Tattva

Vande Mātaram (Hail to the Motherland) is the national song of India. The song was composed by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay. The song first appeared in his book Anandamatha. Rabindranath Tagore sang it in 1896 by setting a glorious tune to it and it was left to the genius of Shri Aurobindo to interpret the deeper meaning of the song out of which India received the philosophy of new Nationalism. The English translation of Vande Mataram rendered by Shree Aurobindo, is considered as the official and best.

“Vande Mataram” was the national cry for freedom from British oppression during the Indian freedom movement. The British, fearful of the potential danger of an incited Indian populace, at one point banned the utterance of the motto in public forums, and imprisoned many freedom fighters for disobeying the proscription.

In Hindu culture, the mother is considered a God, and worshipping the mother through songs is an age-old tradition. Vande Mataram is one such song, which describes the motherland. That is why the song keeps reappearing again and again in different forms.

While Vande Mataram was treated as the National Anthem of India for long, ultimately Jana Gana Mana, was chosen as the National Anthem of independent India. The song was rejected on the grounds that Muslims felt offended by its depiction of the nation as “Ma Durga”, thus equating the nation with the Hindu conception of Shakti. In 1937 the Indian National congress discussed at length the status of the song. It was pointed out then that though the first two stanzas began with an unexceptionable evocation of the beauty of the motherland, in later stanzas there are references where the motherland is likened to the Hindu goddess Durga. Therefore, the Congress decided to adopt only the first two stanzas as the national song, which unfortunately continues to this day.

At the bottom, you see the full version with the original 5 stanzas. You can download the mp3 with all 5 stanzas at http://www.hssus.org/geet/Vande_mataram.mp3Throughout it’s history there have been numerous remakes, recreations, and interpretations of this song. Notable is music composer A. R. Rahman’s Vande Mataram released to commemorate fifty years of India’s Independence in 1997 produced by Bharat Bala Productions. In 2002, Rehman’s Vande Mataram was voted the second most requested song by listeners on the BBC’s World Service radio. To this day, Vande Mataram is considered the true national mantra describing the love of patriots for India.

On the left is the picture of Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay (b.26 June 1838- d.8 April 1894), the composer of Vande Mataram, a Bengali Indian poet, novelist, essayist and journalist.

Shobhit Mathur is a software developer at Amazon.com. You can reach him at shobhit.mathur@gmail.com

 The original version of Vande Mataram

वन्दे मातरम्सुजलां सुफलां मलयजशीतलाम्
सस्य श्यामलां मातरंम् ॥
शुभ्र ज्योत्सनाम् पुलकित यामिनीम्
फुल्ल कुसुमित द्रुमदलशोभिनीम्,
सुहासिनीं सुमधुर भाषिणीम् .
सुखदां वरदां मातरम् ॥
कोटि कोटि कन्ठ कलकल निनाद कराले
द्विसप्त कोटि भुजैर्ध्रत खरकरवाले
के बोले मा तुमी अबले
बहुबल धारिणीम् नमामि तारिणीम्
रिपुदलवारिणीम् मातरम् ॥ तुमि विद्या तुमि धर्म, तुमि ह्रदि तुमि मर्म
त्वं हि प्राणाः शरीरे
बाहुते तुमि मा शक्ति,
हृदये तुमि मा भक्ति,
तोमारै प्रतिमा गडि मन्दिरे-मन्दिरे ॥

त्वं हि दुर्गा दशप्रहरणधारिणी
कमला कमलदल विहारिणी
वाणी विद्यादायिनी, नमामि त्वाम्
नमामि कमलां अमलां अतुलाम्
सुजलां सुफलां मातरम् ॥

श्यामलां सरलां सुस्मितां भूषिताम्
धरणीं भरणीं मातरम् ॥ 

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This entry was posted on Sunday, October 1st, 2006 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Hindu History. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.