BANKIM CHANDRA CHATTERJEE
and
HIS IMMORTAL POEM ‘VANDE MATARAM’ - I BOW TO MY MOTHER (MOTHER BHAARATAVARSHA)
Glorified by many as the last word in patriotic ardour, the song ‘Vande Mataram’ is not just a song but a symbol of the national culture of India. Even with a lapse of more than 130 years since its composition, it continues to hold an indelible place in the national psyche as is evident from its popularity even today. Sometime in 1992 when the B.B.C. London invited nominations for the most popular song in India, nearly 25,000 listeners of the BBC World Service nominated Vande Mataram as one of the most two popular songs. In 1915, M.K.Gandhi, not yet known as the Mahatma, spoke at a meeting in Madras which began with the singing of Vande Mataram for invocation. Addressing the huge gathering, Gandhiji said: “You have sung that beautiful national song on hearing which all of us sprang to our feet. The poet Bankim Chandra has lavished all the adjectives we possibly could do, to describe Mother India. It is for you and me to make good the claim that the poet has advanced on behalf of his Motherland”
Vande Mataram, which literally means “Mother! I bow to thee”, was the soul stirring slogan of the Indian freedom fighters during their struggle against the British regime .It forms part of a song which appears in a Bengali novel called ‘Anandamath’ published sometime in 1881 and written by the doyen of Bengali literature, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee [1838-1894]. Bankim Chandra was born in a village in Bengal in 1838. Even when he was studying in a high school in his village near Calcutta, his teachers were awed at his extraordinary intelligence and grasping power. Creating records at every step of his academic career, Bankim coveted the top honours in the Presidency College, Calcutta and was the first graduate of the Calcutta University along with his compatriot Jadunath Bose. In the year 1858 when he was 20 years old he became a Deputy Magistrate—the highest administrative position a contemporary Indian could have reached in those days under the British Government. In spite of the coveted position he held. Bankim’s real genius lay in Bengali literature. He wrote about 15 novels in Bengali like Durgesh Nandini, Kapala Kundala, Mrinalini, Visha Kanya etc but it was his novel Anandamath and the song in it , Vande Mataram, that brought him fame all over the country. Anandamath, before it came out in the form of a book, had been serialized in a Bengali literary journal called ‘Banga Desh’ edited by Bankim himself.
One day, sometime about 1875, Bankim was returning home in the evening by train from Calcutta where the office of ‘Bangadesh’ was located. Looking on either side of the window, he was enjoying nature in all its pristine glory. The sylvan beauties of the river, the brook, the chirping of birds, flora and fauna etc totally absorbed his attention. Even when he reached home, the pleasant thoughts continue to dominate his mind. The inherent literary genius in the man manifested itself when Bankim took out a piece of paper and jotted down these pleasant memories in the form of a poem, as and when they occurred to him. Some lines came out in his mother tongue Bengali while the others were in Sanskrit. These are the very lines which eventually became famous as ‘Vande Mataram’ and which found a place in his novel ‘Anandamath ‘at a much later date.
In the memoirs written by Bankim Chandra’s younger brother, it has been recounted that the poem had been lying around for several years in Bankim’s study. One of the assistants who helped Bankim in editing ‘Banga Desh’, one day picked up the poem and said “This is not so bad and will do quite well as a filler to fill up an empty space we have in the galley-proofs for the number”. It is learnt that Bankim refused to have it published in that fashion and said “You cannot possibly guess now if this is good or bad. Time will tell—I shall be dead by then. It is possible that you may see that day”. That was the end of the matter and the poem as we know remained unpublished till Bankim went back to the poem he had written many years ago to make it the centerpiece of a complete mosaic of ideas, the novel ‘Anandamath’.
Sometime in 1881, Bankim’s novel was serialized in his own magazine ‘Bangadesh’. This novel contained the first few lines of ‘Vande Mataram’ which Bankim first composed and also included some additional lines. A notable fact was that when the poem was inserted in the journal, the first 12 lines constituting the first two poems were put within quotation marks while the rest of the poems namely lines 13 to 27 did not have any such quotation marks. It could therefore be inferred that the first twelve lines were those written earlier, sometime in 1875 and the others were written sometime later, probably in 1881, bearing in mind the theme of ‘Anandamath’. This distinction gains importance because it was the latter part which contained those "explicit" and "idolatrous" imageries which were objected to by many outside the Hindu community. It would be of interest to note that the central theme of Anandamath pertains to the determined struggle of a band of patriotic Sanyasis who fought against the oppressive rule of the East India Company and died in the battle with the cry of ‘Vande Mataram’ in their lips.
