Vande Mataram controversy

Amid controversy over Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind’s resolution asking Muslims not to recite Vande Mataram, the government tried to distance itself from the episode saying home minister P Chidambaram was not present when the resolution was adopted. India’s national song ‘Vande Matram’, which came under attack on Tuesday at the Darul Uloom Deoband seminary, evolved from being just a poem into a cry for freedom from British rule. According to historian Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, the Sanskrit poem was written by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee in the early 1870s. ‘Vande Matram’, which translates to “Mother, I bow to thee”, became the rallying cry for Indians fighting colonial rule.
It attained popularity only after 1905, when Bengal was sought to be partitioned. In his book, he says the first two stanzas have to be distinguished from the full text. “...This distinction between the originally composed song and the additions made later to fit into the narrative of the novel is important, because it was the latter part which contained those explicitly Hindu and idolatrous imageries which were objected to by many outside the Hindu community,” his book says.