New Delhi ~ “Vande Mataram”, the national song tugging at the heartstrings of many an Indian, has stirred heated debates every few years over its “secular” or “anti-Islamic” nature and the role it played in India’s freedom struggle.

On Friday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said important stanzas of the national song “Vande Mataram” were dropped in 1937 which sowed the seeds of partition and asserted that such a “divisive mindset” is still a challenge for the country.

Modi made the comments while inaugurating the year-long commemoration of “Vande Mataram” to mark 150 years of the national song.

It all began in 1875 when Bengali novelist-poet Bankim Chandra Chatterjee wrote an ode to the motherland as a personification of Goddess Kali. Since then, the poem, dedicated to Bengal, has time a

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