Thursday was Rabindra Jayanti, and a little bit of Gurudeb's common sense is always refreshing. So here's some: "No Muslim can be expected patriotically to worship the 10-handed deity as 'Swadesh'... Parliament is a place of union for all religious groups, and there the song [Vande Mataram] cannot be appropriate."
On Wednesday, no doubt to honour Rabindranath's good sense, a Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) member of Parliament from Uttar Pradesh, named Shafiqur Rahman Barq, decided to stomp out of the Lok Sabha when other members were singing Vande Mataram as is customary when Parliament is adjourned sine die. Barq later explained that, since he was observant and religious and all that stuff, he couldn't possibly bow before anything that wasn't his chosen deity - though that didn't seem to bother any of the other many depressingly religious people we have elected to Parliament, who were singing away, or in most cases opening and closing their mouths in time because they'd forgotten the words. Barq is made of sterner stuff. He later told CNN-IBN: "I request that Muslims not be compelled to sing this song since it is against the Sharia." Actually, I'm pretty sure that in some parts of the world they think all music is against the Sharia.
Barq is not a sympathetic character. Even when he joined the BSP, he was a apparently a little thrown by having to yell out "Jai Bhim" at party conferences, no doubt till someone took him to stand in front of an Ambedkar statue and gently explained exactly which party he'd signed up with. But he did say, with a sad and touching delicacy, that he tries to avoid confrontations: "I usually absent myself when Vande Mataram is played, to avoid any awkward situations."
Here's the thing. I think that Barq is objecting to Vande Mataram for quite the wrong reasons. But he has clearly done so with discretion in the past. And the man has a perfect right to walk out of a room, even if it's the Lok Sabha, if he doesn't want to be around when the song is being sung. Speaker Meira Kumar disagreed, saying "this should never happen again". And here's the Bharatiya Janata Party, brave guardians of the Constitution's dignity and integrity except the secular bits: "Every session of Parliament, which is the temple of democracy... ends with the rendition of the national song Vande Mataram... Unfortunately, the national song has been dishonoured... Those who hate Vande Mataram not only have no right to be a part of Parliament but also have no right to live in this country." Right till I heard them say that, I thought I was totally on board with the concept of citizenship being decided on the basis of musical and literary taste.
Liberal countries understand that their citizens disagree. They don't force a narrow vision of what constitutes patriotism down their throats. Patriotism is itself an unrefined sort of solidarity, but the most debased sort of patriotism is the unthinking worship of national "symbols". Draping yourself in the flag is the true last resort of the scoundrel, as Naveen Jindal's many critics point out. The sort of thinking that contracts love of a country as diverse and inspiring as ours to a song or a pattern on cloth is so painfully reductive that it must be the product of artificially narrowed minds.
The sad part is that, as Robi Babu pointed out in his letter, not all national symbols are chosen with great wisdom. There are parts of our history that we like to forget, because they impinge upon our beloved narrative of Hindu-Muslim solidarity as we fought oh-so-secularly for freedom against the British. But Vande Mataram, even when it began to be sung by freedom fighters in Edwardian Bengal, was seen as divisive and dangerous. And if we were the slightest bit more interested in our own history, we would understand why - not just because the lyrics stress the "hymn" part of "patriotic hymn", but because of the book from which it was taken. Bankimchandra Chatterjee is one of those clay-footed icons with which our intellectual history is unfortunately adorned, people whose photographs are up in libraries and classrooms but whose works are thankfully rarely read. Ananda Math, like much of Bankim's historical fiction, is so pompously regressive and fanatically anti-Muslim that it goes all the way past painful and into comic. The subject is, of course, patriotic war - but not against the British, oh no, but the vile Muslims, and only by good and proper Hindus of the right caste. Indeed, the glorious climax of the book's final version is when arms are laid down because the Muslims have been defeated: "You have set up a British government. Give up your fighting... The English are friends as well as rulers." Not exactly the sort of sentiment national symbols are typically made of.
But India's founders, Nehru in particular, didn't always want to fight the good liberal fight. The Congress decided the song "should be considered apart from the book" and seen as just a "symbol of national resistance". In that, as in so much else, their compromises are coming back to haunt us now. Barq is not a sensible man, but he should not be asked to prove his loyalty to India and the Constitution because he dislikes a compromise choice for national symbol.
Truthfully, if anything is a real national symbol, it is Parliament, representing in its diversity, ours; and in its debate, constitutional liberalism. So forgive me if I roll an eyebrow at the horrified defence of "national symbols" by the same people who've been disrupting and disgracing Parliament for this entire session and the past four years.
mihir.sharma@bsmail.in
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