Vande Mataram
- Also spelled:
- Bande Mataram
Who wrote the poem “Vande Mataram”?
What role did “Vande Mataram” play in India’s Independence Movement?
Why was “Vande Mataram” controversial?
Vande Mataram, poem by Bengali writer Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, which became a rallying cry in the Indian Independence Movement. It became popular after being published in his novel Anandamath (1882; “The Abbey of Bliss”), although it may have been composed much before the novel was written. Part of the poem, greatly regarded for its nationalist vision of India as a goddess, was set to music and became the foremost of Indian patriotic songs. It was unofficially adopted as the national song (“Jana Gana Mana” is the national anthem) when independent India became a republic in 1950. However, this status has been both contentious and contested.
Publication in Anandamath
Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s patriotic fervor is believed to have been awakened when he was assaulted by a British officer. In 1873 Chatterjee was a bureaucrat in Berhampore (or Baharampur), Bengal, and was returning from work by palanquin. His retinue passed through a field where Colonel Duffin, commanding officer of the Berhampore cantonment, was playing cricket. Enraged at having his game disrupted, the officer attacked Chatterjee, who took him to court. In 1874 the court decided that Colonel Duffin should apologize publicly, and he did.
“Vande Mataram,” composed in Sanskrit but written in the Bengali script (which substitutes b for v and alters some vowels), appeared as a devotional poem of six stanzas in Anandamath, a novel set amid the sannyasi rebellion (an early anti-colonial uprising by Hindu ascetics against the East India Company’s rule in India) and a famine that devastated Bengal in 1770. The novel follows Mahendra, a rich zamindar, or landlord, who becomes displaced, dispossessed, and separated from his family by the famine. He is given shelter by the leader of a group of rebel sannyasis. In a key scene, the motherland is depicted as a goddess and worshipped by the revolutionary sannyasis, who recite the poem “Vande Mataram” (in Bengali: “Bande Mataram”). Vande means “to praise, celebrate, or venerate,” while mataram, from the Sanskrit root mata, is rendered in English as “mother.”
Opening stanza
The transliteration in the Latin alphabet of the first stanza reads:
Bande mataram
Sujalam suphalam
Malayajasatalam
Sasyasyamalam
Mataram
Revolutionary leader Aurobindo Ghose translated Anandamath into English between 1909 and 1910. His presentation of the poem reads:
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!
Rallying cry for independence
Rabindranath Tagore’s Rendition
Tagore, a prominent figure in the independence struggle, greatly helped popularize “Vande Mataram” as a song. He sang it often—at Congress Party sessions and protest marches—and a recording in his voice exists.
“Vande Mataram” was famously recited by Rabindranath Tagore in 1896 at the annual convention of the Indian National Congress (Congress Party) in Calcutta (now Kolkata). By the time Bengal was partitioned in 1905, the poem had been set to the classical raga Desh Malhar (history does not record who composed the music) and had become popular as a marching song. It gathered political momentum during countrywide protests against the partition (which was eventually annulled in 1911) and became a stirring symbol of nationalism, unity, and resistance against the British raj. Indeed, the song and the raising of “Vande Mataram” as a slogan was outlawed by British authorities.
The prohibitions against “Vande Mataram” transformed it into a protest song. In addition to his translation, Ghose also launched an English weekly named Bande Mataram. It continued to be sung or chanted by Congress Party members as well as Ghose’s extremist confederates, such as Khudiram Bose, who was hanged for his involvement in a bombing that killed a British officer. In 1937 the Congress Party adopted the first two stanzas as India’s national song.
National song controversy
Though it became emblematic of the struggle for independence, “Vande Mataram” attracted both reverence and controversy. It was criticized by some for its overtly religious connotations, particularly by the Muslim League, which objected to the invocation of the deity Durga in a later stanza and dismissed the song as Hindu fundamentalism. Consequently, the later stanzas were omitted from the version that became the national song in 1937. Despite this concession, “Vande Mataram” remained divisive and, when contenders for independent India’s national anthem were being considered, Tagore’s “Jana Gana Mana” was favored as more appropriate to the spirit of unification.
Rajendra Prasad, the first president of India, unofficially gave “Vande Mataram” the status of national song in 1950. However, unlike the national anthem, it is not mentioned in the constitution, no rules of decorum need be followed when it is played, and its legal status as the national song remains in dispute. In 2017 the Madras High Court ruled that the song should be played weekly in educational institutions and monthly in government offices across Tamil Nadu state. In 2022 a plea was filed in the Delhi High Court asking that “Vande Mataram” be granted equal status to “Jana Gana Mana.” In response, the union government held that while both songs should be shown equal respect by citizens, it could not be treated as a legal matter.
Versions
More than one musical version of “Vande Mataram” exists, and the variations are set to different tunes and ragas. Classical vocalist V.D. Paluskar (1872–1931) sang a rendition, set to raga Kafi, at the Congress Party session in 1923. A popular version that was played on All India Radio, the national radio network, is believed to have been composed by sitar maestro Ravi Shankar (1920–2012). The song has been used in several films, most notably in Anand Math (1952; Hindi adaptation of the novel Anandamath)—this iteration was composed and sung by Hemant Kumar. Modern versions of the song include “Maa Tujhe Salaam,” a popular composition by A.R. Rahman using the words vande mataram as the refrain.