As the rupee crashed to 90.56 per dollar, IndiGo’s meltdown stranded thousands, unemployment hit 9.2%, and Delhi suffocated under toxic air, parliament chose to spend ten hours arguing over which stanzas of a 150-year-old song should be sung. This farce was not commemoration but calculated distraction – a textbook move from the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP’s) playbook: when governance collapses, ignite a culture war; when economic data indicts you, bury it under manufactured outrage; when West Bengal elections near, weaponise Bengali icons against Bengalis.

The Vande Mataram row is an electoral operation masquerading as nationalism, a saffron-draped diversion designed to polarise rather than govern. It captures the rot at the heart of today’s politics – polarisation over policy, propaganda over history, and a startling disregard for the real crises crushing ordinary Indians.

Theatre of absurd

On December 8, Narendra Modi stood in the Lok Sabha to mark the 150th anniversary of Vande Mataram – but instead of commemoration, he delivered a historical hit job. What he called “an opportunity to reinstate our pride” quickly turned into an attack on Jawaharlal Nehru and the Congress, accusing them of “fragmenting” the song in 1937 and “sowing the seeds of Partition.” His claim was blunt: the Congress Working Committee’s (CWC's) decision to recommend singing only the first two stanzas amounted to capitulation before Jinnah and the Muslim League – an act that, according to him, emboldened separatism. It was a tidy narrative designed for outrage, not truth. The idea that Partition could have been averted had Congress asserted Hindu cultural dominance is not history – it is propaganda crafted for electoral mobilisation.

The choreography made the intention unmistakable. J.P. Nadda echoed the charge in the Rajya Sabha. Amit Shah brushed off all criticism as anti-national. Social media amplification followed. This was no spontaneous reflection on a national symbol; it was a calibrated political operation.

Even the careless errors – ministers repeatedly calling Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay “Bankim Das,” provoking Trinamool Congress (TMC) outrage – exposed the hollowness of their cultural claims. The BJP wraps itself in Vande Mataram today but had no presence in the anti-colonial movement it symbolised. Their sudden reverence rings thin when matched against the opportunism of weaponising a song they neither fought for nor inherited through sacrifice.

Historical falsehoods

The 1937 CWC decision was not Nehru’s personal whim but a collective resolution of the freedom movement’s tallest leaders – Mahatma Gandhi, Subhas Chandra Bose, Rabindranath Tagore, Abul Kalam Azad and Nehru. To isolate Nehru now is to smear an entire generation that paid for independence with prison terms, exile, and blood.

Their reasoning was simple: the first two stanzas of Vande Mataram are civic and inclusive, while the later verses – embedded in Anandamath – invoke Durga and Lakshmi explicitly. Tagore himself urged that only the opening stanzas be sung to preserve unity; he found “no difficulty” in separating the universally acceptable from the religiously specific. Congress sought to ensure that Muslims, who had marched alongside Hindus chanting Vande Mataram during the 1905 Swadeshi agitation, could continue participating without being symbolically excluded. This had nothing to do with appeasing Jinnah, who rejected even the truncated version.

Mallikarjun Kharge reminded parliament that this was the judgment of leaders who endured lathis, bullets, and imprisonment – unlike the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which stayed out of the freedom struggle and, as historians have noted, often aligned with colonial interests. Congress’s “appeasers,” as BJP caricatures them, had more patriotism in their fingernails than the entire Hindutva ecosystem that avoided anti-colonial confrontation.

The real history demolishes BJP’s revisionism. Bankim wrote the song in 1875; it became the battle cry of the 1905 Swadeshi movement, chanted by Hindus and Muslims alike. Bhikaji Cama carried it to the world stage in 1907. And on January 24, 1950, the Constituent Assembly – our most distinguished democratic body – gave Vande Mataram constitutional recognition as the national song, distinct from Jana Gana Mana.

What BJP never mentions is the most telling fact of all: neither the RSS nor the Hindu Mahasabha played any part in this history. They did not march, they did not sing, they did not resist. Their contribution to independence was nil at best and obstructive at worst. For their ideological heirs to now lecture the freedom movement about patriotism is an irony lost only on those allergic to historical truth.

The polarisation playbook

If this were truly about honouring Vande Mataram’s anniversary, parliament would not have ignored the economic freefall and governance failures demanding urgent attention. The real trigger is electoral arithmetic: Bengal votes in 2026, and the BJP still cannot crack Mamata Banerjee’s grip. Having failed through defections, central-agency intimidation, and high-voltage campaigns, the party has returned to its most reliable instrument – cultural polarisation.

The strategy is crude but effective: pit Bankim against Tagore, invent a cultural schism where none exists, and force Bengalis into a false choice. Both icons shaped Indian nationalism; both stood for ethical pluralism; and both would have rejected this sectarian appropriation. Yet the BJP treats their legacies as raw material for communal engineering.

