‘Recitation of Vande Mataram against Islam’…

I agree with Sushma but alas we cannot do anything we are helpless. Nothing can be done. We Hindus are immature with confused mind, we lack right approach. See now Arjun sing is totally acting selfish favouring his vote bank. And morever he wants to fund madrassa. On what basis? when they are not ready to sing vande matram. Why to fund them?. Frankly speaking we Hindus don’t know when to love and when to not, when to pamper when to not. Only God can save us now. We all must include prayers to protect us from this cult to our dieties during our prayer. If we really take help of our God and Godesses they will definitly help us sooner or later. Beleive me. In next comment i will include my experince and result which i prayed to our God. I am secular i pray Jesus, Buddha, and many god but definitely not allha.

Muslims can never be faithful to any country, they are faithfull only to their global brotherhood called “The Umma”, that’s why they are menance everywhere where they live.
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To refuse to sing a national song is an indirect refusal to accept the nation in which they live.
 

Note: Comment has been edited by B Shantanu

I have come across an article on Times of India website and would like to share with u all that shows the loyality of this community to the country they live in. All secular hindus and people who “LOVE INDIA AND ARE SYMPATHETIC TO THEM IN PARTICULAR” pls.do read it once to see how much they value India.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1629373.cms

They r telling their coming generations as well to chose religion over the country.

The entire nation is preparing to celebrate the centenary of adopion of “Vande Mataram” on September 7, 2006.Once again the cronies and mercenaries like Imam Bukhari, handpicked and deployed as Muslim leaders by the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty have drawn another Islamic LOC between the poor Indian Muslims and their Hindu brothers by declaring it as against Islamic beliefs.These are the biggest bandicoots who colluded with congress and laid the foundation for vote bank and Muslim appeasement politics.

Thanks for Ayodhya and Advani factor which gave a loud slap on the face of these so called Muslim leaders and shook the Muslim masses to wakeup from their deep slumber.Unfortunately,Advani lost his vision down the line and espoused the pseudo-democratic polity.A great opportunity to turn the Indian Muslims against the Islamists and stepout of the Islamic LOC was lost.

This is a national song and the slogan “Vande Mataram” was the national cry against the British Raj.This is the first successful weapon against suppression which became a nightmare for the British Raj. Muslims can omit those lines referring to “worshipping the motherland” and our Hindu brothers understand our faith more than anybody else.Indian Muslims should wakeup and stop believing that there is a large wealthy Muslim nation with big oil tycoons waiting to embarce and shower them with fortunes.We must learn to love and respect our motherland.

This is a golden opportunity for the Indian Muslims to chop off their umbilical cord with the mullahs and integrate in to the mainstream. On 7th September,the Muslim masses should come out in large numbers nationwide declaring themselves as “Warriors against terror” and should shout the slogan “Vande Mataram” as a strategic deterrent against the Islamists and anti-muslim establishments.They can kill two birds with one stone.Even this can become the platform for their political identity.

One more golden opportunity waiting in front of the Indian muslims.

VANDE MATARAM.

..its so clear from above mentioned comments…tat muslims are wrongly labeled as xtremists…on the contrary its hindus who r xtremists….tat they force others to worship their deities and follow their philosophy…i thnk vryone has the rght to follow his religion… we cant force muslims to follow our ways…hindus will never awake from their deep slumber..wch is the most basic reason for our contry remaining backward….they follow som bulshit n stupid dogmas and even force minorities to follow suit….only God can save this contry from this foolish cult who can one day sell this contry for political gains….it is muslims who r true patriotic….

….u told zakir is asking ppl to follow islamic philosophy…asking is dffrnt and enforcing is dffrnt….zakir has complte rght to preach practise n propogate his religion…..its his constituional rght wich he is xercising…who r we to stop him….any preacher wen he is preachng his dogma he will show the benefits of his dogma and ask others to follow it….wats the big deal???….but if certain communities religious policies dsnt permit them to sing some song y anyone shld force them….isnt tis xtremism forcing others to follow ur own dogma???…..i havent come across any incidnt in wch muslims force hindus to com to mosque or read quran or follow their rituals but i have across mny incidnts in wch hindus forcibly apply tikas throw holi powders on muslims and even dstrb their congregational prayers at eid time by doin som mischif and will purposely pick up som quarrel ….but muslims never blame a common hindu for this and blame politics for tat……but in hindus even common ppl spit venom against muslims…..tats y muslims fell in inferiority complex and this effects their sycology….to sch an extent tat they will pick up arms som day against injustices….and this will benefit the terrorists training camps as they get free recruitmnts…..

