The winter session of the parliament this time began on 1st December 2025. The day the dates of the winter session were announced by the government, the opposition started crying that the winter session was reduced to a smaller period as compared to the sessions held previously. They expressed their desire for discussion on various issues concerning the nation and complained that the time for the debate in the parliament for all such issues was insufficient and insignificant. The opposition also made disruptions and created rackus in the parliament to press for their demand on the debate on certain issues of their choice. However, the parliamentary affairs ministry invited the opposition for presenting suggestions in order to make the session vibrant and fruitful.
Consequently, dates were fixed for debate and discussion on various important issues in both the houses of the parliament. Besides the other issues, while the opposition was very curious about debate on Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls undertaken by the ECI and also the electoral reforms, the government expressed its intent to have an elaborate debate on the 150th anniversary of the national song ‘Vande-Mataram’ written by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee in 1875. There was a behind the door agreement on the issues of debate; and the dates were also finalised in this connection. It was decided to have debate on the two issues in both the houses of the parliament during the middle of the session and accordingly dates were also made known in the public domain.
The dates fixed for the debate were 8th, 9th and 10th December 2025. The debate on Vande-Mataram -the national song of Bharat was initiated by the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi himself on 8 December 2025 in the Lok Sabha. Rahul Gandhi, the leader of opposition in the Lok Sabha chose to remain absent when the debate was initiated by Prime Minister Modi. He in his speech recalled the historical significance of the Vande-Mataram in the context of the freedom struggle against the foreign rule. It needs to be mentioned here that the song was initially composed in 1975 by its author but was later put by him in his popular novel ‘Anand-Math’.
The novel and the song became ‘guru-mantra’ for the freedom fighters during their entire period of struggle both within and outside the country against the colonial rule in India. While the novel depicts the struggle launched by the monks (sanyasis) against the foreign looters and invaders in India, the song Vande-Mataram depicts Bharat-Mata as the presiding deity for whom the struggle is undertaken. In fact the song Vande-Mataram was conceived by the bard in the backdrop of the ‘mutiny of 1857’ that was for the first time nomenclatured by the great freedom fighter V.D.Savarkar as the Indian war of Independence 1857. He wrote a book in the cellular jail in Andaman & Nicobar with the same title that got great prominence among the freedom lovers and was later published in 1909.
The author of the national anthem, Jana-Gana-Mana, Gurudev Rabindra Nath Tagore was the first leading light to recite the complete song ‘Vande-Mataram’ on the occasion of the Calcutta session of the Indian National Congress 1896. This was the period when the Congress was passing through a transitional situation from a party of petitioners before the Britishers to a fast developing independent movement of India. The recitation of the Vande-Mataram caught the imagination of the people throughout the length and the breadth of Bharat and it became a major slogan of the freedom struggle along with ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai’ and ‘Inqalab-Zindabad’. Later, due to the subtle but strong intervention of Nataji Subhash Chandra Bose, the slogan of ‘Jai-Hind’ also joined the chorus of nationalist slogans.
The Constituent Assembly of India under the chairmanship of Dr. Rajendra Prasad unanimously passed the resolution on 24 January 1950 recognising Vande-Mataram as the national song while according the national anthem status to the Jana-Gana-Mana. But Dr. Rajendra Prasad made it amply clear on the occasion that the national song -Vande-Mataram would be having the same status as that of the national anthem Jana-Gana-Mana. Unfortunately, in order to appease a particular set of people in the socio-political spectrum, the then Congress regime under the Prime Ministership of Nehru deviated from the position taken by the Constituent Assembly. The governments that followed Nehru also followed the suit and made compromises in this regard.
Prime Minister Modi gave a vivid description of the story of Vande-Mataram in the Parliament. He recalled the deceit that was done with the national song in 1937 when the Congress with the interpose of Jawahar Lal Nehru in order to appease the Muslim League and Jinnah compromised on the vivisection of the national song. The contents of the song were reduced to only the first two verses. It was a functional march of Congress towards the division of India for which the Britishers and the Muslim League were already hands in glove with each other. The history and the comments enunciated by PM Modi irked the opposition and particularly the Congress party. They tried to make disruptions but failed in their attempt to do so. PM Modi said that ‘the mantra of Vande-Mataram energised and guided India’s freedom movement as it was a timeless symbol of the country’s cultural and spiritual unity’.