Also read: Politic | Why Patriotism Isn't a Sangh Monopoly

As historian Mridula Mukherjee notes, this government’s instinct is to politicise everything, diverting public attention from economic distress to manufactured cultural battles. Whenever unemployment surges, the rupee sinks, or governance failures stack up, the BJP reaches for identity-based distraction to “frighten and divide people.”

The party has followed the same script repeatedly – weaponising food habits, clothing, festivals, even bizarre claims about opponents stealing buffaloes or mangalsutras. The goal is constant: stoke insecurity so citizens vote on fear rather than performance.

This isn’t limited to rhetoric. Adityanath has made Vande Mataram compulsory in educational institutions; BJP leaders in Hyderabad demanded it be sung in municipal meetings; a Maharashtra minister declared that those unwilling to sing should “leave the country”. The message is unmistakable: dissent equals disloyalty.
Priyanka Gandhi spelt out the political calculus – this controversy is about “Bengal elections and discrediting freedom fighters.” Kharge was blunt: it’s a smokescreen to bury economic collapse. While economists called for parliamentary attention to the rupee crisis and rising unemployment, the BJP invested its energies in staging an electoral-cultural drama. This is not nationalism; it is a diversionary tactic masquerading as patriotic concern.

India burns while BJP fiddles with history

The opportunity cost of this parliamentary theatre is staggering. While over ten hours were devoted to relitigating a 1937 decision, urgent contemporary crises received minimal attention. The contrast could not be starker or more damning.

The rupee’s historic collapse: The Indian rupee has crashed to an unprecedented all-time low of 90.56 per dollar – the worst levels in India’s history. This represents a catastrophic depreciation of over 50% since 2014, making it Asia’s worst-performing currency this year.

The crisis accelerated dramatically in December 2025. The rupee breached the psychological barrier of Rs 90 on December 3, hitting 90.17, then continued its free fall to 90.56 by December 11-12. Corporate dollar outflows for year-end international payments, combined with the absence of a US-India trade deal following failed negotiations, have deepened the currency’s collapse. Every percentage point of rupee depreciation makes imports more expensive, fuels inflation, increases foreign debt burdens for Indian companies, and erodes the purchasing power of every citizen.

Depleting foreign exchange reserves: India’s foreign exchange reserves, after touching a peak of about $704.9 billion in September 2024, have since declined and are now hovering around the high-$687 billion range as of December 2025, reflecting persistent interventions by the RBI to support the rupee. The RBI has sold billions of dollars in multiple tranches to support the rupee, including heavy selling in August and ongoing net sales into late 2025. The December 5 decision to cut interest rates by 25 basis points – despite the currency’s weakness – signals that policymakers have effectively abandoned defending the rupee in favour of stimulating a slowing economy. This demands urgent parliamentary scrutiny, comprehensive policy response, and honest acknowledgment of economic mismanagement. Instead, parliament debated song lyrics.

Unemployment crisis: Unemployment, according to CMIE, spiked to 9.2% in June 2024 – an eight-month high – and hovered around 8% again by November 2024, reflecting persistent job distress despite government claims of recovery. Youth unemployment is even higher. Millions of Indians, particularly young people, cannot find work despite government claims of being the “fastest-growing major economy.” This employment crisis destroys individual lives and families while representing colossal waste of India’s demographic dividend. The labour force participation rate remains modest at around 55.1%, with female participation lagging at approximately 33.7%, indicating significant underutilisation of human capital in the workforce. This demands emergency intervention, policy innovation, and institutional reform. Instead, parliament debated 19th-century poetry.

Infrastructure and service collapse: IndiGo, India’s largest airline, experienced operational collapse in December 2025, leaving thousands of passengers stranded across airports nationwide. This crisis in critical infrastructure demands regulatory oversight, passenger protection measures, and investigation into systemic failures. Instead, parliament prioritised historical grievances over contemporary consumer protection. This has exposed even the middle classes going gaga over Modi to government’s mismanagement.

Environmental emergency: Delhi and northern India choked under hazardous pollution levels, with air quality reaching emergency levels that endanger public health, particularly for children and the elderly. This environmental and public health crisis demands comprehensive action on stubble burning, vehicular emissions, industrial pollution, and urban planning. Instead, parliament debated which stanzas properly honour the motherland while that motherland’s air became unbreathable.

Trade deficit explosion: By October 2025, India’s merchandise trade deficit surged to a record $41.68 billion as imports jumped to a historic $76.06 billion while exports fell nearly 12%, reflecting sluggish global demand and tariff headwinds. Exports to key markets such as the U.S. also declined amid punitive tariffs of up to 50% on several Indian goods, especially in labour-intensive sectors like textiles, gems and jewellery, and seafood – a trend analysts warn could significantly weaken India’s export competitiveness.

