India, Dec. 8 -- "Bihar ki jeet hamari hai, ab Bengal ki baari hai" - this slogan accompanied chants of "Vande Mataram" by BJP-led NDA members as Prime Minister Narendra Modi entered the Lok Sabha to initiate a discussion to mark the 150th anniversary year of the national song on Monday. "We have won Bihar, it's now the turn of Bengal," it meant, pointing towards the state assembly election due early next year.

That could not be the only reason why Bengal remained central to the Vande Mataram discussion. The song was written by a Bengali, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, as poem in Sanskritised Bengali in a literary tradition of the 1870s. Its tune was later composed by Jadunath Bhattacharya, another Bengali. It became more famous after it was...