The Vande Mataram row: Here's what Nehru said

Composed by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, 'Vande Mataram' was first published in the literary journal Bangadarshan on November 7, 1875. Chatterjee later incorporated the hymn in his immortal novel 'Anandamath' which was published in 1882.

It was set to music by Rabindranath Tagore and became an integral part of India's civilizational, political and cultural consciousness.

On its 150th anniversary today however, the song became a battleground for the ruling BJP and the Congress with the former accusing late Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru of dropping the last four stanzas of the six part hymn to "pander to the Muslim League" at the time.

Through its October 29, 1937, resolution, the Congress Working Committee adopted the first two stanzas of the poem. The ones dropped contained references to Goddess Durga and others.

The Congress maintained the stanzas were dropped on the advice of Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore whom Nehru, then Congress president, consulted on the matter.

In his work "Vande Mataram",  Sabyasachi Bhattacharya's records how Subhash Chandra Bose was eager that Vande Mataram be adopted by the Congress and Bose wanted Mahatma Gandhi and Nehru engaged on the matter.

"Meanwhile, Nehru had decided to consult Rabindranath Tagore. Nehru had only recently read Anandamath. Only six days before the Congress Working Committee meeting, Nehru wrote about the poem,” states the book.

Nehru said, "I have managed to get an English translation of Anandamath and I am reading it to get the background of the song. It does seem that this background is likely to irritate the Muslims."

Nehru also found the language of Vande Mataram difficult and said that "I do not understand it without the help of a dictionary."

Sabyasachi Bhattacharya's book Vande Mataram further records Rabindratah Tagore's response to Nehru's queries about the song.

It quoted Tagore's opinion on the hymn as follows "To me the spirit of tenderness and devotion expressed in its first portion, the emphasis it gave to the beautiful and beneficent aspects of our motherland made a special appeal, so much so that I found no difficulty in dissociating it from the rest of the poem and from those portions of the book of which it is a part, with all the sentiments of which, brought up as I was in the monotheistic ideals of my father, I could have no sympathy."

The CWC on October 29, 1937, dropped four stanzas of the song and adopted the first two which Rabindranath Tagore approved of.