Anandamath and Vande Mataram
In the Lok Sabha, BJP deputy leader V.K. Malhotra said it was unfortunate that some people were objecting to the song [Vande Mataram]. … "Its singing should be made compulsory. Those who do not wish to sing this can leave the country," Malhotra said.
Parliament rocked over ‘Vande Mataram’ | IndianMuslims.info
Vande Mataram (’Victory to the Mother’) is a patriotic song written by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee that first appeared in his 1882 novel Anandamath. Anandamath depicts a fictional band of militant Hindu ascetics who overthrow Muslim rule during one of the 1770s famines in Bengal. It is widely considered to be the seminal work of early Hindu nationalism. Chatterjee put forth the case - not only in Anandamath but through a large opus of stories, essays and articles - that Hindus were not amorphous congeries of castes and communities, but a single cohesive body, a nation.
I recently read a new, largely adequate translation by Cambridge Indologist Julius Lipner. Chatterjee is one of the shapers of modern Bengali, and I have the feeling that some of his lyricism cannot be represented in English - and Lipner, unfortunately, is no poet. The translation includes an introduction concerning Chatterjee’s views on Hinduism, his literary career, and the novel’s reception among the Bengali cognoscenti - in addition to copious explanatory notes. Anandamath makes it utterly clear that Chatterjee regarded Muslims as foreign interlopers who had subjugated and colonized Hindus, and early on, Indian Muslims protested the Hindu symbolism in the song.
But by the year of Anandamath’s publication, the British had long since usurped power from feckless Muslim overlords, so the novel is actually a protest against their rule. The sanyasi’s song swiftly became a rallying cry for the Indian independence movement; freedom fighters of all religious backgrounds sung the song at meetings of the Indian National Congress. The British characters in the novel are grotesqueries whose Bengali is riddled with malapropisms, or straight-backed Machiavellians scheming for control of Bengal. Chatterjee was actually forced to change the novel’s ending so as to justify British rule.
The song is thought to be India’s national song, though its official status is quite ambiguous. Another song, Rabindranath Tagore’s Jana Mana Gana, enjoys, I think, higher standing, as India’s national anthem. Here’s how Dr. Rajendra Prasad, one of the drafters of the Indian Constitution, described the status of the national songs:
The composition consisting of words and music known as Jana Gana Mana is the National Anthem of India, subject to such alterations 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 honored equally with Jana Gana Mana and shall have equal status with it. (Applause) I hope this will satisfy members. (Constituent Assembly of India, Vol. XII, 24-1-1950) [Link]
My take: The song has long since transcended its context. It’s a national symbol, a reminder of the struggle against imperialism, a thread in the fabric of the secular Indian Republic, and ultimately uniting. If you don’t like it, do as the American atheists do when they are subjected to the God-centric Declaration of Independence: excercise your right to sit down. Otherwise, stand up and sing. Narrow-minded nationalists and opportunistic rabble rousers should not use the song as a wedge to divide religious communities.
Here is a (rather Victorian) translation by Sri Aurobindo.