@ prince of angels: You seem to have a habit of making bold statements without offering much evidence by way of support.

E.g. “….but india was an islamic contry for 1000 yrs…” That is interesting. I did not know that…

Can you please point us to some references?

As for “….jst imagin if india wld had been a hindu contry then i dnt knw wat wld had happnd of minorities…..now my question whom do u think is more xtremist….hindu rule or muslim rule????….”

I think the readers of this blog are sensible and intelligent enough to form their own judgement…

To prince of angels

Are you an advocate for muslims. Do they need one? Its so dumb when you give reasons for muslim’s inferiority complex. Just look into their holy book, you may also find many other reasons for thier this state of mind. Again all muslims are not suffering form this complexes. Why? Only those who bring religion at everyplaces goes through this your so called complexes. If you are really interested in so called issues you are suggesting on this site on every issues pertaning to Hindu-Muslims you need to go though this site. http://www.faithfreedom.org

Jai Hind!

Hi Prince of angel

Really! you have gone through their holybooks and you cannot find anything? That shows you are more biased and lacks reasons in finding the truth. May be you are one of those who are brainwashed.

How much your opinions worths? least care about what you say on all this issues. We have many unbias scholars to judge the issues and we know the truth. Nothing is going to be changed by pampering religion which have caused trouble all over the world due to misintipretation of Holy book. And you also did the same misinterpritation. I have upmost respect for all religion but that doesnot shut my brain to figure out what is right and what is wrong. Brave are those who accepts the faults and try to correct it. Keep that is good throw that is bad.

Jai Hind!

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@ prince: I am tempted to comment here (against my own better judgement!)

You say: “…ofcorse brave are those who can find fault in their ways and may accept others ways….so be brave and accept ur philosophy’s fault and accept the truth…”

I (and most readers of this blog) accept that the belief system (not philosophy – thats a wrong word) that we call “Hinduism” has been suffering from some distortions and we are working hard to change them…

That said, we believe that a] the truth lies within oursleves and b] everyone is perfectly free to choose his/her own path to salvation/truth.

So I find any preaching of “the only truth” to be hugely condescending and smacking of arrogance.

By the way, are you willing to accept the same thing about Islam? i.e it has “faults” and it should accept “others ways”?

Or since muslims will never accept…”modification” of Quran, Islam must be perfect?!

Do you see the “problem” in your own arguments? Anyways, I think I have indulged you enough..

Pl. only comment on the (main) post above or to my questions…otherwise I reserve the right to ignore/delete/modify your comments…and pl. stick to the topic. Pl. also give references and support your arguments with logic otherwise they are just words without much substance.

*** Updated ***

1st Apr ’08

Over at Sandeep’s blog, Shanth has made a comment that I felt was worth reproducing here (24th Mar ’08):

“…no one is trying to hide or feel embarassed about the great REVEALATIONS (re. some practices in “Hinduism”) your link makes. We are all aware of it. At least we do not go burn and behead people who wrote it. And each one of them have a meaning to convey which people of your cult would find difficult to understand because you are always made not to question but accept things as they are.

I am not surprised by your behaviour though. You guys are made to retain notions of a religion being defined in a book.

Unlike it Hinduism is not defined in one book and doesn’t limit the knowledge of this worldly life in one book. So I can empathise with you.
…

Also if you are an Indian by race I will have to gently remind you that please have respect for your forefathers who would have been Hindus as well.”

@Rafiq: It is not the Muslims who are oppressed but hindus. Even putting up a temporary structure for the Amarnath pilgrims tantamounts of demographic invasion as per Kashmiri muslims. Is it not opression of the worst kind ? After vivisection of the country called prepartition India where are the hindus in Pakistan and Bangladesh ? In India the Muslim population has increased from 9% to over 13%. How can population of a particular community increase if they are opressed. Oppressed are the hindus in Pakistan, Bangladesh, and even in Kashmir. Oppressed are the Hindus in India whose populatoin is declining as a percentage. Oppressed are the Hindus in India whose temples are nationalised by the government and mismanaged, funds diverted for purposes other than religious, even to other religions. Oppressed are hindus whose tax money is used to subsidise haj, madrassas, payment towards madrassa teachers etc., etc., Opressed are hindus when the government terms their beloved God Lord Rama as mythological figure and even certain Chief Minister hurl abuses on HIM. The list is endless. Today it is Vande Mataram. Tomorrow it may even be even our cherished National Anthem. Somebody is going to have some nitpicking and objections to some words.

Even in truncated India they dictate terms.

