Ranbir Singh Pathania

mlaudhampureast@gmail.com

“Vande Mataram is not merely a song; it is the dream of India’s freedom itself,” Rabindranath Tagore had once observed.

Across the national movement, this was not a Hindu chant or a Hindu war cry. It was a civilisational invocation. It was recited by those who challenged colonialism with the certainty of death and the clarity of conviction. Ashfaqullah Khan – the martyr of the Kakori case – invoked it from jail. Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan – the Frontier Gandhi – invoked it in public mobilisation. Maulana Abul Kalam Azad treated it as part of the emotional vocabulary of anti-colonial Indian nationalism. For them, this was not a clash with Islam. For them, this was part of the composite spiritual vocabulary of a free India in the making.

Yet, i

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