India, Sept. 25 -- Few songs in modern Indian history carry the emotional and political weight of Vande Mataram. Composed in the late nineteenth century, it became a battle cry of the freedom struggle and entered the national imagination long before Independence.

A hundred and fifty years on, it is back at the centre of a political storm. The Congress Working Committee has chosen to retain its 1937 position that only the first two stanzas be sung, drawing criticism from the BJP-led government, which promotes the full six-stanza composition at official functions. The row arrives in the familiar vocabulary of Indian politics: nationalism, appeasement, secularism, patriotism. Perhaps the question itself is wrong. The real issue is whether a...