New Delhi, Aug. 28: The BJP has lined up its own Muslim brigade for a public rendition of Vande Mataram on Parliament House premises to taunt the government.

Party president Rajnath Singh today said 200 Muslim BJP supporters — all believed to be from the party’s minority morcha — wanted to sing the national song in Parliament.

“We have asked Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee’s permission to let them recite Vande Mataram inside Parliament,” Rajnath said in a statement. “They want to stand next to Mahatma Gandhi’s statue in Parliament and sing Vande Mataram on September 5.”

Muslim leaders have since pre-Independence days argued that the lyrics are at odds with Islam’s stand against idolatry, and imams have issued fatwas against Muslims singing the song.

Rajnath has also asked the chief ministers of all BJP-ruled states to order educational institutions to ensure the singing of Vande Mataram on September 7. The day marks the culmination of the centenary celebrations of the song’s adoption as the national song by the Congress in 1905, before independent India made the status official on January 24, 1950. “It would be a grand finale to the commemoration year of our national song,” Rajnath said.

One BJP-ruled state, Chhattisgarh, has already carried out the instruction, setting up a showdown with madarsas that have vowed to defy the order.

The BJP’s national executive meeting, which begins on September 7, will also kick off with a rendition of Vande Mataram. A resolution is expected at the executive on the song.

The BJP is furious at Union human resource development minister Arjun Singh’s stand that no one can be compelled to sing Vande Mataram. It plans to raise the song’s “denigration” by the government in the run-up to the elections in Uttaranchal, Uttar Pradesh and Punjab.

Arjun made his comment after being asked to clarify on a central government circular that all educational institutions should sing Vande Mataram on September 7.

“Two ulemas say something and the government starts crawling. This is the worst form of appeasement,” BJP spokesman Ravi Shankar Prasad said.

He was angrier with Arjun than the minority community.

“No credible section of the Muslim society issued any derogatory statement against the national song. The Muslim intellectuals never uttered a word. Then why did the HRD minister succumb?”

Attack on Brinda

A Bajrang Dal mob stormed an auditorium in Raipur where CPM Rajya Sabha member Brinda Karat was addressing a party meeting this evening but were thwarted by cadres who locked the door from inside.

Outside the auditorium, more than half-a-dozen CPM activists were hurt trying to keep the lathi-wielding Bajrang army at bay.

The mob arrived around 7 pm shouting slogans against Karat for her campaign against yoga guru Baba Ramdev, whom she had accused in February of using human and animal bones to make his “wonder cures”. The campaign fizzled out because of a lack of political support.