Jammu, Sept. 9 -- A fault line within the INDIA bloc burst into the open in Srinagar this week, after Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah and National Conference president Farooq Abdullah stood through all six stanzas of "Vande Mataram" at the inaugural event of the International Film Festival - a gesture that has now pitted the party against its own coalition partner, the Congress.
The moment, captured on video and widely shared, quickly snowballed into a full-blown political spat.
Congress general secretary K C Venugopal was the first to strike, posting the video with a sharp rebuke: the full version of the song, he wrote, "sits uneasily with the syncretic and pluralist ethos that our freedom fighters envisioned and nurtured ...