No controversy can dim Vande Mataram’s enduring legacy in nation-building

Vande Mātaram!

Sujalām, suphalām, malayaja-śītalām,

Śasya-śyāmalām, Mātaram!

The union cabinet has just cleared an amendment putting the national song Vande Mataram on par with the national anthem Jana Gana Mana. And yet, this decision did not attract universal applause given that it was the rallying cry of our freedom movement. Instead, it has, almost immediately, stirred a hornet’s nest of controversy, with a section of Muslim leaders saying an ode to the mother goddess was unacceptable to them.

AIMIM president Asaduddin Owaisi wrote on social media that Vande Mataram could not be treated on par with the national anthem because “the nation is not a goddess; it does not run in the name of a god or goddess and it does not belong to one god or goddess”. He went on to add that several leaders of the freedom movement – including Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose and Rabindranath Tagore – “all rejected it”.

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History, though, says otherwise. The lyrics by legendary Bengali litterateur Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay were set to music by Jadu Bhatt, a hugely respected musician in the early 20th century, and were repeatedly sung at multiple sessions of the Congress. Tagore himself sang it at the 1905 session, and so popular was his rendition that there were several encore demands from the audience, and the poet happily obliged. But Tagore was not the first to sing the song. His niece Sarala Devi sang it at the 1895 session of the Congress, just a year after Bankim’s death. As for Netaji, he supported the singing of Vande Mataram all through his stint in the Congress. There are multiple books on the INA and the song itself that clarify this point.

But first, it is important to go back to the history that inspired this hymn. When it first appeared in print 151 years ago, 'Vande Mataram' was a requiem for a revolution ostensibly referencing the Sanyasi rebellion of the 1760s, when 'Om Vande Mataram' became a battle cry. In effect, it was also referencing the uprising of 1857, which was fresh in popular memory at that point. First published on its own in 1875 before being included in the author’s historical fiction work Anandamath in 1882, the song was in fact a clarion call to the nation, demanding that Mother India be worshipped as the goddess that she is, asking Indians to consecrate her with both daring and devotion (sharire shakti and hriday bhakti).

In his book on his uncle called Bankim Jeebani, Bankim's nephew Satish Chandra Chattopadhyay recounts an anecdote about what the song meant to the man who penned it. The author is said to have quizzed his eldest daughter about the song, and she, playfully, told him that people don’t like it much. That banter made Bankim think. Then he said, prophetically, that there will come a day when all of Bharat will come alive to the words of the song.

That Bankim knew what the song would become in the context of India’s struggle for independence becomes clear not just from this anecdote but from another quoted by Jagadish Bhattacharya in his book Vande Mataram. Apparently Bankim had written the song several years before it was published and refused multiple requests for its debut. He is said to have told his assistants at Banga Darshan, the literary magazine he edited, that “people may not be able to appreciate its value now, but they will soon, even if I am not around to see it”.

Bankim’s prophecy proved correct. After his death in 1894, very quickly, 'Vande Mataram' became the rallying cry of the freedom movement. Leaders like Sri Aurobindo called it the mantra to worship the motherland. In his essay on Bankim Chandra, Sri Aurobindo wrote, "Among the rishis of the later age we have at last realised that we must include the name of the man who gave us the reviving mantra which is creating a new India, the mantra Vande Mataram.” Why was this mantra the secret to Bharat’s revival? Because it would be chanted across the length and breadth of the country to consecrate Ma Bharati or Mother India. “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,” wrote Sri Aurobindo.

By 1905, when the country’s youth rose up against the unjust proposal to partition Bengal, Vande Mataram took on a life of its own. On August 7, 1905, a huge anti-partition agitation was held at the Town Hall in Kolkata, and it was here that Vande Mataram was sung as an opening invocation. Very quickly, the song and the phrase became a byword for a nation waking up to its destiny. The Vande Mataram Sampraday (community) was set up, and they took out processions every Sunday where the song was sung with great gusto. Both Rabindranath Tagore and fellow poet-musician Dwijendralal Roy joined these outings multiple times. Soon, every Swadeshi gathering would begin with a rendition of the song, and all the leaders of the movement would be greeted with lusty cheers of 'Vande Mataram'. Very soon, common everyday folk replaced their usual greetings with 'Vande Mataram'. Children in school followed suit, as did the students in colleges and the workmen in factories. India was speaking defiance in one voice.

As the power of the chant grew, so did the brutality of the reprisals. The colonial administration cracked down on any rendition of the song and famously flogged 15-year-old student Sushil Sen, who had come to the courthouse to offer support during the trial of Sri Aurobindo on charges of writing treasonous editorials. British magistrate Douglas Kingsford mercilessly flogged him every time he shouted 'Vande Mataram', but the young man would not stop. Neither did his friends, who cheered along.

Children were expelled from school for singing the song. Students lathi-charged and expelled for the same offence. Agitators were bunged into prison and flogged. And yet, they could not silence the cry of courage. What started in Bengal soon spread to the rest of India. On November 25, 1905, The Tribune of Punjab wrote: “Even in the Punjab, when educated gentlemen meet, their salutation for each other nowadays is frequently 'Vande Mataram'. How many soldiers the authority must have, to stop the mouths of countless millions of India.”

In the south, Tamil freedom fighters began to sing the song without understanding much of what the words meant. That prompted poet and freedom fighter Subramania Bharati to translate the original into Tamil, which was published in the literary monthly Chakravarthini. By October 1906, Diwali celebrations across what was then Madras began and ended with a rendition of Vande Mataram. Visiting British journalist Henry Nevinson described this craze in his book The New Spirit in India. Writing about a meeting being held on Marina Beach in what was then Madras, he wrote about how a line of students dressed in white carried a yellow flag with 'Vande Mataram' emblazoned on it, and the 5000-strong crowd cheered in one voice. 'Vande Mataram'. 'Vande Mataram'. 'Vande Mataram'.

While all of India sang the song and chanted the chorus, Indian students abroad used it to organise their future course of action. This includes the team that was behind the Gadar Movement in San Francisco and the university Majlis in Cambridge. In his brilliant biography of Sri Aurobindo, litterateur Manoj Das quotes a few lines from the memoirs of Ambika Charan Mazumdar, who was a president of the Congress. This is what he wrote: “Like red rag to a bull, the innocent expression 'Vande Mataram' became almost intolerable to a certain class of officials. Some interpreted it to mean ‘seize and beat the monkey’…”

Vande Mataram – the song and phrase – is the strongest connection that the post-independence generation can have with the indomitable spirit of our freedom fighters whose sacrifices have earned us the country we now call our own. If we forget the flogging, lathi-charges, arrests, exiles and brutal killings that these brave men and women of India welcomed, we will see why leaders like Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Sri Aurobindo and many others called the song a mantra for the motherland. Vande Mataram!

(Nandini Sengupta is a freelance writer and author of several books. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.)