The Parliamentary Debates that put the Government on the mat

 

The Parliamentary Debates that put the Government on the Mat

The two debates on Vande Mataram (“Hail to the Motherland”) and Electoral Reforms in the Parliament between 8^th and 10^th December 2025 have united the opposition parties like never before to corner and expose the government’s misadventure. 

In the name of celebrating the 150^th anniversary of the national song adopted from the poem Vande Mataram composed by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, the government’s attempt to give a communal colour to the song has backfired.

The debate on the ‘Electoral Reforms’ gave the INDIA bloc members of parliament an opportunity to expose the partisan role of the Election Commission, particularly that of the CEO Gyanesh Kumar, to benefit the ruling party, through the SIR exercise and the vote chori. The debates were a diversionary tactic to avoid discussion on several burning national issues.

 

The Debate on Vande Mataram

 

Opening the debate on Vande Mataram on December 8 in Lok Sabha Narendra Modi accused Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru of practicing ‘appeasement politics’ to ‘divide’ Vande Mataram that, according to him, led to the partition of India. 

It was evident that the debate was announced in view of the West Bengal Assembly election due in a few months. Otherwise, there was no need to have a debate on the national song.  It also provided Modi a fodder to revert to his favorite false narrative of targeting Pandit Nehru to discredit him by distorting and manufacturing history.

 

Priyanka Gandhi, hitting back at Modi, provided a chronology of Vande Mataram. The poem Vande Mataram with only two stanzas was written in 1875, and seven years later, in 1882, four more stanzas were added and included in Bankim Chandra Chatterjee's novel Anand Matt.

In 1896; Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore recited the first two stanzas of the poem at the Indian National Congress session held in Calcutta. The song had served as a rallying point against the partition of Bengal in 1905, and since then it inspired countless freedom fighters. The British government banned the song and imprisoned the freedom fighters who invoked the song.  

 

In the late 1930s, there were communal riots between supporters and opponents of the song. Following the correspondence between Netaji Subhash Chadra Bose, Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore and Pandit Nehru, the Congress Working Committee consisting of 15 members, including the icons of the freedom movement Pandit Nehru (President of the Congress),Sardar Patel, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Rajendra Prasad, Subhash Chandra Bose, Rajagopalachari, JB Kripalani, and Narendra Dev, had unanimously passed a resolution on October 28,1937, adopting the first two original stanzas of Vande Mataram as  a national song in the presence of Mahatma Gandhi and Gurudev Tagore.

 

The text of the resolution:

 

“The Working Committee have given careful consideration to the question that has been raised in regard to the Congress anthem ‘Vande Mataram’.This song has a historic background and has evoked deep enthusiasm and powerful sentiment in the course of our struggle for freedom. It has thus acquired a unique place in the national movement. The Committee recognise the validity of the objections raised by Muslim friends to certain parts of the song. While the Committee have taken note of such objections in so far as it has felt justified in doing so, it is unable to go any further in the matter. The Committee have, however, come to the conclusion that the first two stanzas of the song, which alone have been generally sung on Congress and other public occasions, should be the only stanzas adopted as the national song for the purposes of the Congress and other public bodies and functions .These two stanzas are in no sense objectionable even from the standpoint of those who have raised objections, and they contain the essence of the song. The Committee recommend that wherever the ‘Vande Mataram’ song is sung at national gatherings, only these two stanzas should be sung, and the version and music as prepared by Rabindranath Tagore, should be followed. The Committee trust that this decision will remove all causes of complaint and will have the willing acceptance of all communities in the country.”

 

Gandhiji defended the resolution, writing in Harijan (November 1937): “No matter what its source and howsoever ancient it may be, no song can be the national anthem that does not represent the feelings of the whole nation… It was decided to adopt only the first two stanzas because they are non-objectionable even to a Muslim.” After independence, the Constituent Assembly had adopted the Vande Mataram as a national song on January 24,1950, endorsed by Ambedkar and Shyama Prasad Mukherjee.

 

The national song Vande Mataram, as adopted (Romanised Bengali text)

 

Bandē mātaram
sujalāṁ suphalāṁ
malaẏajaśītalām
śasyaśyāmalāṁ
mātaram!
Bandē mātaram.

Śubhra-jyōṯsnā
pulakita-yāminīm
phullakusumita
drumadalaśōbhinīm,
suhāsinīṁ
sumadhurabhāṣiṇīm
sukhadāṁ baradāṁ
mātaram!
Bandē mātaram.

 

  

The complete original lyrics of the "Vande Mataram” consisting of six stanzas:

Vande Mātaram.
Sujalāṃ suphalāṃ
Malaẏajaśītalām
Śasyaśyāmalāṃ
Mātaram.
Vande Mātaram.

Śubhra-jyotsnā-pulakita-yāminīm
Phullakusumita-drumadalaśobhinīm,
Suhāsinīṃ sumadhurabhāṣinīm
Sukhadāṃ varadāṃ Mātaram.
Vande Mātaram.

Saptakoṭīkanṭha-kala-kala-ninādakarāle
Dvisaptakoṭībhujaidhṛtakharakaravāle,
Avalā kena mā eta bale!
Vahuvaladhāriṇīṃ
Namāmi tāriṇīṃ
Ripudalavāriṇīṃ
Mātaram.
Vande Mātaram.

Tumi vidyā tumi dharmma
Tumi hṛdi tumi marmma
Tvaṃ hi prāṇāḥ śarīre.
Bāhute tumi mā śhakti,
Hṛdaẏe tumi mā bhakti,
Tomārai pratimā gaṛi mandire mandire.

