Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) national president Amit Shah on Wednesday criticised those who tried to communalise the National Song Vande Mataram, and said the Congress’ decision to accept only the first two stanzas and drop the rest of Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay’s song in 1937 was done to suit the party’s appeasement policy.
“There had been a controversy on Vande Mataram song. In fact there were debates organised to decide whether the full song should be adopted as the national song. I am a student of history and this incident pained me maximum. Congress failed to understand that this song was not written for a religion or a particular community. This was the expression of a poet for his motherland,” Shah said.
He was delivering the first Bankim Chandra Chattapadhyay Memorial Lecture in Kolkata organised by Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee Research Foundation on the occasion of the Bengali writer’s birth anniversary.
He added that when the Congress had formed provisional governments in the pre-Independence era, it had taken up Vande Mataram as National Song, but only the first two stanzas were sung to appease a community. Adding that he was not there to deliver a political speech, Shah said cutting down Vande Mataram to pieces was the “sin” committed by Congress and the consequence was the partition.
Shah has also attended a meeting of the BJP’s election committee here and a workshop of the social media cell. He is learnt to have directed the BJP state unit to target all 42 seats and go for an all-out fight against Trinamool Congress.
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