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Vande Mataram

Vande Mataram written by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee set to Raag Desh as performed on All India Radio
National song of  India
Lyrics	Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, Anandamath (1882)
Music	Jadunath Bhattacharya (original) Hemanta Mukherjee (film version)
Adopted	24 January 1950 (24 January 1950; 74 years ago (1950-01-24))
Audio sample
Vande Mataram played on the Mohan veena by Vishwa Mohan Bhatt in 2017 file help

Vande Mātaram (Devanagari: वंदे मातरम् Bengali: বন্দে মাতরম্‌ Bônde Mātôrôm; transl. I praise you, Motherland) is a poem written in Sanskritised Bengali by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee in the 1870s. The first two verses of the poem were adopted as the National Song of India in October 1937 by the Congress.

The poem was first published in 1882 as part of Chatterjee's Bengali novel Anandmath. It is an ode to the motherland, personified as the "mother goddess" in later verses, of the people. This initially referred to Bengal, with the "mother" figure therefore being Banga Mata (Mother Bengal), though the text does not mention this explicitly. Indian nationalist and philosopher Sri Aurobindo referred Vande Mataram as the "national Anthem of Bengal".

Nonetheless, the poem played a vital role in the Indian independence movement. It first gained political significance when it was recited by Rabindranath Tagore at Congress in 1896. By 1905, it had become popular amongst political activists and freedom fighters as a marching song. The song, as well as Anandmath, were banned under British colonial rule under threat of imprisonment, making its use revolutionary. The ban was ultimately overturned by the Indian government upon independence in 1947.

On 24 January 1950, the Constituent Assembly of India adopted Vande Mataram as the Republic's national song. President of India Rajendra Prasad stated that the song should be honoured equally with the national anthem of India, Jana Gana Mana. While the Constitution of India does not make reference to a "national song", the Government filed an affidavit at the Delhi High Court in November 2022 stating that Jana Gana Mana and Vande Mataram would “stand on the same level”, and that citizens should show equal respect to both.

The first two verses of the song make abstract reference to the "mother" and "motherland", without any religious connotation. However, later verses mention Hindu goddesses such as Durga.

Unlike the national anthem, there are no rules or decorum to be observed when reciting Vande Mataram.

Indian Muslims and Sikhs have opposed the singing of Vande Mataram since in Islam and Sikhism, the homeland cannot be considered as a mother.

Etymology

The root of the Sanskrit word Vande is Vand, which appears in Rigveda and other Vedic texts. According to Monier Monier-Williams, depending on the context, vand means "to praise, celebrate, laud, extol, to show honour, do homage, salute respectfully", or "deferentially, venerate, worship, adore", or "to offer anything respectfully to". The word Mātaram has Indo-European roots in mātár- (Sanskrit), méter (Greek), mâter (Latin) which mean "mother".

Lyrics of the song

The first two verses of Vande Mataram adopted as the "National Song" read as follows:

Lyrics

The complete original lyrics of the Vande Mataram are available at Vande Mataram  – via Wikisource.

Translation

The first translation of Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay's novel Anandamath, including the poem Vande Mataram, into English was by Nares Chandra Sen-Gupta, with the fifth edition published in 1906 titled "The Abbey of Bliss".

Here is the translation in prose of the above two stanzas rendered by Sri Aurobindo Ghosh. This has also been adopted by the Government of India's national portal. The original Vande Mataram consists of six stanzas and the translation in prose for the complete poem by Shri Aurobindo appeared in Karmayogin, 20 November 1909.

Mother, I bow to thee!
Rich with thy hurrying streams,
Bright with thy orchard gleams,
Cool with the winds of delight,
Dark fields waving, Mother of might,
Mother free.

Glory of moonlight dreams,
Over thy branches and lordly streams,
Clad in thy blossoming trees,
Mother, giver of ease,
Laughing low and sweet,
Mother, I kiss thy feet,
Speaker sweet and low,
Mother, to thee I bow.

