Vande Mataram

Anybody who refuses to    chant Vande Mataram is anti-national and has no right to live in this country—so say the political champions of Hindutva. Take a leaf out of the pages of history. The song Vande Mataram, composed by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, was first incorporated in his famous novel Anandamath (The Monastery of Joy). Anandamath ends with the announcement that there were no longer the Muslim rulers, who were now ousted from power. But the English were friends, and if the English rule was established, the ancient Hindu religion would be revived and restored to its proper place. Anandamath was in fact an apology for loyal acceptance of British rule with the hope that with British help, the dream of Hindu restoration would be realized. Samar Sen, in one of his famous poems, summed up the spirit of Anandamath and Vande Mataram as 'the dawn ushered in by the whites after the calamitous rule of the Yavanas.' It is with the dream of Hindu restoration that persons like Savarkar, Golwalkar, Shyama Prasad Mukherjee etc refrained from fighting the British rule. Golwalkar and his close comrades were also supporters of Hitler and Mussolini. It was not for nothing that persons like Shyama Prasad were in the good graces of the Britishraj, while even elite politicians like Sarat Bose were interned or kept in prison for years. Now is the time to manufacture all sorts of lies to demonstrate their patriotic credentials.

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Frontier
Vol. 52, No. 5, Aug 4 - 10, 2019