Yogi government has right to make national anthem compulsory in madrasas: Shahnawaz

Veteran BJP leader Syed Shahnawaz Hussain insisted that there was “nothing objectionable” in the Yogi Adityanath administration’s order to make national anthem lessons compulsory in madrassas across Uttar Pradesh. The minister of Bihar, who is one of the prominent Muslim faces of the party associated with the politics of Hinduism, also claimed that “Jana Gana Mana” was “sung with joy and ease” at the seminar where he studied.

Asked by reporters about the UP Madrasa Board’s order, Hussein said, “Has the national anthem not been sung at the UP Madrasa so far? If so, I am very surprised.”

“I myself studied in a madrassa. There we sang the national anthem with joy and voluntarily. There could be nothing offensive in showing respect to the nation,” Hussein insisted.

The order made it compulsory for students to recite the poem before the start of class.

This has been the exception by some Islamic scholars and religious leaders who have claimed that the words of the poem written by Rabindranath Tagore went against their religious principles.

The recitation of the national anthem, as well as the popular national anthem ‘Bande Mataram’ by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay’s novel ‘Ananda Math’ has become a bone of contention between the BJP and those who equate the party’s insistence on Hindu hegemony.

During the budget session, the Bihar Assembly witnessed a heated exchange between the BJP and AIMIM legislators led by Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Waisi on the issue.

Some BJP MLAs have even expressed the view that while MLAs were reluctant to recite the national anthem or national anthem, they deserved disqualification.