The main focus of all the speakers from the opposition on the topic was that the BJP was trying to hijack the legacy of Vande-Mataram as it had no history of its own of the freedom struggle as such. That the Congress was the party that popularised the Vande-Mataram before independence should be acknowledged by everyone and particularly the government led by Modi. They didn’t want to give any credit to the government for the debate on the issue and the programmes that were held in connection with the 150th anniversary of the national song. Priyanka Gandhi who spoke on the occasion was focussed less on the topic of the debate than the criticism of the government and the Prime Minister.
The discussion on electoral reforms and the Special Intensive Revision of the electoral rolls (SIR) was initiated by Manish Tewari, Congress MP followed by many others from the opposition benches including the leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi. LoP continued with his old narrative of ‘vote-chori’ without giving any substantial evidence of the claim. He failed to do so initially with the Election Commission of India, followed by the Supreme Court of India and then in the recently held Bihar elections. He raised all the issues connected with his so-called claim of vote-theft at all levels earlier but failed to make any impact on the ground. Having got dejected and rejected by the other constitutional institutions on the issue including the apex court, he tried his luck in the Bihar elections as well. His alliance and Congress party were routed in the hustings in Bihar miserably where they raised this issue vigorously.
His rhetoric of putting challenges before the government in this regard and particularly before the PM and the Home Minister Amit Shah was aptly dealt by the Home Minister. Amit Shah made sure that all the questions raised by the LoP were replied to point by point. He also referred to the questions raised by Manish Tiwari that the electoral reforms should have been initiated. The selection procedure in the ECI as adopted by the parliament was formally implemented by the government unlike the Congress’s way of selecting the CEC and the other ECs as per their party’s priorities. During the course of Amit Shah’s reply in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, his party and the other opposition members staged a walk-out and thereby exhibited their non-seriousness in the debate. Their ideological hollowness was also exposed during the debate on both the topics in both the houses.
Mallika Arjun Kharge, LoP in the Rajya Sabha was also elusive in his presentation on many occasions. While referring to the points raised by the PM in the Lok Sabha on the issue of the Vande-Mataram, he admitted that it was not Nehru alone who decided in favour of the ‘cut-piece’ formula of the national song but the whole Congress party took the decision that was implemented later by the party and the government. In a way, he reinforced the claim of the PM in this regard unwittingly. He continued with the diatribe that the BJP was trying to ignore the role of the Congress in the freedom struggle which was refuted by the speakers from the treasury benches.
It was expected of the opposition benches to take part in the debate and discussion on the important issues in the parliament keeping in view their insistence on the debate on the issues that were important from their perspective. Unfortunately, they failed to make any impact during the discussion which continued in both the houses of the parliament for three days. The opposition and particularly the Congress is not in a position to pinpoint the causes of their failure in the elections in the country and are making an absurd attempt to blame the ruling alliance for their continuous debacles. The opposition is not ready to accept their failures and is living in a denial mode leading them to feel shy of any sort of introspection and reform. The discussion in the parliament was one more attempt for them to hide their failures and stop taking corrective steps.
One important aspect of the socio-political scenario of the country should have now necessitated the opposition to understand the ideological shift that the nation has been taking slowly and steadily over the last two decades in particular. The opposition parties in the country and their leaders don’t realise that the era of left-liberal-Nehruvian socialism is over. Its influence on the regional parties is also fading away. The younger generations have a better intellectual grasp of the situation existing both within and outside the country. The Communist parties are fighting their struggle for survival while the Congress is fighting its existential war.
The Congress in particular is waiting for the ruling alliance and the BJP to commit mistakes so that it gets a chance to come to the fore. Unfortunately, the opposition is repeating its mistakes every now and then and exposing itself inch by inch. It did the same in the important debates in the parliament this time. In such a scenario, it missed a great opportunity to showcase its ideological maturity, political sagacity and the policy formulations for the welfare of the people. The non-serious frame of mind of the opposition was also exposed fully this time. It is hoping against the hope that the opposition in the country realises its role in the democracy. The question remains as to who makes them visualise their role in the given scenario…..!
