British and Muslim but at the end of the dialogue has accepted the fact that although the British were the real enemy but the people got to wait to gather strength to fight the British in proper time. Some Muslims have quoted this dialogue without giving the proper context and tried to prove than Bankim Chandra Chatterjee was anti-Muslim. This argument is not justified if we would look at other novels he wrote. His first novel in Bengali "Durgesh Nandini" was about the resistance of the Afghans in Bengal in collaboration of the Hindu Rajahs against the Hindu Rajput commanders of the Mughal Army of Akhbar. The heroine of that novel was an Afghan princes Ayesha. In other novels Bankim Chandra Chatterjee has mentioned the administrative efficiency of the Muslim Kings in India. Even in the novels ‘Raj Singha’, describing the valor of the Rajputs against the army of Aurangjeb, or in ‘Sitaram’, describing the resistance of a Hindu Raja in Bengal against the Muslim invasion, there is nothing, which can be remotely called ‘anti-Muslim’. A.G.Noorani, an apologist for Jinnah, the Muslim League and Pakistan, have quoted a dialogue from Ananda Math in his article “ How Secular is Bande Mataram” in The Frontline (Vol. 16, Jan. 02 - 15, 1999) to prove the supposedly communal character of Bankim Chandra and supported the rejection of Vande Mataram by the Muslims. That dialogue in Ananda Math, in the last chapter, describes a divine force persuading the leader of the Sanyasis, Satyananda, to stop fighting. The dialogue is as follows (HE implies the divine force and S implies Satyananda): "He: Your task is accomplished. The Muslim power is destroyed. There is
nothing else for you to do. No good can come of needless slaughter. There is nothing in this dialogue, which is anti-Muslim but certainly it is against the Muslim Imperialism? Rabindranath Tagore or Mahatma Gandhi had many important British as their close friends but at the same time they were against the British Imperialism. Similarly Bankim Chandra as a civil servant for the British in India had many Muslim friends but was against the Muslim Imperialism, which had subjugated India from 7th to 18th century. Objections to the Muslim Imperialism are not anti-Muslim or communal, as all imperialists whether Muslim or non-Muslim are evil. It is not possible for a
novelist in India with social consciousness to ignore the communal riots
between Hindus and Muslims. Ananda Math has described one such incident.
Similarly in Rabindranath Tagore’s novel Ghare Bahire (Home and Abroad)
has implicitly described a communal riots as well. Does it mean even
Rabindranath Tagore was a Hindu communal, particularly when he used to
recite poems in the Hindu Mela organized by Bankim Chandra as a
front-runner of the Swadesi Movement? Surprisingly one professor of
History in the Jawaharlal Nehru University thinks so (in private
communication with the author). Do you wish to reach our readers?
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