A song that once moved millions to defy colonial rule is now at the centre of a sharp political clash. Odisha Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi fired a pointed broadside at the Indian National Congress on Thursday, 20 August 2026, accusing the party of treating Vande Mataram as 'political property' after its Working Committee decided to limit the singing of the national song to only two stanzas.

Majhi did not mince words. 'Vande Mataram is not a political bargaining chip,' he wrote. 'It is the soul of Bharat's freedom struggle.' He went further, charging that 'a song that inspired generations of freedom fighters cannot be reduced to vote-bank calculations or political convenience.'

A 1937 Decision That Still Divides

The Congress Working Committee's position on Vande Mataram is not new. At its 1937 Haripura session, the party resolved to sing only the first two stanzas of the song — a decision taken to accommodate diverse community sentiments at a time when the independence movement was building the broadest possible coalition. That context has long since become contested ground.

For the BJP, the 1937 resolution has served as a recurring exhibit in the argument that Congress historically subordinated cultural symbols to electoral arithmetic. For Congress, the decision reflected inclusive nation-building. The two readings have never converged — and Majhi's post makes clear the dispute is very much alive in 2026.

Nationalist Symbol, Partisan Battlefield

Vande Mataram — composed by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay in the 19th century and adopted as a rallying cry of the independence movement — occupies a singular place in India's cultural memory. Its first two stanzas were designated the national song after independence. The remaining stanzas, which carry explicit religious imagery, have historically been the fault line.

Majhi's intervention fits a well-worn but still potent pattern: since 2014, BJP leaders at the national and state level have repeatedly used cultural symbols — the national anthem, the national song, historical figures of the freedom struggle — to draw contrasts with Congress and reinforce a nationalist identity. Each such moment generates its own media cycle and, the party calculates, its own electoral dividend.

'The nation remembers. The nation has learnt. And the nation will not allow Congress to repeat the same politics again,' Majhi concluded — a closing line aimed as much at voters as at the opposition.

What Comes Next

With other state BJP units likely to amplify the statement and a parliamentary session on the horizon, the row over Vande Mataram could surface in legislative debate on national symbols and heritage policy. Congress has not yet responded publicly to Majhi's post. That silence — or whatever breaks it — will set the next beat of this story.