[Assam] Assam does not need ‘Vande Mataram’, NOR does she need followers of dangerous CULTS in her soil.

[Bartta Bistar]

*Guwahati, Friday, September 1, 2006*
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*Vande Mataram: a tribute to Motherland*

*http://www.assamtribune.com/
*By Sivasish Thakur
 GUWAHATI, Aug 31 – Vande Mataram, the national song of the country,
continues to be embroiled in a long-drawn controversy that has resurfaced
once again even as it is all set to complete its hundredth year on September
7. Written by the celebrated poet of West Bengal, Bankim Chandra
Chatttopadhyay, in 1876, Vande Mataram was formally adopted as the national
song at the Calcutta session of the Indian National Congress on September 7,
1906.

The opposition to the song, as put forward by the Muslim clergy, stems from
the appeal in the song to worship the motherland (Vande Mataram), which,
they say, is against the basic tenets of Islam that strictly prohibit
worship of anyone except Allah.

While the controversy continues to hog the limelight, drawing different
responses from the public, political parties and the intelligentsia alike,
not many would be knowing that a scholar from the State has done an in-depth
analysis of the issue, and a book, billed as the first-of-its-kind on the
subject, is ready to hit the stands within a month.

The author of Vande Mataram and Islam, Prof Aurobindo Mazumdar, retired Head
of the Department of Mass Communication and Journalism, Gauhati University,
terms his endeavour as a dispassionate analysis of the song as also the
history of the country's Freedom Struggle.

"The history of Vande Mataram is the history of the Freedom Struggle itself,
and the two cannot be separated…To forget Vande Mataram is to disregard the
history of the Freedom Struggle and vice versa," Prof Mazumdar says.

How does he see the controversy dogging the national song for decades? "I
would say that much of the controversy surrounding the song is totally
uncalled for that originates from a lack of understanding of its very
essence. This is unfortunate politicization and the consequent victimization
of a song that deserves to be the national anthem," he says. "Love and
affection for the motherland is a most natural thing – something that ought
to be placed above the narrow confines of murky politics, and it is
regrettable that a noble song should find itself at the center of an
unnecessary controversy," he adds.

The book, divided into several chapters, gives a chronological account of
Vande Mataram and the Freedom Movement. "I have sought to view it from
different perspectives – from the point of view of the Congress, the Muslim
League, the British, the common people, during the Freedom Struggle, during
Partition, after Independence and so on," Prof Mazumdar says.

There is also a chapter dealing with Vande Mataram and Asom. "The song
stirred the souls of the masses with a feeing to sacrifice everything to
liberate the motherland from British imperialism. This clarion call to break
the shackles of slavery reverberated across the nation, and Assam, too, was
greatly moved by the appeal," he says. A number of books, poems, dramas,
etc., written in Assamese have references of Vande Mataram, he adds.

According to Prof Mazumdar, who has also authored the much-acclaimed Indian
Press Freedom Struggle published by Orient Longman, Vande Mataram and Islam
is the first book written on the subject. "The book involves an unbiased
observation and detached dissection of every word of Vande Mataram," he
says.

A lot of painstaking effort has gone into the book. Prof Mazumdar, who
started to work on it in 1998, says that he had to undertake substantial
research on the subject, which also entailed a lot of travelling to
different parts of the country and interacting with people, particularly
veterans associated with the Freedom Struggle.
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