Hunger and malnutrition: India’s Global Hunger Index ranking remains in the ‘serious’ category (102 out of 123 countries), lagging behind many neighbours and well below expectations for a middle-income country, even as some African and South Asian peer groups perform better – an embarrassment for a nation claiming superpower status. Malnutrition, food insecurity, and agricultural distress affect hundreds of millions of citizens. This demands urgent policy attention, resource allocation, and honest assessment of welfare schemes. Instead, parliament engaged in cultural one-upmanship.

The list continues: data suppression and manipulation undermining evidence-based policy; electoral integrity concerns; institutional capture; and persistent inflation eroding middle-class savings. Each of these issues affects millions of Indians daily. Each demands parliamentary time, expert testimony, and legislative action. Each was sidelined for BJP's electoral theatre in Bengal.

History as political weapon

The Vande Mataram dispute is part of a broader pattern: the BJP turns history into a political weapon. It cherry-picks facts, converts collective decisions into alleged personal betrayals, erases the RSS’s absence from the freedom struggle, and manufactures heroes and villains through hindsight stripped of context.

This method serves several purposes. It lets the BJP falsely claim the mantle of the independence movement, smear Congress as “anti-national,” reopen long-settled debates to stoke communal divides, and divert attention from present governance failures. The irony is stark: a party that shouts “tukde-tukde gang” is itself splintering the consensus the freedom fighters laboured to build. They extol Vande Mataram while presiding over a collapsing economy and a rupee that has crossed Rs 90 per dollar.

Such historical manipulation is corrosive to constitutional democracy. Coercing cultural conformity violates India’s pluralistic ethos, equating dissent with disloyalty chills debate, and using parliament for propaganda undermines the institution. Most dangerously, it sets a precedent for endless political relitigation of settled questions. If an 87-year-old decision can be demonised today, nothing stops future regimes from reopening any chapter of history, trapping the nation in perpetual, manufactured conflict instead of real governance.

Cultural icons as electoral pawns

The Bengali dimension of this controversy is crucial. Bankim is a pillar of Bengali literature and nationalism, and Vande Mataram carries deep cultural resonance. For a party with no organic roots in Bengal’s intellectual or political traditions to weaponise these icons against Bengalis themselves is pure opportunism.

Bengal’s intellectual heritage – Bankim, Tagore, Bose, and many others – favoured nuance, synthesis, and inclusive nationalism. The 1937 decision was consistent with that ethos: it honoured Bankim’s creation while ensuring its universal appeal. Calling this betrayal or weakness is to misread Bengali culture entirely.

The BJP’s strategy is transparent: manufacture Bengali resentment over supposed disrespect to Bankim, cast itself as the defender of Bengali pride against an “outsider” Mamata Banerjee, and inject communal tension by harping on Muslim inclusion. This ignores a basic fact: it was Bengal’s own greatest minds who shaped the 1937 decision. To suggest Bengalis cannot see through this manipulation is an insult to their intelligence.

As Mahua Moitra noted, the BJP is “playing the Vande Mataram card” purely for “2026 Bengal advantage.” The real question for Bengal is whether it will let its cultural heritage be twisted into a tool against its own political and economic interests.

A nation deserves better

India is in deep distress. The rupee is in free fall against the dollar, unemployment is gutting an entire generation, infrastructure is decaying, institutions are battered, and trade deficits loom as new US tariffs threaten millions of jobs. And the ruling party’s answer is not governance – it is another cultural distraction.

The Vande Mataram drama is a perfect snapshot of this political bankruptcy. It substitutes electoral strategy for national interest, weaponises history instead of learning from it, and fans division while real problems intensify. It treats citizens as props while pretending to honour their heritage.

Also read: Dear Modi, Bankim Chandra Chattopadhya is Not Your ‘Da’

A government serious about patriotism would tackle the currency crisis, invest in the young, negotiate trade challenges, and repair creaking institutions. A real nationalist leadership would be confronting India’s economic emergencies, not excavating an 87-year-old debate for a Bengal election.

Those who carried Vande Mataram into the freedom struggle – who marched, suffered, and bled – did not do so to watch their legacy turned into a campaign tool. They built an inclusive movement; their successors rewrite that history to inflame passions and avoid accountability.

As the 2026 Bengal polls approach, voters must decide whether they will allow their cultural icons to be conscripted into the BJP’s polarisation machine, or demand governance over grievance, solutions over slogans, competence over cultural warfare.

Meanwhile, parliament debates song lyrics as the rupee sinks, the economy gasps, and citizens wait for leaders who actually lead. The choice before India is blunt: a politics that honours the past by securing the future, or a politics that weaponises the past to evade present failures.

Vande Mataram means “I bow to thee, Mother” – but which Mother India is being honoured? The imaginary mother conjured for cultural combat, or the real motherland of 1.4 billion people who need jobs, stability, clean air, and a currency that does not collapse?

History will not be kind to those who spent their political capital on symbolic warfare while the country’s economic foundations crumbled beneath them.

This article went live on December fourteenth, two thousand twenty five, at fifty-two minutes past six in the evening.

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