A weak PM looking to Vande Mataram as a diversion: Priyanka Gandhi Vadra

No debate is possible on the national song, and yet, Parliament is debating the issue as of today, 8 December 2025. Parliament should have been discussing issues like pollution in our cities, unemployment among our youth, and inflation; instead, it is wasting its valuable time in discussing why only the first few stanzas of a 150-year-old poem was accepted as our national song and not the rest.

This was the core of Congress MP and general-secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra's address in the Lok Sabha today, during a debate on the national song Vande Mataram, composed by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay in the 1870s and first published as part of his Bengali novel Anandamath in 1882.

“Let me remind people that even our national anthem (Jana Gana Mana) is only part of a much longer poem,” Priyanka also said as part of her speech, which was one of those in response to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's opening address on the debate.

The only reasons for the debate on Vande Mataram, the Congress MP from Wayanad said, were that there is an upcoming Assembly election in West Bengal, and PM Modi wants to "divert people’s attention from the failures of his governance" by bringing allegations against those who sacrificed themselves for India's independence.

"This is not the same confident Narendra Modi that we we saw earlier. His aura has taken a hit, his confidence is shaken and he badly needs a diversion because his policies have been disastrous for the country and people are not happy," she added.

That is why the PM is always looking to the past and digging out mud, hoping some of it will stick. He is not confident enough to dwell on the present and the future, she said.

PM Modi is undoubtedly a good orator, the Congress MP said, but then twisted the knife by pointing out that he often "errs on facts". Accusing the PM of stating half-truths, she said the PM in his speech did not mention in which party session the song was sung first. It was not a session of the Hindu Mahasabha or the RSS, but the Calcutta session of the Congress in 1886 that Rabindranath Tagore sang it first, she reminded the House.

Reading out from letters exchanged between Subhas Chandra Bose — who presided over the Congress session — and Jawaharlal Nehru, Priyanka recalled that Tagore and the Congress leaders were on the same page.

In every Congress session since then, Vande Mataram has been sung collectively, she reminded the BJP, and asked if the BJP had been doing the same. When the song was adopted as the national song by the Constituent Assembly in 1950, all the stalwarts like Dr B.R. Ambedkar, Dr Rajendra Prasad, Nehru, Sardar Patel and even Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, the founder of the Bharatiya Jan Sangh (the BJP's predecessor), were present and nobody voiced any objection.

Now after all these years, PM Modi is insulting them and the Constituent Assembly for adopting Vande Mataram as the national song. Is the BJP now so arrogant that its leaders have started putting themselves above these stalwarts, she wondered.