Who hath said thou art weak in thy lands,
When the swords flash out in seventy million hands,
And seventy million voices roar
Thy dreadful name from shore to shore?
With many strengths who art mighty and strong,
To thee I call, Mother and Lord!
Thou who savest, arise and save!
To her I cry who ever her foemen drove
Back from plain and Sea
And shook herself free.

Thou art wisdom, thou art law,
Thou art heart, our soul, our breath
Thou art love divine, the awe
In our hearts that conquers death.
Thine the strength that nerves the arm,
Thine the beauty, thine the charm.
Every image divine.
In our temples is but thine.

Thou art Goddess Durga, Lady and Queen,
With her hands that strike and her swords of sheen,
Thou art Goddess Kamala (Lakshmi), lotus-throned,
And Goddess Vani (Saraswati), bestower of wisdom known
Pure and perfect without peer,
Mother lend thine ear,
Rich with thy hurrying streams,
Bright with thy orchard gleams,
Dark of hue O candid-fair

In thy soul, with jewelled hair
And thy glorious smile divine,
Loveliest of all earthly lands,
Showering wealth from well-stored hands!
Mother, mother mine!
Mother sweet, I bow to thee,
Mother great and free!

Apart from the above prose translation, Sri Aurobindo also translated Vande Mataram into a verse form known as Mother, I praise thee!. Sri Aurobindo commented on his English translation of the poem that "It is difficult to translate the National Song of India into verse in another language owing to its unique union of sweetness, simple directness and high poetic force."

Translation into other languages

Vande Mataram has inspired many Indian poets and has been translated into numerous Indian languages, such as Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Odia, Malayalam, Assamese, Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, Punjabi, Urdu and others.

Arif Mohammad Khan translated Vande Mataram into Urdu. It can be read in Urdu (Devanagari script) as:

History and significance

Composition

Bankim Chandra Chatterjee was one of the earliest graduates of the newly established Calcutta University. After his BA, he joined the colonial government as a civil servant, becoming a Deputy Collector and later a Deputy Magistrate. Chattopadhyay was very interested in recent events in Indian and Bengali history, particularly the Revolt of 1857 and the previous century's Sanyasi Rebellion. Around the same time, the administration was trying to promote "God Save the King" as the anthem for Indian subjects, which Indian nationalists disliked. It is generally believed that the concept of Vande Mataram came to Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay when he was still a government official, around 1876. He wrote Vande Mataram at Chinsura (Chuchura), in a white colour house of Adhya Family near Hooghly river (near Jora Ghat) in West Bengal.

Chattopadhyay wrote the poem in a spontaneous session using words from Sanskrit and Bengali. The poem was published in Chattopadhyay's book Anandamath (pronounced Anondomôţh in Bengali) in 1882, which is set in the events of the Sannyasi Rebellion. Jadunath Bhattacharya was asked to set a tune for this poem just after it was written.

Indian independence movement

"Vande Mataram" was one of the most popular songs of protest during the Indian independence movement. The colonial government in response banned the book and made the recital of the song in public a crime. The colonial government imprisoned many independence activists for disobeying the order, but workers and general public repeatedly violated the ban many times by gathering together in the presence of colonial officials and singing it. Rabindranath Tagore sang Vande Mataram in 1896 at the Calcutta Congress Session held at Beadon Square. Dakhina Charan Sen sang it five years later in 1901 at another session of the Congress at Calcutta. Poet Sarala Devi Chaudurani sang the song in the Benares Congress Session in 1905. Lala Lajpat Rai started a journal called Vande Mataram from Lahore. Hiralal Sen made India's first political film in 1905 which ended with the chant. Matangini Hazra's last words as she was shot to death by the Crown police were Vande Mataram.

In 1907, Bhikaiji Cama (1861–1936) created the first version of India's national flag (the Tiranga) in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1907. It had Vande Mataram written on it in the middle band.

