Vande Mataram row: Pinarayi accuses Congress of soft-hindutva shift
Thiruvananthapuram, Aug 15 (IANS) The Congress’s decision on Saturday to sing the full version of Vande Mataram at the AICC headquarters and at official Independence Day functions in Congress‑ruled Karnataka, Himachal Pradesh and Telangana has provided Opposition Leader Pinarayi Vijayan fresh ammunition to accuse the party of embracing a “soft‑Hindutva” line.
In a sharply worded social media post, Vijayan said the Congress had once again exposed where its political commitments lay, arguing that the party was moving away from India’s secular nationalist tradition and towards the Hindutva agenda of the RSS.
The controversy has also acquired a Kerala dimension, with the full version of Vande Mataram being rendered at an official function at the State Forest Department headquarters.
Political observers noted that the song was heard in venues where the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has an established presence in Kerala.
At the Lok Bhavan, Governor Rajendra Vishwanath Arlekar led from the front, singing Vande Mataram during the Independence Day function.
Vijayan recalled that the Congress Working Committee had decided in 1937 that, given the religious imagery in the song, only its first two stanzas should be sung at platforms of the national movement.
He said even when the Constituent Assembly accorded Vande Mataram the status of the national song in 1950, it was the first two stanzas that were intended.
The Congress, he alleged, was now throwing its own secular legacy into the dustbin by opting for the complete version.
Vijayan also referred to the Supreme Court’s March 2026 ruling in the Mohammed Saeed Noori case, which, he said, made it clear that singing Vande Mataram at government functions was not mandatory.
He argued that there was no legal obligation to sing the song and that failure to do so was not a punishable offence under the Centre’s amended law either.
Against this backdrop, he described the full rendition at official functions as an attempt to appease the RSS and accused the Congress of betraying the country’s secular society.
The Opposition Leader went a step further, accusing the Congress of copying Sangh Parivar positions in an attempt to compete with majoritarian politics.
“The latest evidence is that the Congress has become the B‑team of the RSS,” said Vijayan.
The remarks add another layer to the increasingly sharp political contest between the Congress‑led government and the Left in Kerala, with Vande Mataram emerging as an unexpected flashpoint on the eve of Independence Day.
–IANS
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