Vande Mataram remained dormant and did not get wide publicity or popularity for quite a few years after its publication in the magazine. However, in the year 1896 when the Indian National Congress held its Session in Calcutta, the Session started with the invocation of ‘Vande Mataram’ The singer was no other than Gurudev Ravindranath Tagore (Thakur) who set the tune to the song and sang it in the presence of a distinguished audience. When the song was over there was thunderous applause. Reacting to the popular response to ‘Vande Mataram’, Tagore observed sometime later:
“When I set the tune to the song and sang it before a vast assemblage of people in the Congress Session at Calcutta, I felt myself electrified from top to toe. It was not a song. It was molten fire. Every word and every line engulfed the audience with the fire of patriotism”. In a letter to Jawaharlal Nehru sometime later in 1937, Tagore writes “The privilege of originally setting its [Vande Mataram’s] first stanza to the tune was mine when the author was still alive and I was the first person to sing it before a gathering of the Calcutta Congress”. With the singing of Vande Mataram in Calcutta in 1896, it attained fame, popularity and publicity and also the importance which it deserved, all over the country.
With the partition of Bengal in 1905 and the rise of the Swadeshi Movement all over the country fighting for independence, Vande Mataram got a terrible boost. Practically it became a Mantra on the lips of every patriotic Indian. The great Tamil poet Subramanya Bharathi translated into Tamil in 1905 and this was followed by several other translations in Marathi, Kannada, Telugu, Gujarati, and Malayalam etc – all between 1905 to 1908. The song was heard in public meetings and processions in many places across India. It was on the lips of every Bengali Swadeshi agitator during the partition of Bengal..
Another event which made the song popular was the Congress Session held in 1905 in Benares when it was sung as an invocation song. The President of the session, Sri. Gopalakrishna Gokhale, requested a Bengali lady by name Saraladevi Chodhurani to sing Vande Mataram before the commencement of the session. She was no other than Rabindranath Tagore’s niece. Commenting on Vande Mataram some time later, Mahatma Gandhi wrote in the ‘Indian Opinion’ dated 2nd December 1095 “The song has proved so popular that it has come to be our National Anthem. Just as we worship our mother, so is this song a passionate prayer to India”
The tradition of singing Vande Mataram in the Congress Sessions continued till 1930 when some Muslims objected to the singing of the same. When the Congress came to power in six of the eleven provinces in 1937, the song acquired the status of a National Anthem to which the Muslim League protested vehemently, describing it as ‘anti-national and "idolatrous" in its inspiration and ideas’. With a view to accommodating the feelings of the Muslims, the Congress Working Committee met in October 1937 and passed the following resolution:
“The Committee recognise the validity of the objection raised by Muslim friends to certain parts of the song. While the Committee have taken note of such objection in so far as it has intrinsic value, the Committee wish to point out that the modern evolution of the use of the song as part of national life is of infinitely greater importance than its setting in a historical novel before the national movement had taken shape. Taking all things into consideration the Committee recommend that wherever the Vande Mataram is sung at national gatherings, only the first two songs should be sung, with perfect freedom to the organizers to sing any other song of an unobjectionable character, in addition to, or in place of, the Vande Mataram song”.
The Congress resolution, widely perceived as a concession, did not satisfy the Muslim League who wanted the deletion of Vandemataram in toto. Mahatma Gandhi was unwilling to allow the song to be a pawn in politics. In July 1939, Gandhiji published an essay about this in his ‘Harijan’dated 1st July 1939 where he recalled that ‘Vande Mataram was a powerful battle cry and that he himself as a lad was enthralled by the song’. He went on to say: “It never occurred to me that it was a Hindu song nor meant only for Hindus. Unfortunately now we have fallen on evil days. All that was pure gold has become base metal today. In such times it is wisdom not to market pure gold and let it be sold as base metal. I would not risk a simple quarrel over singing Vande Mataram at a mixed gathering. It will never suffer from disuse. It is enthroned in the hearts of millions”
Describing the significance of the song Vande Mataram, Maharshi Aurobindo said sometime in 1907 “ It was 32 years ago that Bankim wrote his great song and few listened : but in a sudden moment of awakening from long delusions the people of Bengal looked around for the truth and in a fated moment somebody sang ‘Vande Mataram’. The mantra had been given and in a single day a whole people had been converted to the religion of patriotism. The Mother had revealed herself. Once that vision has come to the people, there can be no rest, no peace, no further slumber till the temple has been made ready, the image installed and the offering offered. A great nation which has had that vision can never again bend its neck in subjection to the yoke of a conqueror”
About 30 years later, some time in November 1938, Sri Aurobindo had a fracture in his thigh and many of his close disciples used to go to the Ashram and spend some time with him in the evening to get the benefit of his advice on some of their doubts on varied subjects. One such disciple met him at the Ashram on 30th December 1939 and raised the problem of the Muslims’ objection to the singing of Vandemataram. The dialogue went on like this:
Disciple: Sir, there are some people who object to ‘Vande Mataram’ as a national song. And some congressmen support the removal of some parts of the song.