A book titled Kranti Geetanjali published by Arya Printing Press (Lahore) and Bharatiya Press (Dehradun) in 1929 contains first two stanzas of this lyric on page 11 as Matra Vandana and a ghazal (Vande Mataram) composed by Bismil was also given on its back, i.e. page 12. The book written by the famous martyr of Kakori Pandit Ram Prasad Bismil was proscribed by the colonial government.

Mahatama Gandhi supported adoption and the singing of the Vande Mataram song. In January 1946, in a speech in Guwahati (Assam), he urged that "Jai Hind should not replace Vande-mataram". He reminded everyone present that Vande-mataram was being sung since the inception of the Congress. He supported the "Jai Hind" greeting, but remanded that this greeting should not be to the exclusion of Vande Mataram. Gandhi was concerned that those who discarded Vande Mataram given the tradition of sacrifice behind it, one day would discard "Jai Hind" also.

Debate on adoption as national song of India

Parts of the Vande Mataram was chosen as the national song in 1937 by the Indian National Congress as it pursued the independence of India from colonial rule, after a committee consisting of Maulana Azad, Jawaharlal Nehru, Subhash Chandra Bose, Acharya Deva, and Rabindranath Tagore recommended the adoption. The entire song was not selected by Hindu leaders in order to respect the sentiments of non-Hindus, and the gathering agreed that anyone should be free to sing an alternate "unobjectionable song" at a national gathering if they do not want to sing Vande Mataram because they find it "objectionable" for a personal reason. According to the gathered leaders, including the Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore, though the first two stanzas began with an unexceptionable evocation of the beauty of the motherland, in later stanzas there are references to the Hindu goddess Durga. The All-India Muslim League and Muhammad Ali Jinnah opposed the song. Thereafter, with the support of Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, the Indian National Congress decided to adopt only the first two stanzas as the national song to be sung at public gatherings, and other verses that included references to Durga and Lakshmi were expunged.

Rajendra Prasad, who was presiding the Constituent Assembly on 24 January 1950, made the following statement which was also adopted as the final decision on the issue:

...The composition consisting of the words and music known as Jana Gana Mana is the National Anthem of India, subject to such alterations in the words as the Government may authorise as occasion arises; and the song Vande Mataram, which has played a historic part in the struggle for Indian freedom, shall be honoured equally with Jana Gana Mana and shall have equal status with it. (Applause). I hope this will satisfy the Members.

—Constituent Assembly of India, Vol. XII, 24-1-1950

Performances and interpretations

The poem has been set to a large number of tunes. The oldest surviving audio recordings date to 1907, and there have been more than a hundred different versions recorded throughout the 20th century. Many of these versions have employed traditional Indian classical ragas. Versions of the song have been visualised on celluloid in a number of films, including Leader, Amar Asha, and Anand Math. It is widely believed that the tune set for All India Radio station version was composed by Ravi Shankar. Hemant Kumar composed music for the song in the movie Anand Math in 1952. Many singers like Lata Mangeshkar, K.S.Chithra sung made it cult classic. In 2002, BBC World Service conducted an international poll to choose ten most famous songs of all time. Around 7000 songs were selected from all over the world. Vande Mataram, from the movie Anand Math, was ranked second. All India Radio's version and some other versions are in Desh raga.

In July 2017, the Madras High Court ruled that the Vande Mataram shall be sung or played at least once a week in all schools, universities and other educational institutions of Tamil Nadu. The Court also ruled that the song should be played or sung in government offices and industrial facilities at least once a month.

