Lucknow, Dec. 23 -- The decision of the Congress to truncate Vande Mataram under its appeasement policy led to cultural division and the Partition of the country, chief minister Yogi Adityanath said in a discussion in the legislative assembly on Monday to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the national song. The compromise on Vande Mataram by the Congress was not out of respect for religious sentiments, but the first and most dangerous experiment in the party's appeasement politics, which fuelled separatism, he said. "Till Muhammad Ali Jinnah was in the Congress, Vande Mataram faced no opposition. After leaving the Congress, he used the national song as a political tool for the Muslim League, deliberately giving it a communal angle; the song remained the same, only the agenda changed," the chief minister said. "In the Congress session held in Lucknow in 1935, Jinnah opposed Vande Mataram. In October 1937 , Jawaharlal Nehru wrote a letter to Subhas Chandra Bose stating that some stanzas of the song needed to be removed. It was a move to "appease" Muslim community. On October 26, 1937, Congress truncated parts of the song under the guise of harmony, sacrificing national consciousness," he said. "Mohammad Ali Jauhar first opposed the song in a Congress session held in 1923. When Vishnu Digambar Paluskar sang Vande Matram, Jauhar left the dais. Congress bowed to pressure and by 1937 only two verses of the song were allowed in Congress sessions," he said. "The truncated version recognised by the Constituent Assembly in 1950 reflected this legacy of appeasement. Vande Mataram is more than a song; it is the soul of India. From the 1905 Bengal Partition movement to the freedom struggle, it inspired the freedom fighters."...