In fact, the example of Bangladesh knocks the bottom out of the anti-Vande Mataram campaign, which, unfortunately, prompted even the Congress president and the Prime Minister to distance themselves from a decision of their own government — namely, to celebrate the centenary of the national song on September 7.

Bangladesh’s 1972 Constitution directs the first 10 lines of Amar Shonar Bangla to be sung as the national anthem, which is written by none other than the author of India’s national anthem —Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore!

Like Vande Mataram, it too is replete with beautiful imagery of a bountiful mother. However, in recent years, some Muslim fundamentalists in Bangladesh have demanded changing of the national anthem. Why? Because “Bangladesh, a Muslim nation, cannot have a national anthem written by a Hindu and an Indian.”

(Read an excellent article on this subject by Dina Siddiqui in Himal: http://www.himalmag.com)

But the real lesson for our Marxists and Islamists comes from another little-known aspect of Amar Shonar Bangla. What was accepted by Bangladesh as its national anthem is not the whole original song composed by Tagore, but only an extract from it. Siddiqui writes: “The longer version appears to function as both paean and pledge of allegiance to an embattled motherland that is also the Mother Goddess.”

It goes: “Oh Mother, I offer at your feet this my lowered head. Give me, O Mother, the dust of your feet, to be the jewel upon my head. O Mother, whatever wealth this poor man has, I place before your feet.”

... contd.