Bite this now:

“Jamiat issues fatwa against singing Vande Mataram”

2. http://blog.taragana.com/n/muslim-clerics-support-vande-mataram-fatwa-bjp-calls-it-anti-national-216069/

3. http://www.inditop.com/politics/unaware-of-resolution-against-vande-matram-chidambaram

And you know what the Honarable Home Minister PC was there in this conference of 2 days.
This spineless HM has shown to the world that anyone literally anyone can come, stay and change the rules and tradition of this nation. It doesn’t matter at all to this politicians whether the nation is screeming out loudly against this islamic atyachar or citizens are being tortured to change their religion. No one gives a damn to this.
What Shri Nathuram Godase did was wrong when considered freedom, but correct when we consider patriotism. Shri Godase should have done his job at least before independance, so that we could have been living here without the fear of dying everyday in our home.

Congressi are the most communal, divisive and anti-national. They are far more dangerous to the nation than extremists of any type.

-Jai Hind.

You have to take the latest protestations as the Muslim way of keeping the pot on the boil. In that controversies are raked up even when there are none to keep the Islamic flag flying high and to overshadow any other claims for loyalties. The natural thing to do is to rebut such claims but to do would give legitimacy to their arguments. To ignore such claims and when they are repeated time and time again, they become the established truth. I favour is the Chinese approach which is to suppress such dissent which in a democracy is hard to justify but legitimate.

On the word vande and bande it comes back to our preoccupation as Hindus to respect and worship rather than one of love and to honour. Muslims would have no excuse to flay any democracies with their devious preoccupation to occupy the high the ground in all spheres. We need to be guarded in our use of words. As a Hindu, it does not come to me naturally to speak of worshipping or respecting Bharat, but to love and honour is tangible.

In Gujarat too! Some muslims opposed the fatwa and are ready to sing Vande Matram.

deoband is a patriotic organization and many ulemas laid down their lives for the freedom struggle fighting alongside hindu patriots . this is a truth that u right wing hardliners cannot digest . baba ramdev and many more from the saffron outfit have said about deobands patriotic role in india’s freedom struggle .it has become a fashion to twist deoband out of context to show it in a poor light . deobands major problems today is the power struggle within its trustees ,especially the uncle nephew rivalry between arsdad madani and mehmood madani . mehmood a rajya sabha MP has become politically ambitious and has broken the age old traditin of keeping the media and politicians out of its gatherings and meetings . mehmood is hobnobbing with politicians and right wing leaders ,and that will prove to be his nemesis . my advise to muslims today is don’t trust chidambaram’s congress , keep a distance from right wing saffronites and show the politically ambitious mehmood madani his place by exposing his misdeeds . we need the deoband of the golden old days where the ulemas held their heads high against the british rule even when they were hung on trees in public along with patriotic hindus.

It becomes imperative to analyse the objections raised by the Muslim community against the recital of the Vande Mataram.

The controversy over the singing of Vande Mataram has once again threatened to divide the country on communal lines. The refusal of the Muslims to sing this song seems to have angered the Hindutva ideologues, who, without giving them an opportunity to explain their position, have accused them of being anti-national. Hence, it becomes imperative to analyse the objections raised by the Muslim community against the recital of the Vande Mataram. Islam, being a monotheist religion, forbids the apotheosis of any deity, animate or inanimate, except God, the Supreme Creator. In fact, ascribing divinity or any attribute of divinity to even Prophet Muhammad (Pbuh) is considered an act of blasphemy negating the very purpose of Islam, that is, to promote the concept of unity of mankind through the worship of a common Creator.

In this context, those opposed to the Muslim point of view should know that, Bankimchandra Chatterjee’s Vande Mataram contains verses which are in direct conflict with the beliefs of Islam. For instance, the fourth stanza of the song addresses motherland India as, “Thou art Durga, Lady and Queen, with her hands that strike and her swords of sheen, Thou art Lakshmi lotus-throned……..” When a Muslim sings these words he is forced to equate his country with the Hindu goddesses Durga and Lakshmi, thereby deifying the physical land of India and beseeching it to “arise and save.” This militates against the concept of Tawheed (oneness of God) according to which a Muslim cannot supplicate to anyone except God. Therefore, just as one cannot force non-Muslims to recite the Quran in their gatherings, it would be most unfair to force the Muslims to violate their Scriptural injunctions by questioning their patriotism.

