The Union minister for home affairs has, of late, spoken more about some stanzas of a song than he has about the fact that the Delhi Police and Rapid Action Force, who are directly accountable to him, unleashed lethal violence on peacefully protesting students in Delhi.Recently, he has spoken again about this song – Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay’s ‘Vande Mataram’.He has called the Congress Party’s decision to continue singing only the first two stanzas of this song, in keeping with their party’s resolution in 1937, an ‘act of treason’. And he went on to say that the Congress Working Committee’s (CWC’s) 1937 resolution to only sing the first two stanzas of this song was the ‘original’ foundation of partition, based on the ‘two nation theory’.This is about as absurd as his minions saying (as they did, recently, in Kolkata) that Vladimir Illyich Lenin, who died in 1924, was responsible for the partition of India in 1947.That aside, since he has raised the question of the 1937 CWC resolution, let’s see what led to it.The historian Sabyasachi Bhattacharya in his book on the subject – ‘Vande Mataram – The Biography of a Song’ (Primus Books, Delhi, 2019) had done a fair bit of archival research into the factors behind the 1937 CWC resolution. I know that history is not the Union home minister’s strong suit, but that shouldn’t prevent us from examining the historical record.When CWC asked for Tagore’s views on Vande MataramBhattacharya’s conclusion, based on his study of the relevant archives, is straightforward. First, Subhas Chandra Bose, and then the members of the CWC who had gathered for the Calcutta session of the Congress in 1937, wrote to Rabindranath Tagore asking for his view on the words of Vande Mataram.In his reply to Bose, Tagore made his position clear: (for the complete text of the letter see – ‘Selected Letters of Rabindranath Tagore’ edited by Krishna Dutta and Andrew Robinson, Cambridge University Press’, page 487.)“The core of Vande Mataram is a hymn to goddess Durga: this is so plain that there can be no debate about it. Of course Bankim Chandra does show Durga to be inseparably united with Bengal in the end, but no Mussulman can be expected patriotically to worship the ten-handed deity. The novel Anandamath is a work of literature, and so the song is appropriate in it. But Parliament is a place of union for all religious groups, and there the song cannot be appropriate.”On October 26, 1937, three days before the Congress session, Tagore wrote again, this time to Jawaharlal Nehru, in reply to a letter from him, on the same subject. Given Tagore’s deep connection with Vande Mataram (he was the first to sing it, having set it to music, in 1896) it was natural that Nehru should think it necessary to consult Tagore. Again, Tagore suggested that only the first two stanzas of the song should be used when sung in a public gathering. His advice had a profound influence on the final resolution.‘Brought up as I was in the monotheistic ideals of my father, I could have no sympathy’Let’s read an excerpt from Tagore’s letter to Nehru of October, 1937.“To me the spirit of tenderness and devotion expressed in its first portion, the emphasis it gave to beautiful and beneficent aspects of our motherland made 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 sentiments of which, brought up as I was in the monotheistic ideals of my father, I could have no sympathy.”(For the complete text of this sequence of correspondence between Nehru and Tagore see pages 825-830 of Volume 8 of the Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru edited by S. Gopal, published by the Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund and Orient Longman, New Delhi.)The CWC, in keeping with these sentiments, therefore decided to use only the first two stanzas. Because, as Tagore made explicit, the later verses contained idolatrous religious imagery that could alienate non-Hindus and even people like him, who were members of the Brahmo Samaj. The intention was to preserve the song as a national symbol while avoiding language that could undermine popular unity.Incidentally, Nehru himself was not initially personally averse to the singing of the entire song. We know this from an article by Krishna Kripalani ‘Bande Mataram and Indian Nationalism’ published in the Viswa Bharati News, October 1937, page 31. Dutta & Robinson, in their annotation to Tagore’s letter to Bose (which mentions Kripalani’s text) cite this publication and say that Kripalani “openly disagreed with Nehru’s opinion that Bande Mataram was ‘harmless’, and supported the Muslim objections”.Union home minister Amit Shah, in his recent statement, said that the