New Delhi: A set of 1937 letters written by Jawaharlal Nehru surfaced on November 7 before Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s address marking 150 years of Vande Mataram, prompting a day-long exchange between BJP leaders and the Congress over who initiated the move to use only the first two stanzas of the song.

The documents appear earlier than Rabindranath Tagore’s October 26, 1937 note and the Congress Working Committee’s October 29, 1937 resolution, sharpening the chronology at the centre of the debate.

At 6:51 am on November 7, BJP spokesperson C.R. Kesavan posted scans of two letters. In the September 1, 1937 letter to Ali Sardar Jafri, Nehru questioned the suitability of Vande Mataram as a national anthem, calling goddess-linked readings “absurd” and citing difficult vocabulary and a m

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