Javed Akhtar On The Fatwa Against Vande Mataram
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 Dismissing the 'fatwa' by Jamait-e-Ulema Hind against Vande Mataram,
renowned lyricist, poet and film scriptwriter Javed Akhtar says, “This
controversy is old and obsolete. Vande Mataram is part of Bankim
Chandra Chatterjee’s novel Anandamath. All the villains in this novel
are Muslims.
Ultimately the Muslims lose and the novelist feels happy
that the Britishers have come to save us from these so-called
‘barbaric’ Muslims. This is the song of the militant sadhus in this
novel. There were two stanzas of strong religiosity in this song. When
talk arose of making Vande Mataram a national anthem it was pointed out
by rational elements that the novel was anti-Muslim. The Congress
decided to take out the two rabidly religious stanzas and the rest of
the song was retained. The controversy ended there. What is this new
resistance? The objection is redundant. You don’t want to sing Vande
Mataram? Don’t! Who is forcing you? I sing it. I don’t see it as
objectionable. If you do, don’t sing it. Why do you insist on bringing
such irrelevant matters centre stage? It’s a non-issue and
unnecessarily provocative. I’ve written songs with Vande Mataram in
them. I used the term Vande Mataram in Priyadarshan’s Saza-e-Kala Pani.
Then I used the term for a song in Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani and
finally for a song that’s used at the military academy at Dehradun.
Please don’t make an issue out of a non-issue. These are non-entities.”
Sampurn Media
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