Vande Mataram Debate in Parliament Turns Political: Modi Questions Nehru’s Legacy, Congress Pushes Back

As Parliament opened a special debate on Monday to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the national song 'Vande Mataram', Prime Minister Narendra Modi used the occasion to revisit, sharply question, the legacy of India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru.

What began as a discussion on the national song quickly shifted into a broader political examination of Nehruvian decisions in both the pre and post-Independence eras, with the opposition claiming government of using the debate to divert attention from contemporary challenges and upcoming elections in West Bengal.

Modi, who initiated the debate, accused Nehru and the Congress leadership of weakening the standing of Vande Mataram to “appease certain sections” of society.

“If Vande Mataram was so popular, why was injustice meted out to it? Why was it betrayed?” he asked, casting the issue as a deliberate historical slight.

The prime minister went on to deliver one of his most direct attacks of Congress’s pre-Independence leadership, citing the party’s 1937 decision to adopt only parts of the song as appeasement to the Muslim League.

“On October 26, 1937, Congress compromised on Vande Mataram and broke it into pieces,” Modi said. “In Bankim Chandra’s Bengal, Congress compromised at the Kolkata session in 1937. Congress kneeled before the Muslim League by sidelining Vande Mataram, which led to the tragedy of Partition.”

Speaking for the Congress Party, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra sharply rebutted Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s criticism of Jawaharlal Nehru, calling the attacks unnecessary and politically driven. Gandhi Vadra, Nehru’s granddaughter, said Congress was fully prepared for a substantive discussion on his legacy.

“Let’s assign a time for discussion, debate it and close it once and for all,” she argued, while ate the same time defending the decision to adopt the first two stanzas of Vande Mataram as the national song, referring to Poet Laureate Rabindranath Tagore's letters where, "Gurudev says that the two stanzas that were always sung were so significant that he had no difficulty in separating them from the rest of the poem and the passages in the book."

She contrasted Modi’s tenure with Nehru’s 12 years in prison during the freedom struggle and credited Nehru with building institutions central to India’s scientific and medical progress, arguing that missions like Mangalyaan and responses like the fight against Covid-19 would not have been possible without ISRO and AIIMS.

Gandhi Vadra aalso accused the government of using the debate to influence upcoming elections in West Bengal and to divert attention from contemporary challenges. “The government wants us to keep delving in the past because it does not want to look at the present and future,” she said.

Participating in the debate, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said that while it was decided that the national anthem and national song will be given equal status and importance in independent India, Vande Mataram was gradually marginalised.

“The politics of appeasement led to the division of India,” Singh asserted, linking political decisions that diluted Vande Mataram’s prominence to the tragic communal divide that resulted in Partition.

Congress Deputy Leader in the LS, Gaurav Gogoi also unleashed a fiery rebuttal on PM Modi’s remarks on Congress and Nehru in the Vande Mataram debate.

The Congress leader from Assam accused the Prime Minister of attempting to “rewrite history” and politicise a unifying national symbol for narrow political gains. Several state assemblies also held functions and discussions to commemorate the legacy of the national song which freedom fighters had used as a rallying cry.

'Vande Mataram' (I bow to thee, Mother), written by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay in the 1870s and later included in his 1882 novel Anandamath, has long occupied a singular place in India’s political imagination.

What began as a literary ode to the motherland evolved into one of the most resonant anthems of the independence movement, gaining particular force during the 1905 Partition of Bengal and the Swadeshi boycott that followed.

Adopted by the Indian National Congress and embraced by freedom fighters across the country, the song became both a unifying symbol and a statement of defiance against British rule.

In 1950, as the newly independent nation sought to define its national identity, Vande Mataram was formally designated India’s national song, a reminder of the emotional and political power it had amassed over decades of struggle.