See also

• Anandmath— The novel from which "Vande Mataram" gained popularity
• "Jana Gana Mana"- The Indian national anthem
• "Shubh Sukh Chain"
• Banga Mata
• Bharat Mata
• Jaya Bharata Jananiya Tanujate
• Tamil Thai
• Telugu Thalli
• Telangana Thalli
• Vande Mataram (album)
• National Pledge
• List of Indian state anthems

Notes

1. sometimes transcribed as ধর্ম
2. sometimes transcribed as মর্ম
3. Sanskrit transliteration "Vande"
4. Sanskrit
    "varadāṃ"
5. Sanskrit transliteration "Dvisaptakoṭībhujaidhṛtakharakaravāle"
6. Sanskrit transliteration "Avalā"
7. Sanskrit transliteration "vale"
8. Sanskrit transliteration "Vahuvaladhārinīṃ"
9. Sanskrit transliteration "Ripudalavārinī"
10. Sanskrit transliteration "vidyā"
11. Sanskrit transliteration "Tvaṃ"
12. Sanskrit transliteration "Tvaṃ"
13. Sanskrit transliteration "Vānī"
14. Sanskrit transliteration "vidyādāẏinī"
15. Sanskrit transliteration "tvaṃ"
16. Sanskrit transliteration "Vande"

1. See, for example, Rigveda 1.27.1; Sanskrit: अश्वं न त्वा वारवन्तं वन्दध्या अग्निं नमोभिः । सम्राजन्तमध्वराणाम् ॥१॥ Wikisource
2. The Assamese version, re-translated into English, reads:
   "O my own land,
   O my dear land,
   O my dear land,
   A land bedecked with gentle streams,
   A land that adorned with heavenly beauty,
   It is such a motherland." – Lakshminath Bezbarua, Translated into English by A Mazumdar
3. This view of Gandhi was not isolated. In another interview, he said, "a song that carried such glorious associations of sacrifice as "Vandemataram" could never be given up. It would be like discarding one’s mother. But they could certainly add a new song or songs like the one mentioned to their repertoire of national songs after due thought and discrimination."

References

1. https://knowindia.india.gov.in/national-identity-elements/national-song.php
2. "Vande Mataram". www.mustrad.org.uk. Retrieved 3 September 2021.
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4. Staff Reporter (14 July 2017). "Vande Mataram was in Sanskrit, AG clarifies". The Hindu. ISSN 0971-751X. Retrieved 24 July 2021.
5. ^ The National Flag Archived 16 March 2015 at the Wayback Machine, The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Volume 76, 27 June 1939, pages 68–70 with footnote 1 on page 69
6. Sabyasachi Bhattacharya (2003). Bande Mataram, the Biography of a Song. Penguin Books. pp. 17–24. ISBN 978-0-14-303055-3.
7. S. K. BOSE (2015). Bankim Chandra Chatterji. Publications Division Ministry of Information & Broadcasting. pp. 88–92. ISBN 978-81-230-2269-7.
8. Sabyasachi Bhattacharya (2003). Bande Mataram, the Biography of a Song. Penguin. pp. 1–8, 73–76, 90–99. ISBN 978-0-14-303055-3.
9. "Bankim's Vande Mataram originally referred to Banga Mata not Bharat Mata: Netaji's grand nephew in new book".
10. "The Mother in Bande Mataram is not Mother India". 8 April 2017.
11. "History revisited: 'Bande Mataram' was written as a song about Bengal – not India".
12. "Bharat Mata: From freedom struggle metaphor to patriotism's litmus test". 21 March 2016.
13. Sri Aurobindo commented on his English translation of the poem, "It is difficult to translate the National Anthem of Bengal into verse in another language owing to its unique union of sweetness, simple directness and high poetic force." Cited in Bhabatosh Chatterjee (ed.), Bankim Chandra Chatterjee: Essays in Perspective, Sahitya Akademi, Delhi, 1994, p. 601.
14. ^ "National Song of India". Government of India. Archived from the original on 15 January 2013. Retrieved 29 April 2008.
15. "National Song". knowindia.gov.in. Archived from the original on 18 August 2017.
16. ^ Diana L. Eck (2012). India: A Sacred Geography. New York: Random House (Harmony Books). pp. 95–97. ISBN 978-0-385-53190-0.
17. ^ Bankimcandra Chatterji (2005). Anandamath, or The Sacred Brotherhood. Oxford University Press. pp. 71–78. ISBN 978-0-19-803971-6.
18. Aurobindo Mazumdar (2007). Bande Mataram and Islam. Mittal Publications. pp. 18–22, 30–31. ISBN 978-81-8324-159-5.
19. "National Symbols | National Portal of India". Retrieved 23 January 2020.
20. "HC dismisses plea to declare 'Vande Mataram' as national anthem or song". The Indian Express. 27 July 2019. Retrieved 1 November 2019.
21. "No concept of National Song in Constitution, says SC". Hindustan Times. 17 February 2017. Retrieved 1 November 2019.
22. "Jana Gana & Vande Mataram 'stand on same level': Govt in HC". Times of India. 7 November 2022. Retrieved 7 November 2022.
23. Sabyasachi Bhattacharya (2003). Bande Mataram, the Biography of a Song. Penguin Books. pp. 34–37, 81. ISBN 978-0-14-303055-3.
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27. ^ Monier Monier-Williams, English Sanskrit Dictionary with Etymology Archived 28 April 2017 at the Wayback Machine, Oxford University Press, page 919
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46. *Kranti Geetanjali ISBN 81-7783-128-3.
47. Speech at Prayer Meeting (Guwahati, Assam) Archived 16 March 2015 at the Wayback Machine, The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, 10 January 1946, page 212
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• Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, Vande Mataram: The Biography of a Song, Penguin Books, 2003, ISBN 978-0-14-303055-3.

