Vande Mataram front and centre at Republic Day

NEW DELHI: Soft flute notes rendering Vande Mataram kicked off Republic Day parade and 2,500 artistes drawn from every state and UT performing to a specially composed version of the national song marked its closure, as the celebration of its 150th anniversary, assiduously promoted by governing NDA to project itself as the true inheritor of its cultural legacy and to corner its opponents, took centre stage at the annual event.Mamata Banerjee-led TMC govt could not be unaware of the backdrop of the national song being sought to be put on a higher pedestal when it chose for its tableau a theme that highlighted the state’s association with the song, carrying statues of not only its author Bankim Chandra Chatterjee but also iconic Bengali figures like Swami Vivekananda, Rabindranath Tagore and Subhas Chandra Bose.As the state heads for the assembly poll, BJP has stepped up its attack on TMC, accusing the party of turning away from Bengal’s Hindu ethos associated with Chatterjee in pursuit of its alleged vote bank politics. TMC, in turn, has called BJP a party run by outsiders disconnected with the state’s cultural impulses.The “150 years of Vande Mataram” was main theme of this year’s parade at Kartavya Path which saw PM Narendra Modi often getting up to explain to the two chief guests, European Council president Antonio Costa and European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, the intricacies of the military parade and the procession of tableaux that were a part of the spectacle. Portraits of Chatterjee were displayed at the venue, and several tableaux, including those of BJP-governed Gujarat and Chhattisgarh, paid homage to the song, deeply ingrained in the cultural agenda of BJP and Sangh Parivar.The culture ministry, in its tableau, foregrounded some of its evocative lines, a rallying cry of freedom fighters, and played its two versions, carrying a statue of “Bharat Mata”. The CPWD’s echoed a similar theme. Prints of 1923 paintings from an album on Vande Mataram by Tejendra Kumar Mitra were displayed in and around the venue to bring alive the spirit of patriotism and culture associated with the national song.