Maharshi: In that case the Hindus should give up their culture.
Disciple: The argument is that the song speaks of Hindu goddesses like Durga (a powerful and potent version of the domestic Mother Goddess Parvati, coomonly worshipped by Hindu men to bestow upon us, her formidable, indomitable power and strength who has a thousand tools in her arms to protect and avenge harm done to her children) and that is offensive to Muslims
Maharshi: But it is not a religious song. It is a national song and the Durga spoken of is India as the Mother. Why should not the Muslims accept it? It is an image used in poetry. In the Indian concept of nationality, the Hindu view would naturally be there. If it cannot find a place here, the Hindus may as well be asked to give up their culture. The Hindus don’t object to ‘Allah-ho-Akbar. Why should not the Hindu worship his God? Otherwise, the Hindus must either accept Mohammedanism or the European culture or become atheists. I told C.R. Das in 1923 that this Hindu-Muslim question must be solved before the Britishers go as otherwise there was a danger of civil war. He also agreed and wanted to solve it.
The Vande Mataram controversy was finally resolved on the final day of the Constituent assembly on January 24th 1950 when Rajendra Prasad, the President of the Assembly, ruled from the chair that whereas Jana-gana-mana (a different song) would be the National Anthem, Vande Mataram “shall be honoured equally” and “shall have equal status “with the National Anthem. It is significant that there was neither a discussion nor a vote on the subject. This lends credence to the suggestion that a free vote would probably have led to the founding fathers enshrining Vande Mataram as the National Anthem.
B. M. N. Murthy
and
HIS IMMORTAL POEM ‘VANDE MATARAM’ - I BOW TO MY MOTHER (MOTHER BHAARATAVARSHA)
Glorified by many as the last word in patriotic ardour, the song ‘Vande Mataram’ is not just a song but a symbol of the national culture of India. Even with a lapse of more than 130 years since its composition, it continues to hold an indelible place in the national psyche as is evident from its popularity even today. Sometime in 1992 when the B.B.C. London invited nominations for the most popular song in India, nearly 25,000 listeners of the BBC World Service nominated Vande Mataram as one of the most two popular songs. In 1915, M.K.Gandhi, not yet known as the Mahatma, spoke at a meeting in Madras which began with the singing of Vande Mataram for invocation. Addressing the huge gathering, Gandhiji said: “You have sung that beautiful national song on hearing which all of us sprang to our feet. The poet Bankim Chandra has lavished all the adjectives we possibly could do, to describe Mother India. It is for you and me to make good the claim that the poet has advanced on behalf of his Motherland”
Vande Mataram, which literally means “Mother! I bow to thee”, was the soul stirring slogan of the Indian freedom fighters during their struggle against the British regime .It forms part of a song which appears in a Bengali novel called ‘Anandamath’ published sometime in 1881 and written by the doyen of Bengali literature, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee [1838-1894]. Bankim Chandra was born in a village in Bengal in 1838. Even when he was studying in a high school in his village near Calcutta, his teachers were awed at his extraordinary intelligence and grasping power. Creating records at every step of his academic career, Bankim coveted the top honours in the Presidency College, Calcutta and was the first graduate of the Calcutta University along with his compatriot Jadunath Bose. In the year 1858 when he was 20 years old he became a Deputy Magistrate—the highest administrative position a contemporary Indian could have reached in those days under the British Government. In spite of the coveted position he held. Bankim’s real genius lay in Bengali literature. He wrote about 15 novels in Bengali like Durgesh Nandini, Kapala Kundala, Mrinalini, Visha Kanya etc but it was his novel Anandamath and the song in it , Vande Mataram, that brought him fame all over the country. Anandamath, before it came out in the form of a book, had been serialized in a Bengali literary journal called ‘Banga Desh’ edited by Bankim himself.
