When Prime Minister Narendra Modi stood in Parliament to mark the 150th anniversary of Vande Mataram, did he actually know he was completing a historic cycle of division? Of course, no one can claim that it was a commemorative act.

He was weaponising a song associated with anti-colonial resistance, turning it into a tool of partition—tricks from his ideological forefathers over a century ago.

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the BJP's ideological nucleus, was founded not to fight the British Raj, but to organise Hindus against Muslims. Its founders, inimical to the Indian National Congress's attempts at Hindu-Muslim unity, chose a path of communal polarisation. This foundational divisiveness is the core mission, not a side effect.

Scholars have long criticised the RSS for spreading hatred and promoting violence. While the Congress, under Gandhi, Nehru, and Patel, sought a united independence, the RSS and its ideological allies actively debilitated the Hindu-Muslim solidarity that could have prevented the bloody tragedy of Partition. Their politics of religious exclusivity fed the very "two-nation theory" they claim to despise.

Today, the BJP, as the political arm of the RSS, continues this work with self-assured precision. The parliamentary debate on Vande Mataram was, as always, the party's attempt to accuse opponents of the sin they are committing. The Prime Minister charged the historical Congress with "fracturing" the song and sowing the seeds of Partition. This is a profound distortion.

The 1937 decision to use only the first two stanzas of Vande Mataram was a sensitive, inclusive decision by a leadership that included the likes of Gandhi, Patel, Bose, and Maulana Azad—aimed at unity. The BJP, in contrast, resurrects the full, contentious verses not to unite, but to exclude; not to honour history, but to rewrite it for electoral gain in Bengal.

And so, Bengal must suffer again. A land that bore the brunt of the 1905 and 1947 partitions is now the target of a cynical "second partition"—maybe not of territory, but of the soul.

The BJP, a party foreign to Bengal's syncretic culture, seeks to reduce its rich intellectual and cultural tradition—from Raja Ram Mohan Roy to Tagore—to a monolithic, Hindu-nationalist prop. People have rightly called out this appropriation, noting the BJP's "utter" alienation from Bengal's way of life. The goal is to fracture society, to turn community against community, and harvest votes from the rubble. It is the oldest RSS tactic, not even repackaged to look different!

This is the party that endlessly accuses others of "appeasement." Yet, it stands on no pedestal of merit or morality, only on that of hatred and division.

As Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has alleged, their core policy is to spread fear and convert it into hatred. This toxic export is now a global stain. From Canada to other diasporas, the locals are beginning to accuse the RSS network of foreign interference and spreading the same majoritarian hatred that fuels violence at home, incurring infamy for Indians worldwide.

Vande Mataram was a cry for a free motherland. The BJP is using it as a dog whistle for disintegration. They partitioned us once through their politics of division. Do we need to reanimate the ghosts of the past?

True patriotism would lie in rejecting manufactured enmities, not in doing post-mortems on excavated cadavers. But will we learn before it's too late?