Never ending Vande Mataram controversy

It's supposed to be the centenary year of the Vande Mataram song written somewhere in 1870's by Bunkim Chandra Chatterjee and later adopted as the National Anthem. There is already a debate that this centenary year itself disputed since nobody knows when the song became the official national song and what the word Vande means- Salutation, praise, worship or combination of all of them. As usual Arjun Singh has managed to rake up a meaningless controversy with the mandate to Educational Insitutions and hastily taking a "U' turn later.

If it means worship in the context of mother then the real issue snowballs since Islam permits only worship of the ' Allah' as brought out in this interview by a leading cleric who points out that Muslims in the country would never have any objections to salutation or praise of Mother as in ARR's ' Maa Tuje Salam' as is the case with many other Islamic countries like Bangladesh(mother) or Jordan (salutation to their King)

But in this beautiful analysis Vir Sanghvi brings out the nuances of the entire controversy and exposes the true colors of all the concerned parties including the RSS, BJP, Congress and the Islamic organizations. Some of his closing comments need to be reproduced for those of you who don't have the time to go through this article.

The moment you force people to be patriotic, you devalue patriotism. We have become so imprisoned in our petty politics and our pointless little debates that we have lost sight of the big picture. Secularism does not mean sterilisation. And patriotism is not a section of the Indian Penal Code.

RK