One day, sometime about 1875, Bankim was returning home in the evening by train from Calcutta where the office of ‘Bangadesh’ was located. Looking on either side of the window, he was enjoying nature in all its pristine glory. The sylvan beauties of the river, the brook, the chirping of birds, flora and fauna etc totally absorbed his attention. Even when he reached home, the pleasant thoughts continue to dominate his mind. The inherent literary genius in the man manifested itself when Bankim took out a piece of paper and jotted down these pleasant memories in the form of a poem, as and when they occurred to him. Some lines came out in his mother tongue Bengali while the others were in Sanskrit. These are the very lines which eventually became famous as ‘Vande Mataram’ and which found a place in his novel ‘Anandamath ‘at a much later date.
In the memoirs written by Bankim Chandra’s younger brother, it has been recounted that the poem had been lying around for several years in Bankim’s study. One of the assistants who helped Bankim in editing ‘Banga Desh’, one day picked up the poem and said “This is not so bad and will do quite well as a filler to fill up an empty space we have in the galley-proofs for the number”. It is learnt that Bankim refused to have it published in that fashion and said “You cannot possibly guess now if this is good or bad. Time will tell—I shall be dead by then. It is possible that you may see that day”. That was the end of the matter and the poem as we know remained unpublished till Bankim went back to the poem he had written many years ago to make it the centerpiece of a complete mosaic of ideas, the novel ‘Anandamath’.
Sometime in 1881, Bankim’s novel was serialized in his own magazine ‘Bangadesh’. This novel contained the first few lines of ‘Vande Mataram’ which Bankim first composed and also included some additional lines. A notable fact was that when the poem was inserted in the journal, the first 12 lines constituting the first two poems were put within quotation marks while the rest of the poems namely lines 13 to 27 did not have any such quotation marks. It could therefore be inferred that the first twelve lines were those written earlier, sometime in 1875 and the others were written sometime later, probably in 1881, bearing in mind the theme of ‘Anandamath’. This distinction gains importance because it was the latter part which contained those "explicit" and "idolatrous" imageries which were objected to by many outside the Hindu community. It would be of interest to note that the central theme of Anandamath pertains to the determined struggle of a band of patriotic Sanyasis who fought against the oppressive rule of the East India Company and died in the battle with the cry of ‘Vande Mataram’ in their lips.
Vande Mataram remained dormant and did not get wide publicity or popularity for quite a few years after its publication in the magazine. However, in the year 1896 when the Indian National Congress held its Session in Calcutta, the Session started with the invocation of ‘Vande Mataram’ The singer was no other than Gurudev Ravindranath Tagore (Thakur) who set the tune to the song and sang it in the presence of a distinguished audience. When the song was over there was thunderous applause. Reacting to the popular response to ‘Vande Mataram’, Tagore observed sometime later:
“When I set the tune to the song and sang it before a vast assemblage of people in the Congress Session at Calcutta, I felt myself electrified from top to toe. It was not a song. It was molten fire. Every word and every line engulfed the audience with the fire of patriotism”. In a letter to Jawaharlal Nehru sometime later in 1937, Tagore writes “The privilege of originally setting its [Vande Mataram’s] first stanza to the tune was mine when the author was still alive and I was the first person to sing it before a gathering of the Calcutta Congress”. With the singing of Vande Mataram in Calcutta in 1896, it attained fame, popularity and publicity and also the importance which it deserved, all over the country.
With the partition of Bengal in 1905 and the rise of the Swadeshi Movement all over the country fighting for independence, Vande Mataram got a terrible boost. Practically it became a Mantra on the lips of every patriotic Indian. The great Tamil poet Subramanya Bharathi translated into Tamil in 1905 and this was followed by several other translations in Marathi, Kannada, Telugu, Gujarati, and Malayalam etc – all between 1905 to 1908. The song was heard in public meetings and processions in many places across India. It was on the lips of every Bengali Swadeshi agitator during the partition of Bengal..
