"Jai Hind! Vande Mataram!”

That’s how the pilot of the flight taking us to Patna signed off, after informing us that we were descending from a height of 35,000 feet.

It felt like we were plunging to a different depth; a different kind of turbulence was gnawing at me. Did my fellow travellers have the same sense of unease?

I wanted to ask the crew why ‘Vande Mataram’ had to be tacked on to the old greeting of ‘Jai Hind’. But then I wondered if I was overreacting. On 26 January this year, in my university housing colony, the slogan of ‘Vande Mataram’ was raised after unfurling the national flag. I didn’t object. Why?

Why can’t we understand that ‘Vande Mataram’ is associated with painful memories of violence for Muslims? ‘Bharat mein rehna hai toh Vande Mataram kehna hai’ is a slogan many Hindus do not see as problematic.

Sitting in the same aircraft, why did it feel like we weren’t in the same moral universe? Is this normal?

A story from Jaipur came to mind. A first-time MLA of the ruling BJP went to a government girls’ school with a fair number of Muslim students. It was possibly the school’s annual day function, and parents were also in attendance.

The MLA wanted the assembly to chant ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai’ after him. He didn’t stop here. “Saraswati Mata ki Jai”, he said, expecting the girls to repeat it after him. The response was muted. This infuriated him. He raised the bar with the next slogan: “Jai Shri Ram”. The Muslim girls kept mum. He then lambasted the principal for allowing the students to wear hijab.

In reaction, the girls staged a public protest, demanding action against the MLA’s uncalled-for insistence and interference. They........

© National Herald