curtailing of the song to the first two stanzas was a result of the ‘appeasement politics’ of the Congress. This is a dog-whistle for saying that the Congress don’t want more than the first two stanzas sung because they know that Muslims will not sing it. Krishna Kripalani and Rabindranath Tagore were the first persons to suggest that. But Tagore didn’t talk only about ‘Muslim objections’ to the complete lyrics of the song.He also clearly talks about his own discomfort at the idolatrous portions of the song, given the Brahmo Samaj values that he was brought up in. If the home minister wants to be honest (which I doubt very much) he would be equally concerned about the ‘appeasement’ of the most minuscule minority in this country – the adherents of the Brahmo faith – which includes the Jorasanko Tagore family.So, on this question, the history is clear: it was not Nehru, and it was not Subhas Bose, nor any other member of the 1936 CWC, who proposed limiting Vande Mataram to its first two stanzas. It was Rabindranath Tagore.Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay wrote the hymn in 1882 and died in 1894. Tagore set it to music, during Chattopadhyay’s lifetime, helped popularise it, and was the first to sing it during the Calcutta Congress session of 1896.There is no denying that it was Tagore’s rendition of the song that gave it much of the force and emotional resonance it acquired during the struggle against colonialism in Bengal, and also elsewhere. But then, it was also Tagore that advocated a degree of restraint with regard to the public performance of the song.So, if the home minister has the courage to do so, he might consider confronting the historical fact directly. Let me repeat what I have said already – the person who wisely edited Vande Mataram for a broader usage was Rabindranath Tagore. It was neither Nehru nor Subhas Bose nor any other member of the Congress Working Committee in 1937. They merely accepted Tagore’s well thought out suggestion.Tagore, the OG ‘Dimaaagi Naxal’?Given his train of thought, It would be in the fitness of things if the home minister were to say that the original ‘traitor’ (or ‘OG Dimaagi Naxal’) as far as this question is concerned, is none other than Tagore.That might help spare us the pain of having to listen to his boss’s repeated attempts at mangling the poetry of Tagore at public gatherings. After all, if Tagore is declared persona non grata then the prime minister might stop trying to channel him, utterly unnecessarily.I, personally, have still not gotten over his attempts to utter the words ‘khol dwar khol’ in the simple and lyrical Tagore song that I know from childhood – ‘O Ré Grihobashi’.The unsung parts of Jana Gana ManaFinally, when it comes to the ‘unsung’ parts of well known songs, let us also remember that ‘Jana Gana Mana’ by our OG Dimaagi Naxal Tagore (written as a Brahmo Hymn and turned into the National Anthem after Tagore’s death, without his consent) is also generally sung in a truncated form. The original text of the song also includes the following lyrics ‘ঘোরতিমিরঘন নিবিড় নিশীথে পীড়িত মূর্ছিত দেশেজাগ্রত ছিল তব অবিচল মঙ্গল নতনয়নে অনিমেষে।দুঃস্বপ্নে আতঙ্কে রক্ষা করিলে অঙ্কে’ “Ghora-timira-ghana nibida nishithe peedita murchita deshe, jagrata chilo taba abichala mangala natanayane animeshe, dusshopne atanke raksha korile anke” (In the dense darkness of a profound and fearful night,when the land lay stricken and unconscious,your steadfast benediction remained awake,with lowered, unblinking eyesIn nightmare and terror, you sheltered us in your embrace) and “অহরহ তব আহ্বান প্রচারিত, শুনি তব উদার বাণীহিন্দু বৌদ্ধ শিখ জৈন পারসিক মুসলমান খৃস্টানীপূরব পশ্চিম আসে তব সিংহাসন-পাশেপ্রেমহার হয় গাঁথা।” “ahoroho tobo ahoban procharito,suni tobo udaro baniHindu Buoddho Shikh Jeinno Paroshiko,Musolman Chirstanipurobo pachimo aasetobo singhasono pashePremahar hoy gatha” (Your call is announced continuously,we heed Your gracious call.The Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Jains, Parsis, Muslims and Christians,the East and the West come together,to the side of Your throneand weave the garland of love)Given the current nightmare this country is undergoing, and the way in which the lyrics of this song directly contradict the Hindu Rashtra persuasion of the current regime, I fully understand the home minister’s tight lipped silence about the ‘unsung’ portion of Jana Gana Mana.Is anyone advising him of how much Tagore he could possibly tolerate ? Maybe they can take some steps forward towards proscribing the troublesome contents of his legacy. That would be in keeping with their diseased and restricted imagination.Shuddhabhrata Sengupta is with the Raqs Collective in New Delhi.