NEW DELHI: BJP cited Mahatma Gandhi’s “we have fallen on evil days” lament over the opposition built up against Vande Mataram Saturday to set the stage for an intense political battle with Congress and the wider ‘secular’ class for their objections to the national song’s full version by announcing a nationwide campaign.The campaign, approved at a meeting of the new office-bearers under party chief Nitin Nabin, will focus on the song’s association with freedom struggle, opposition by Pakistan’s founder M A Jinnah and other Muslim hardliners which led Congress to prune it and “communal pressure or narrow vote-bank considerations” driving the current protests against the national song.The meeting adopted a four-page resolution, accusing Congress of “bowing before the same politics of appeasement” to which it had yielded in 1937, enabling Jinnah-led Muslim League to impose communal demands even upon national symbols.BJP’s decision to launch the 10-point campaign comes after Congress asserted that it will stick to its 1937 resolution that had adopted the first two stanzas of Vande Mataram to signal its defiance of the notification restoring its full version for all official events and Parliament passing a law making any insult to the song a penal offence. With Gen Z emerging as an axis of political mobilisation for its rivals after their successful protest over paper leaks, the campaign also seeks to target its pitch for Vande Mataram at the youth.PM Modi visited party headquarters to interact with the new team. Organisational meetings are all about new ideas aimed at strengthening the party and deepening connection with the people, he said.In its resolution, BJP marshalled comments of stalwarts like Gandhi and C Rajagopalachari to hit back at its rivals, who have accused it of stoking political divide over the song. It framed its campaign as a contest between the song’s rich legacy versus a bid to truncate it to appease Muslim fundamentalists.
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It cited Gandhi’s 1939 comments: “I associated the purest national spirit with it (Vande Mataram). It never occurred to me that it was a Hindu song or meant only for Hindus. Unfortunately, now we have fallen on evil days.” Nabin accused Congress of sowing the same seeds of division that it did in 1937 by adopting a truncated version under the Muslim League’s pressure.Month-long campaign for PM Modi’s birthdaySeveral youth-centric programmes will be part of BJP’s month-long campaign from Modi’s birthday on Sept 17, with the annual “sewa” programme turning special this time as he will also be completing 25 years as head of a govt.
