| Six stanzas, one big rift: Congress-NC clash over Vande Mataram in Srinagar | | |  Mahim Gupta
Early Times Report
Jammu, Sept 9: A fault line within the INDIA bloc burst into the open in Srinagar this week, after Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah and National Conference president Farooq Abdullah stood through all six stanzas of "Vande Mataram" at the inaugural event of the International Film Festival — a gesture that has now pitted the party against its own coalition partner, the Congress.
The moment, captured on video and widely shared, quickly snowballed into a full-blown political spat.
Congress general secretary K C Venugopal was the first to strike, posting the video with a sharp rebuke: the full version of the song, he wrote, "sits uneasily with the syncretic and pluralist ethos that our freedom fighters envisioned and nurtured for India." He invoked the legacy of the Congress Working Committee's 1937 decision — reportedly shaped by Rabindranath Tagore's counsel — to adopt only the first two stanzas, name-checking Gandhi, Nehru, Patel, Bose, Rajendra Prasad, Azad, Sarojini Naidu and J B Kripalani as the architects of that "considered judgement."
Jammu and Kashmir Congress chief Tarriq Karra echoed the sentiment, calling national symbols and songs binding threads of India's diversity and expressing "concern" that an alliance partner had opted for the complete rendition.
The National Conference wasn't willing to let the criticism slide. Party spokesperson Tanvir Sadiq pushed back firmly, arguing that standing for the song at a government event was no longer a matter of political choice but a legal one. Following parliamentary legislation, he said, singing and standing for Vande Mataram has become a "statutory obligation" — binding on every party or government "regardless of ideological position," just as it has been for Congress-run states that have sung all six stanzas at official functions.
Sadiq was careful to draw a line, however: the NC, he said, has never been a signatory to either the two-stanza or six-stanza version of the song, and while it does not oppose those who wish to sing it, it has "been opposed to forcing people" to do so.
The Srinagar flashpoint is only the latest chapter in a long-running national argument over the song's rendition. Congress has consistently maintained that its official programmes will feature only the first two stanzas, standing by the 1937 resolution. That stance has repeatedly drawn fire from the BJP — Union Home Minister Amit Shah has previously accused the party of practising "appeasement politics" over the issue.
With the Abdullahs' gesture now exposing daylight between the NC and its principal ally within the INDIA bloc, the episode adds fresh strain to an alliance already navigating its share of ideological fault lines — even as both parties insist their differences stop short of a formal rupture. |
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