Tvaṃ hi Durgā daśapraharaṇadhārinī
Kamalā kamala-dalavihāriṇī
Vānī vidyādāẏiṇī
Namāmi tvaṃ
Namāmi kamalām
Amalāṃ atulām,
Sujalāṃ suphalāṃ
Mātaram
Vande Mātaram.

Vande Mātaram

Śyāmalāṃ saralāṃ
Susmitāṃ bhūṣitām
Dharaṇīṃ bharanīm
Mātaram.

 

The poem composed in a Sanskritiised Bengali is difficult for common people to understand Even Pandit Nehru, in his letter to Tagore, said that he found it difficult to understand the poem without a dictionary. The latter four stanzas were excluded from the Vande Mataram because they contained explicit allusions to Hindu goddesses (specifically Durga, Lakshmi and Saraswati), which were considered inconsistent with the beliefs of some non-Hindu communities, particularly Muslims, which had raised objections to the whole song. 

 

Thus, Modi was not telling the truth; he was misleading the people and the nation right from the Parliament House. His holding Pandit Nehru singularly responsible for the ‘divide’ of the Vande Mataram and then connecting it to the partition of India is a deliberate distortion of history with a malicious intent not only to discredit him, but also to polarize the people by invoking anti-Muslim sentiments on the eve of Assembly election in West Bengal.  

 

And keeping quiet all these years and now questioning the form of Vande Mataram, by those whose ancestors collaborated with the British and played no role in the freedom struggle, is an insult to all those great souls who took the decision with their great wisdom; and those who led the freedom struggle and made sacrifices. As Jairam Ramesh says, the ruling party members “wanted to be historians, but they have become distorians.”  

  

The Debate on Electoral Reforms

 

The second debate was on Electoral Reforms. Opening the debate in the Lok Sabha on December 9, Manish Tiwari questioned the impartiality of the Election Commission and said that the EC doesn’t have the power to conduct a nationwide SIR of electoral rolls. He also questioned the selection committee that selects the election commissioners. Giving the examples of the developing countries, he demanded reverting to the ballot paper as the EVMs could be manipulated. 

All the opposition leaders who spoke criticized the role of the Election Commission for doing the ruling party's bidding and failing to ensure free and fair elections. The SP leader Akilesh Yadav said that election reforms can only be undertaken if the EC is impartial. He mentioned several cases in which the EC failed to act despite complaints of electoral malpractices during the Uttar Pradesh elections.

 

The opposition leaders said the SIR is a complicated exercise conducted in great haste just before the elections to delete the names of certain sections of people from voter lists. They alleged that the EC was working at the behest of the ruling BJP and that there is huge mistrust and lack of transparency in the election process.

 

The Leader of the Opposition (LOP) Rahul Gandhi has attacked the entire political ecosystem of the Modi government. It is imperative to understand what he has said:

 

“Mahatma Gandhi framed the entire freedom struggle round the concept of Khadi. Khadi is the expression of the people of India. Each fabric has thousands of threads woven together. All threads are equal. In the same way our nation is also a fabric. It is a fabric of 1.5 billion people, woven together by the vote. It is the idea that every person in the Union of India is equal regardless of what religion he comes from, regardless of what community he belongs to, and regardless of what language he speaks, that disturbs my friends in the RSS. The project of the RSS is wholesale capture of the institutional framework of the country. Our institutions are captured. Our education system has been captured. Vice Chancellor after Vice Chancellor after Vice Chancellor is placed, not on merit, not on capability, not on scientific temper, but on the fact that he belongs to a particular organization. They captured the intelligence agencies. They captured the CBI, the ED, and the Income Tax Department; and there is a systematic placement of bureaucrats who favored their ideology...the complete capture of the Election Commission. The Election Commission is doing things completely out of line.”

 

He reiterated the vote theft allegation. He said there were 1.2 lakh duplicate voters in Bihar even after the SIR of electoral rolls. He proved this in Maharashtra, Karnataka and Haryana, showing this is how they are winning elections. The Election Commission has not answered the charges he made in his press presentations.

He wanted to know why the CJI was removed from the selection panel that selects Election Commissioners, and why the ECs are given immunity from any punitive action. Why would the PM and the Home Minister give this tremendous gift of immunity to the ECs.  Why is the rule made to destroy the CCTV footages 45 days after the elections.

It is not a data issue but one of stealing elections. And no Prime Minister in the history of India has done what the Modi government did in December 2023 when it changed the law to grant complete immunity to EC members. 

 

He said: 

“Electoral Reforms are very simple. Government does not want to do that. Number one, give machine-readable voters list to all political parties one month before the election. Second, withdraw the law that destroys CCTV footage; also, tell us what the architecture of the EVM is, and give us access to the EVM … Our experts can go and see what is inside the EVM. Finally, change the law that allows the Election Commissioner to do what he wants to do.  And I want to assure the Election Commissioners, don’t worry, we are going to change the law, and we are going to find you. There is no bigger anti-national act than Vote Chori. When you destroy the vote, you destroy the fabric of this country. You destroy modern India. You destroy the idea of India. Those across the aisle are doing an anti-national act." 

 

Replying to the debate on December 10 in the Lok Sabha, Amit Shah did not provide a specific answer to the issues raised by the Opposition leaders. He accused them of coming with a bogey of Vote Chori to oppose the SIR of electoral rolls because they want to protect ‘infiltrators’ and make them voters. The entire opposition staged a walk out in protest.

Earlier, he made a shocking admission that there is nothing wrong if the RSS people occupy positions in public institutions. After all, he said, Modi and he share an RSS ideological background. He downplays the danger this trend poses if every ruling party recruits people subscribing to its political ideology into public office. It will destroy the entire administrative apparatus, and the very concept of the political neutrality of the bureaucracy, as followed in democratic countries worldwide, to ensure a just and fair public service to the people, going for a toss.