Congress on Tuesday quoted a statement by historian Sugata Bose and said that this further exposes Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In Bose’s remarks quoted by Congress General Secretary Jairam Ramesh, he said that on the advice of Rabindranath Tagore, the Congress had decided in 1937 that only the first part of ‘Vande Mataram’ would be sung in its major meetings.
Ramesh shared part of a video of Bose on social media platform ‘X’ in which he is talking about the relationship between Subhash Chandra Bose and India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. Sugata Bose is seen saying in the video that ”Subhash Chandra Bose and Jawaharlal Nehru worked together during the All India Congress Committee (AICC) meeting in Calcutta (now Kolkata) in October-November 1937. At that time, I took Rabindranath Tagore’s advice on a very sensitive subject and that was Vande Mataram.
Sugata Bose, one of India’s finest historians, is a Professor at Harvard University and also Director of the Netaji Research Bureau in Kolkata. He was a Lok Sabha MP during 2014-2019.
He is the grandson of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s brother Sarat Chandra Bose and is the author… pic.twitter.com/j0J0q9x9pb
— Jairam Ramesh (@Jairam_Ramesh) December 9, 2025
The historian said, “It was on the advice of Rabindranath that the Congress decided at this AICC meeting that henceforth only the first part of the song would be sung in the national meetings of the party, which is a beautiful proclamation of the national glory of our country.” Bose, a descendant of Subhash Chandra Bose, says, “This was done because Tagore felt that we needed unity and consensus in our nationalist movement and he did not want rivalry between different religious communities. So from the very beginning they stayed together…Mahatma Gandhi decided that Subhash Chandra Bose would be the President of the Congress and Jawaharlal Nehru would take over this responsibility in 1938.
While sharing this video, Ramesh wrote, “Sugat Bose, one of India’s finest historians, is a professor at Harvard University and also the director of Netaji Research Bureau in Kolkata. He was a Lok Sabha member during 2014-2019. He is the grandson of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose’s brother Sarat Chandra Bose and is the author of several books published on Netaji. This conversation further exposes the Prime Minister, he said.
A day before this, during the discussion on Vande Mataram in the Lok Sabha, Prime Minister Modi had alleged that Nehru had betrayed Vande Mataram by bowing to Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s opposition to the national song, due to which it was disintegrated. Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra defended Nehru and the party and claimed that the BJP was organizing a discussion on Vande Mataram in view of the upcoming assembly elections in West Bengal.