The religious predicament of the Muslims was understood in the right spirit decades ago by Jawaharlal Nehru. In October 1937, when the Congress Working Committee met in Calcutta under the Presidentship of Nehru, it adopted a resolution which said, “The Committee recognizes the validity of the objection raised by Muslim friends to certain parts of the song. While the Committee has taken note of such objection insofar as it has intrinsic value, the Committee wishes to point out that the modern evolution of the use of the song as part of National life is of infinitely greater importance than its setting in a historical novel before the national movement had taken shape. Taking all things into consideration, therefore, the Committee recommend that, wherever Bande Mataram is sung at national gatherings, only the first two stanzas should be sung, with perfect freedom to the organisers to sing any other song of an unobjectionable character, in addition to, or in the place of, the Bande Mataram song.” (Quoted by A.G. Noorani in the Frontline, Jan 2-15, 1999).

Based on the above resolution, the Hindutva brigade wants the Muslims to sing the first two stanzas arguing that there is nothing wrong in bowing to the motherland. This is a deliberate attempt to mislead the minority community, because, many Hindus elevate “Bharat Mata” or Mother India, to the status of a goddess as clearly seen in the traditional depiction of India as a lady dressed in a saree holding a red flag. In fact, in 1936, a Bharat Mata temple was built in Benaras by Shiv Prashad Gupt and was inaugurated by none less than Mahatma Gandhi. Then in May 1983, Swami Satyamitranand Giri founded a Bharat Mata temple in Haridwar which has a statue of Bharat Mata holding a milk urn in one hand and sheaves of grains in the other. According to the temple guide book, “the temple serves to promote the devotional attitude towards Bharat Mata, something that historians and mythological story-teller may have missed.” (Mc Kean, Lise. “Bharat Mata: Mother India and Her Militant Matriots”, in Devi : Goddesses of India, edited by John S.Hawley and Donna M.Wulff, Motilal Banarasidass Publishers, Delhi, 1998).

Moreover, not many know that Bharat Mata poojas are regularly performed all over India. The Hindu, on Jan 3, 2005 reported one such pooja by the BJP activists in a temple in Mahabubnagar, Andhra Pradesh, during which there was a clash between the BJP and CPI (M) workers. The Chandigarh Tribune reported on April 13, 2002 that the employees of the Govt. Medical College and Hospital in Chandigarh performed the pooja of Bharat Mata “as per the Indian culture.” Also, the largest Hindu website dedicated to the freedom movement, http://www.freeindia.org, has posted an ancient Sanskrit Hindu verse glorifying Mother India as a goddess. It reads, “Ratnakaradhautapadam Himalyakirtitinim (I) Brahmara-jarsiratnamdhyam vande Bharatamataram (II)”. When translated it means, “I pay my obeisance to mother Bharata, whose feet are being washed by the ocean, who wears the mighty Himalaya as her crown, and who is exuberantly adorned with the gems of traditions set by Brahmarsis and Rajarsis.”

The aforementioned facts prove deification of India by the Hindus, which means that the Muslims, by singing the first two stanzas of the Vande Mataram, would be violating the basic tenet of Islam, that is Tawheed. It cannot be argued that saluting the motherland is harmless because the fourth stanza clearly identifies the land of India mentioned in the first stanza with goddess Durga and Lakshmi, and therefore, any salutation to motherland tantamounts to bowing before Hindu goddesses – an act unthinkable for a Muslim. The Muslims respect the right of the Hindus to worship any deity, but they cannot be forced to commit un-Islamic acts.

Another reason for the Muslims’ reluctance to sing the Vande Mataram is the fact that the novel Anandamath by Bankimchandra Chatterjee, in which it was first published, glorified the ethnic cleansing of the Muslims. As an example the following passage may be quoted. “The rural people ran out to kill the Muslims while coming across them. In the night, some were organised in groups and going to the Muslim locality, they torched their houses and looted their everything. Many Muslims were killed; many of them shaved their beards, smeared their bodies with soil and started singing the name of Hari. When asked, they said, we were Hindus. The frightened Muslims rushed towards the town in group after group. ( pages 161-162 of Abbey of Delight, the English translation of Anandamath , by Arabinda Das).

In any case, the Vande Mataram is a national song and not the national anthem of India, hence refusal to sing it cannot be construed as showing disrespect to the country. Given the fact that the Muslims have been singing the Jana Gana Mana ever since India attained independence, and the fact that they have laid down their lives for the country during and after the freedom struggle, their nationalist spirit cannot be doubted even for a minute. It must be understood that India being a secular democracy, every community has the right to profess and practice its faith so long as it does not challenge the unity and integrity of the nation, and therefore, the coercive imposition of the beliefs of one religion over another would only result in communal disharmony.