DC Edit | National Song Must Unite Indians, Not Divide Them

The founding fathers of the republic and the makers of the Constitution were very clear in their mind that India can survive and succeed only if it recognised and promoted its diversity. The very first article of the Constitution is the celebration of this idea when it defines “India that is Bharat” as a “union of states”. There can be more than one name possible for the country which they envisaged as being built not as one single block but as a union of states. The effort now must be to recognise all the possible versions and opinions within a large agreed framework and celebrate them all instead of steamrolling all but one.

Unfortunately, those who run the administration at the Centre now have different ideas, and hence we hear reports of states and people objecting to the singing of ‘Vande Mataram’, the national song in full. The great men and women who led the freedom movement wanted it to be of all the people of the country and hence they chose slogans and symbols which, they believed, reflected their unity and celebrated their diversity. True, the Sangh Parivar which drives the present government had a different idea about the country in those days. It believed and propagated two-nation theory which finally triumphed but India, despite being partitioned on religious lines, chose to remain a secular democratic republic while its newborn neighbour had other ideas. This dichotomy had carried seeds of division within, but the country’s leadership has been careful not to widen the fault lines; they chose instead to bridge them. The BJP government at the Centre, however, is driven by the divisive ideology of those times; and hence the insistence on singing all six stanzas of the national song.

Respecting people’s sentiments is one thing, appeasing them quite another. Democracy is not about imposing the majority’s decision on the minority; and if that’s the case, then India need not retain a democratic form of governance. Democracy is all about respecting disagreement within the framework where the proponents of the different idea get to enjoy the same rights as the majority. Attempts to upset this arrangement mean attempts to unravel the republic.

The national flag and national anthem are symbols that enjoy constitutional protection which the national song does not. Insulating the national song as it has been approved by the Constituent Assembly is a legitimate act but stretching that protection to the last stanza is an attempt to present it as equal to the other national symbols. That could face resistance. It was not for no reason that the leaders of the national movement, including Mahatma Gandhi, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, Subhas Chandra Bose and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, came to a decision on the song. Going against the spirit of that decision will only widen and deepen the fault lines. Some states give priority to their own state anthems while some others would not go by the decision of the Union government but that of the Constituent Assembly. The Union government must respect their decisions instead of devising new rules and decrees to impose its will on them. It must find means and reasons to unify the people, not divide them further.