Amidst the political row over India’s national song ‘Vande Mataram’, Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan on Monday led a “mass singing” of the national song at Delhi University’s Ramjas College. “May our young companions sing the full version of Vande Mataram and become carriers of its spirit at the University of Delhi,” he said.
At an event to commemorate 150 years of the song’s writing being held at the Ramjas College, Mr. Pradhan also called for the singing of the national song to be made a tradition across classrooms at the University of Delhi, asserting that the varsity “will play a major role in transforming the timeless spirit of Vande Mataram into a people’s movement and connecting it with future generations”.
This comes after Prime Minister Narendra Modi last week accused the Congress party of having removed key stanzas of the original song in 1937 while speaking at an event on November 7 to mark 150 years since Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay wrote it. The Congress hit back by arguing that Mr. Modi had “insulted” Rabindranath Tagore and the Congress Working Committee of the time, and that the PM was trying to distort history to deflect attention from “pressing national concerns”.