Further reading

• Tagore, Sir Rabindranath (1919) . The Home and the World. Trans. from Bengali by Surendranath Tagore. London: MacMillan & Co. OCLC 228705970. Bande (with a B rather than a V) Mataram plays a great part in this novel about a Bengali family.
• "Vande Mataram : Biography of a Song" by Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, Publisher:Penguin, ISBN 9780143030553

External links

Vocals

• Vande Mataram Hemant Kumar & Lata Mangeshkar in Anand Math(1951).
• Hemant Kumar from the film Anand Math(1951) Original Version.
• Vande Mataram, Lata Mangeshkar in Anand Math (4:57 minutes)
• Vande Mataram, Amruta Suresh and Abhirami Suresh (4:36 minutes)
• Vande Mataram, Group song (1:09 minutes)

Debate

• "National Song" section, Official Portal of the Indian Government
• How Secular is Vande Mataram?, AG Noorani, Frontline
• Boycott threat over Indian song, BBC
• 1937 Congress Resolution on validity of Muslim objection to this song, Outlook India

v t e National symbols of India
Constitutional	Flag of India (Flag) Emblem of India (Emblem) Satyameva Jayate (Motto) Jana Gana Mana (Anthem) Vande Mataram (Song) National Pledge (Pledge)
Flora and fauna	Bengal tiger (Animal) Indian peafowl (Bird) Lotus (Flower) Banyan (Tree) Mango (Fruit) Indian elephant (Heritage animal) Ganges river dolphin (Aquatic animal) King cobra (Reptile) Lactobacillus bulgaricus (Microber)
Days	Independence Day Republic Day Gandhi Jayanti
Others	Indian rupee (Currency) Ganges (River) Indian Calendar (Calendar)

v t e Works of Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay
Bengali novels	Durgeshnandini (1865) Kapalkundala (1866) Mrinalini (1869) Bishabriksha Indira Jugalanguriya Chandrashekhar Radharani Rajani Krishnakanter Will Rajsingha Anandamath (1882) Devi Chaudhurani (1884) Sitaram
English novel	Rajmohan's Wife
Literary magazine	Bangadarshan
National song of India	Vande Mataram
Wikiquote Wikisource texts

• Indian literature
• Indian patriotic songs
• Indian anthems
• 19th-century Sanskrit literature
• Songs in Bengali
• Indian political slogans