Another event which made the song popular was the Congress Session held in 1905 in Benares when it was sung as an invocation song. The President of the session, Sri. Gopalakrishna Gokhale, requested a Bengali lady by name Saraladevi Chodhurani to sing Vande Mataram before the commencement of the session. She was no other than Rabindranath Tagore’s niece. Commenting on Vande Mataram some time later, Mahatma Gandhi wrote in the ‘Indian Opinion’ dated 2nd December 1095 “The song has proved so popular that it has come to be our National Anthem. Just as we worship our mother, so is this song a passionate prayer to India”
The tradition of singing Vande Mataram in the Congress Sessions continued till 1930 when some Muslims objected to the singing of the same. When the Congress came to power in six of the eleven provinces in 1937, the song acquired the status of a National Anthem to which the Muslim League protested vehemently, describing it as ‘anti-national and "idolatrous" in its inspiration and ideas’. With a view to accommodating the feelings of the Muslims, the Congress Working Committee met in October 1937 and passed the following resolution:
“The Committee recognise the validity of the objection raised by Muslim friends to certain parts of the song. While the Committee have taken note of such objection in so far as it has intrinsic value, the Committee wish to point out that the modern evolution of the use of the song as part of national life is of infinitely greater importance than its setting in a historical novel before the national movement had taken shape. Taking all things into consideration the Committee recommend that wherever the Vande Mataram is sung at national gatherings, only the first two songs should be sung, with perfect freedom to the organizers to sing any other song of an unobjectionable character, in addition to, or in place of, the Vande Mataram song”.
The Congress resolution, widely perceived as a concession, did not satisfy the Muslim League who wanted the deletion of Vandemataram in toto. Mahatma Gandhi was unwilling to allow the song to be a pawn in politics. In July 1939, Gandhiji published an essay about this in his ‘Harijan’dated 1st July 1939 where he recalled that ‘Vande Mataram was a powerful battle cry and that he himself as a lad was enthralled by the song’. He went on to say: “It never occurred to me that it was a Hindu song nor meant only for Hindus. Unfortunately now we have fallen on evil days. All that was pure gold has become base metal today. In such times it is wisdom not to market pure gold and let it be sold as base metal. I would not risk a simple quarrel over singing Vande Mataram at a mixed gathering. It will never suffer from disuse. It is enthroned in the hearts of millions”
Describing the significance of the song Vande Mataram, Maharshi Aurobindo said sometime in 1907 “ It was 32 years ago that Bankim wrote his great song and few listened : but in a sudden moment of awakening from long delusions the people of Bengal looked around for the truth and in a fated moment somebody sang ‘Vande Mataram’. The mantra had been given and in a single day a whole people had been converted to the religion of patriotism. The Mother had revealed herself. Once that vision has come to the people, there can be no rest, no peace, no further slumber till the temple has been made ready, the image installed and the offering offered. A great nation which has had that vision can never again bend its neck in subjection to the yoke of a conqueror”
About 30 years later, some time in November 1938, Sri Aurobindo had a fracture in his thigh and many of his close disciples used to go to the Ashram and spend some time with him in the evening to get the benefit of his advice on some of their doubts on varied subjects. One such disciple met him at the Ashram on 30th December 1939 and raised the problem of the Muslims’ objection to the singing of Vandemataram. The dialogue went on like this:
Disciple: Sir, there are some people who object to ‘Vande Mataram’ as a national song. And some congressmen support the removal of some parts of the song.
Maharshi: In that case the Hindus should give up their culture.
Disciple: The argument is that the song speaks of Hindu goddesses like Durga (a powerful and potent version of the domestic Mother Goddess Parvati, coomonly worshipped by Hindu men to bestow upon us, her formidable, indomitable power and strength who has a thousand tools in her arms to protect and avenge harm done to her children) and that is offensive to Muslims
Maharshi: But it is not a religious song. It is a national song and the Durga spoken of is India as the Mother. Why should not the Muslims accept it? It is an image used in poetry. In the Indian concept of nationality, the Hindu view would naturally be there. If it cannot find a place here, the Hindus may as well be asked to give up their culture. The Hindus don’t object to ‘Allah-ho-Akbar. Why should not the Hindu worship his God? Otherwise, the Hindus must either accept Mohammedanism or the European culture or become atheists. I told C.R. Das in 1923 that this Hindu-Muslim question must be solved before the Britishers go as otherwise there was a danger of civil war. He also agreed and wanted to solve it.
The Vande Mataram controversy was finally resolved on the final day of the Constituent assembly on January 24th 1950 when Rajendra Prasad, the President of the Assembly, ruled from the chair that whereas Jana-gana-mana (a different song) would be the National Anthem, Vande Mataram “shall be honoured equally” and “shall have equal status “with the National Anthem. It is significant that there was neither a discussion nor a vote on the subject. This lends credence to the suggestion that a free vote would probably have led to the founding fathers enshrining Vande Mataram as the National Anthem.
B. M. N. Murthy
