Last Updated:December 08, 2025, 13:19 IST

PM Modi drew a connection between the national song and the Emergency declared 50 years ago by former prime minister Indira Gandhi

Prime Minister Narendra Modi tore into the Congress and the Gandhi-Nehru lineage on Monday as the Lok Sabha discussed the 150th anniversary of ‘Vande Mataram’, recollecting how the national song was never given its due under the rule of the Grand Old Party.

Drawing a connection between patriotic war cry and the Emergency declared 50 years ago by former prime minister Indira Gandhi, PM Modi said: “When ‘Vande Mataram’ celebrated its 100th anniversary, the country was entangled in the Emergency… when it celebrated its 100th anniversary, the Constitution was strangled. Now, at 150 years, it is a good opportunity to restore the glory of ‘Vande Mataram’ which won us freedom in 1947.”

Targeting yet another predecessor, the prime minister accused former PM Jawaharlal Nehru of having followed Muhammad Ali Jinnah in opposing ‘Vande Mataram’ because it could “irritate Muslims”.

As chants of “shame, shame” erupted in Lok Sabha, PM Modi said “some forces” had carried out “vishwas ghaat” (betrayal) of the national song in the last century. “It is our duty to tell our next generations who did it,” he said. “Muslim League (pre-Independence) led by Mohammed Ali Jinnah, in 1937, carried out a drive against Vande Mataram. But the Congress and Jawaharlal Nehru, rather than opposing them, started probing Vande Mataram instead.”

He added: “Within five days of Jinnah’s protest of 1937, Nehru ji wrote to Subhas Chandra Bose that the Anand Math context of the song can irritate Muslims. The entire country was shocked. Yet, on October 26 that year, the Congress made a compromise and divided Vande Mataram into parts. And the excuse was that ‘this is for communal harmony’.”

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