Vande Mataram beyond religion: Shivpal | Lucknow News
Lucknow: Senior SP legislator Shivpal Yadav said it was a matter of grave concern that the name of Rahimtullah Muhammad Sayani, the second Muslim President of the Indian National Congress, was not mentioned alongside Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay and Rabindranath Tagore while highlighting the national song Vande Mataram. Sayani chaired the Congress convention in Calcutta in 1896 when Vande Mataram was sung by Tagore.
“Sayane log kyun Sayani ka naam nahi le rahe hain, ispe charcha karayi jani chahiye (Why are wise people not mentioning Sayani’s name? This should be discussed),” Yadav said during the discussion on Vande Mataram in the Assembly.The SP member said even when Vande Mataram was adopted as the national song by the Constituent Assembly, leaders like Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and Maulana Hasrat Mohani were present. “No one then opposed Vande Mataram,” Shivpal said, stressing that the song became the soul of Indian consciousness.“Why is Vande Mataram being pulled into a controversy of communal politics? It is not correct to show history in the wrong perspective,” he said, adding that the national song never belonged to any particular religion, language, or region. “Ye rashtra ki atma ka geet tha (This was the song of the nation’s soul),” he said. In an apparent dig at RSS, Shivpal asked where the ‘vaicharik poorvaj’ (ancestral ideologues) of the present-day BJP leaders were when revolutionaries gave their lives for independence. “The same leaders today are giving long lectures to us,” he took a swipe at the BJP.“History was a witness to the struggles of Samajwadis and Congress leaders during the freedom struggle. At that time, Vande Mataram was our power,” he said and asked why those in govt are behaving as if they had the “copyright of nationalism”.Shivpal said that the ruling BJP sought to carry out a discussion on Vande Mataram just to divert people’s attention from the real issues concerning children, youth, and farmers.He said that the issue was deliberately raised to cover up the people associated with the ‘codeine syrup case and the Special Intensive Revision (SIR). He said the song was being used by the BJP as an “election weapon” against its opponents.Congress legislative party leader Aradhna Mishra said it was not the question of who sings Vande Mataram. “It was about who understood Vande Mataram,” she said.
