Invoking Mahatma Gandhi, BJP to start nationwide Vande campaign against Congress

The BJP has announced a nationwide campaign against the Congress, invoking the memory of Mahatma Gandhi, to counter the opposition to the full version of the national song, Vande Mataram. The BJP cited Gandhi's assertion that the song's purest national spirit is not limited to Hindus, amidst growing protests from the Congress and the secular class.

The resolution approved by the BJP's top office-bearers under party chief Nitin Nabin focuses on the song's association with the freedom struggle and its opposition by figures like Pakistan's founder M A Jinnah and Muslim hardliners, which led the Congress to prune it. The BJP claims that the current protests are driven by communal pressure or narrow vote-bank considerations.

The four-page resolution accuses the Congress of bowing before the politics of appeasement, similar to what it did in 1937, enabling the Muslim League-led Jinnah to impose communal demands on national symbols. The BJP's 10-point campaign aims to target the youth, particularly Gen Z, who have emerged as an axis of political mobilisation for its rivals.

It seeks to emphasize the song's rich legacy and contest it against the truncated version that the Congress wants to force. The campaign will run from PM Modi's birthday on September 17 and include several youth-centric programmes, with the annual sewa program being special for Modi's 25 years at the helm of government.