The recent parliamentary debate marking the 150th anniversary of Vande Mataram should have been an occasion for historical reflection and constitutional maturity. Instead, it exposed a familiar pattern in contemporary politics: the selective appropriation of religious concepts to legitimise a majoritarian cultural argument, while flattening both theology and constitutional ethics in the process.
Defence Minister Rajnath Singh’s invocation of the Islamic concept of UmmahatulMumineen – the wives of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, revered as “Mothers of the Believers” – was presented as an attempt at reassurance. His argument was that just as Muslims revere these figures without worshipping them, reverence for the motherland in Vande Mataram should not be seen as idolatrous or anti-Islamic. On the surface, this appeared conciliatory. In substance, it was deeply flawed, both theologically and constitutionally.
Respect Is Not Worship, But Context Is Everything
Islam indeed makes a clear distinction between respect (ta‘zeem) and worship (ibadah). Muslims revere the Prophet’s wives as UmmahatulMumineen because the Qur’an itself confers this moral and social status upon them. Yet this reverence is inseparable from tauheed– the uncompromising monotheism that forbids worship of anyone or anything other than God.
The analogy collapses because Vande Mataram, particularly in its original literary and symbolic context, goes beyond respect. Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s Anandamath explicitly visualises the nation as a goddess, drawing imagery from Durga and Lakshmi. This is not a secondary or accidental layer; it is integral to the work’s metaphysical imagination. The issue for many Muslims has never been nationalism per se, but the theological leap from love of land to sacralisation of land.
AIMIM president Asaduddin Owaisi’s intervention, therefore, was not an act of obstruction but of clarification. By pointing out that Muslims also refer to the Qur’an as Ummul Kitab – the Mother of all Books – without worshipping it, he underscored a basic Islamic principle: metaphor does not dissolve theology. Respectful language does not suspend doctrinal boundaries.To collapse these distinctions is not bridge-building; it is appropriation.
The Constitution Settled This QuestionDecades Ago
What is striking is that this debate is not new, nor unresolved. The Constituent Assembly, acutely aware of India’s religious diversity, addressed it with wisdom and restraint. In 1937 and again in 1949, national leaders across ideological and religious lines – Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Rabindranath Tagore, and Maulana Abul Kalam Azad – agreed to adopt only the first two stanzas of Vande Mataram as the national song, precisely because they were free from explicit deification.
This was not “appeasement”, as repeatedly alleged during the debate. It was constitutional accommodation, an act of inclusion rooted in the spirit of Articles 25 and 26, which guarantee freedom of conscience and religion. To recast this consensus as a product of communal pressure is to malign not just Nehru or the Congress, but the ethical intelligence of the freedom movement itself.
Indeed, Maulana Azad’s position is particularly instructive. A devout Muslim and a committed nationalist, he consistently argued that patriotism must never be coercive. Love for the nation, he believed, derives its strength from voluntary moral commitment, not enforced ritual conformity.
When Theology Is Reduced to Rhetoric
Rajnath Singh’s reference to UmmahatulMumineen reveals a deeper problem in today’s political discourse: the instrumental use of religious vocabulary without responsibility to religious meaning. Islamic concepts are cited not to understand Islam, but to neutralise Muslim objections. This is not interfaith dialogue; it is theological ventriloquism.
Islam does not object to symbols because they are Hinduistic; it objects when reverence crosses into worship. Nor does the Constitution ask citizens to abandon their beliefs at the gates of nationalism. On the contrary, Indian secularism, unlike its European counterpart, is premised on principled distance, not cultural erasure.
Forcing or morally pressuring citizens to sing a song that their conscience finds religiously problematic violates not only Article 25 but also the Supreme Court’s long-standing jurisprudence on freedom of expression and belief. Patriotism, in a constitutional democracy, is measured by fidelity to rights and duties, not by performative displays of cultural uniformity.
History Without Distortion
Much of the debate was also marred by selective history. Claims that Vande Mataram was diluted under Nehru’s presidency due to Muslim opposition ignore the collective nature of the decision-making process and Bankim Chandra’s own complex views on equality and social reform. As Jairam Ramesh rightly pointed out, there is “far too little history in our politics and far too much politics in our history.”
Equally troubling was the attempt to weaponise the song amid parallel debates on voter disenfranchisement, electoral revisions, and alleged targeting of minorities. When cultural symbols are mobilised in moments of political anxiety, they cease to be unifying and become divisive by design.
Constitutional Patriotism, Not Cultural Tests
India’s strength has never lain in enforcing sameness, but in sustaining difference within a shared constitutional framework. The decision to distinguish between the national anthem (Jana Gana Mana) and the national song (Vande Mataram) was itself a recognition of this plurality.
To reopen settled questions is not homage to history; it is an invitation to cultural policing. And when Islamic theology is misrepresented in the process, the damage is twofold: Muslims are made to appear obstinate, and Hindu nationalism is falsely presented as benignly universal.
True national unity does not require Muslims to reinterpret their faith to fit a political narrative, nor Hindus to surrender their symbols. It requires the state to respect both, and to remember that the Constitution, not cultural majoritarianism, is the final arbiter of national identity.
Beyond Symbolism
As the Houses adjourned amid chaos, no resolution emerged – only deeper polarisation. Meanwhile, pressing issues of pollution, unemployment, and democratic accountability remained sidelined. The irony was not lost on the public: a song celebrating a “sujalamsuphalam” land debated in a season of poisoned air and disenfranchised voters.
If Vande Mataram is to retain its moral resonance, it must be rescued from political compulsion. And if Islamic concepts are to be invoked in Parliament, they deserve accuracy, humility, and respect – not rhetorical convenience.
The question is not whether one bows to the nation, but whether the nation bows to its Constitution.