Vande Mataram at 150 — A Rajya Sabha MP on Tribal Heritage, National Identity, and Civilisational Debt
On the occasion of Vande Mataram’s 150th anniversary, BJP Rajya Sabha MP Sujeet Kumar — a Harvard and Oxford-educated lawyer and tribal welfare advocate from Odisha — joins Sangam Talks to reflect on the song’s civilisational significance and the long-overdue recognition of India’s tribal freedom fighters.
Kumar traces Vande Mataram’s journey from Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay’s 1875 composition through Rabindranath Tagore’s 1896 Congress session rendition to its role as the emotional engine of the independence movement — a history Congress systematically suppressed. He connects this to his core passion: the erasure of tribal freedom fighters from Indian history books, which mention only the Nehru-Gandhi family while Birsa Munda, Lakshmana Naik, and Rendo Majhi remain unknown to schoolchildren. He credits both Atal Bihari Vajpayee (who created the separate Ministry of Tribal Affairs in 1999) and Narendra Modi (who declared Birsa Munda’s birthday Janjati Gaurav Divas and built tribal freedom fighter museums) for beginning to repair this civilisational amnesia. The conversation closes with Kumar reciting the stanza of Vande Mataram that was omitted when the song was officially adopted — the one invoking Ma Durga, Ma Lakshmi, and Ma Saraswati.

About The Speakers :
Sujeet Kumar is a Rajya Sabha MP for the 2nd term, from Odisha, and a leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party. A lawyer, trained arbitrator, and former policy advisor to the Government of Odisha, he has previously served in senior roles, including Advisor to the Special Development Council and Special Secretary to the State Planning Board. An engineer and lawyer by training, he holds master’s degrees from Harvard University and the University of Oxford, and is currently practicing Law in the Supreme Court and various High Courts.
Before entering public life, he worked with Infosys, the UNDP, and the World Economic Forum, and later founded the Kalinga Kusum Foundation and LexMantra LLP. Widely engaged in international parliamentary forums, he serves as Convenor of the All-Party Indian Parliamentary Forum for Tibet and Co-Chair of IPAC.
Passionate about tribal welfare and child rights, he has led several transformative initiatives in Odisha, including the Child-Friendly Constituency model.

Debasis Sarkar is an Anchor at The Sangam Talks and an independent researcher in Indology.