National Anthem Controversy, Jana Gana Mana vs. Bande Mataram Options

[amardeep]

(This is a recent post from my blog)

A really informative piece by Pradip Kumar Datta has just been posted on SACW, on the history of India's national anthem. The current anthem is Rabindranath Tagore's "Jana Gana Mana." (See the entry at Wikipedia for the text and translation of the song)

The Hindu right has been casting aspersions on it recently (Datta cites Sadhvi Rithambara's "hate cassette" as well as websites like www.freeindia.org). The reason: it was composed by Tagore on the occasion of King George V's visit to the Indian National Congress in 1911. Tagore was famously ambivalent about the commission, and wrote the song as he did as an act -- he thought -- of subversion. But I suppose it's also possible to say that the song, written to celebrate the visit of the English king, loses some autonomy through that history. Still, the details are worth pursuing, and the virtue of Datta's article is that he we went back and read the original coverage of the event in the English-language press of the day:

[ajit]

Amardeep, I am kinda curious about the reading of Vande Mataram as being addressed to a goddess. Isn't it a mother figure that is being addressed ? The translation you have referred to contains no religious imagery as far as I can see.

I think the objections to the song may relate to other writings of Bankimchandra, not anything specifically in this particular song.

[arnab]

[arnab]

by the way, the entire translation is here

[ajit]

[arnab]

[Swati]

Anyone who's familiar with Jana Gana Mana in its entirety would never claim that it is a paean to British rule. In fact it is so obvious that the song is a tribute to India and India alone. I have never found a translation of the entire song (I'm sure there is one in existence) and I would urge those amongst us whose translation skills are better than mine to respond.

[arnab]

and here's a link to a piece in frontline which presents the congress working committee's take on the controversy in 1937: http://www.flonnet.com/fl1601/16010960.htm

[ajit]

Arnab, thanks for the link to the Frontline extract. It is worth thinking over how things went from the sentiment expressed in the congress working committee's resolution to the song becoming Sadhvi Rithambara's property. After all, the song itself remained unchanged.

I am still unclear why Amardeep described the song itself as praising a goddess.

Could you provide a link to the Aurobindo translation ? I am curious which word got translated as Durga. Is it from the two stanzas the above resolution specifically distances itself from ?

[arnab]

here's the link again: http://intyoga.bravepages.com/bande.htm -- you'll see why amardeep speaks of the song being addressed to a goddess.

i don't know if the song has become sadhvi rithambara's property. but she and her following are the ones asking again for it to take "jana gana mana's" place. perhaps we can ask why. it seems clear that the "loyalist" tag attached to tagore's song is inappropriate.

i like the cwc's 1937 take on the matter. but this issue erupting again now (if indeed it is erupting) is not the same issue that it was back then--it was a live issue then, now it is being re-surrected to unclear ends.

[ajit]

Hmmm... maybe some terminology to remove lingering ambiguity. The song has several stanzas as the CWC resolution makes clear. It also distinguishes between first two stanzas and the last two. The term 'national song' by long practice (referred to by said resolution) refers only to first two stanzas only one of which was refrred to in the initial posting. Perhaps Amardeep meant to give a link to all the 4 stanzas but instead only provided a pointer to the 'national song' part. Hard to guess.

Arnab, the part you skipped over - and the one I am interested in not just for rhetorical reasons but also because I'd really like to know - is what happened between 1937 and 2004. Something had to have happened for the judgment of people like Maulana Azad to have been overridden. Sadhvi Rithambara is taking advantage of a situation that is not of her creation. How did this situation come about ? Did the congress leaders - or whoever - just wake up one day and say "Darn that old coot Azad. let's forget him and his buddies. Let's declare the song religious and goddess-praising." ?

[arnab]

[arnab]

not to go completely off-topic here but does anyone remember the mild parody of vande mataram that kids used to (still do?) sing? "vande mataram! something, chai garam!"--it is driving me crazy that i can't remember what that "something" was. channe? chhole?

[ajit]

Sadhvi Rithambara (and *her* buddies) are looking for wedge issues. The national anthem is one. Ram Janmabhoomi is another. The reason they succeed so easily - In my humble opinion - is because each of these contains a kernel of honest differences between well-meaning people. Almost every person on the street will agree there is *something* to be said on both sides of these issues and that they require sensitive handling to avoid antagonising different people. Sadly, for reasons that are mainly electoral (again in *my* opinion) the only public discourse is in terms of extreme formulations behind which there is no desire to actually bring about a reconciliation but in fact to make them worse.

To clarify what *I* think about the national anthem, I think it must be chosen so as to promote national unity. I would settle for "Humpty Dumpty" if it was uncontroversial and appealed to sufficiently many people without offending anyone. Therefore, although I do not intellectually understand the objection to "Vande Mataram" I would not insist on it.

This does not prevent me from wondering about the roots of the disagreement. I do not believe the tune is all that stood in the way of VM. I would venture to guess that Nehru stood on the side of the traditional-modernist divide that Nandy criticises. The song is very Sanskritic and is "culturally" Hindu if not overtly religious. But these objections are not consistently followed. Jana gana Mana is not particularly Hindustani either and the references to "Tava shubha ashish maagay" too could be critiqued for smacking of Hindu sentiment.

I love Saare jahan say achchha - but if the Bankim association condemns VM it can certainly be argued that the Iqbal association condemns 'Saaray jahan say ..' too.

[Rumali Roti]

Musically speaking, I've never been crazy about "Jana Gana Mana." Lyrically speaking, it's not particularly deep -- it's like a shopping list of states and regions, and many people (Assamese for example) will remind you that their state wasn't mentioned (which, unlike Goa and Chattisghad (sp?) etc., WAS a state at the time of independence). Still, it's not deliberately offensive.

Very few people actually have the musical range required to sing "The Star Spangled Banner" -- should Americans now change it, for matters of convenience? No, because it's seeped in history.

There are certain things you DON'T do: picking a new national anthem is one of them.

This post has been edited by roshna: Sep 15 2004, 08:57 PM

[amardeep]

Wow, quite a number of comments. Arnab, thanks for the link to the working committee's report on Frontline. Interesting to see what was said.

The national anthem question actually doesn't appear to be a huge controversy right now (I hope I didn't overstate the case), but it is part of a pattern of revisionist approaches to the history of Indian nationalism on the part of the VHP and friends. They have been quietly demoting Gandhi, while promoting Savarkar... etc.

My purpose wasn't to criticize "Bande Mataram." Rather, I thought it might be a good opportunity to reconsider the history of the *real* debate about the songs.

I think it's important to preserve the true complexity (or, one might say, the "hybridity") of the history as it happened. The secular nationalist leaders often had complex relationships to British authority; indeed, Tagore himself disowned "nationalism" in the direct sense after World War I and, more locally, the chaos of the non-cooperation/Khilafat movement. The leaders were operating in a political and discursive space dominated by the British, and they were very much "hybrids" in the sense that their very Indianness was defined partly through British lenses. In my view, the British/Imperial context of Tagore's writing "Jana Gana Mana" shouldn't be erased or forgotten for political expediency. Its hybrid status isn't a problem for me; I admire it.

But then, I think that "Victoria Terminus" should have kept its name, and Bombay should still be Bombay!

[Pratima]

[Dilliwala Dilwala]

What should be important to note is that the recent SACW article starts off by invoking an infamous Sadhvi Rithambara hate cassette, and as far as I can tell, it relates to the late 1980s and the early 1990s at the height of the Janambhumi campaign. In short, the issue has long been dormant and is not being resurrected now by the rightwing Hindutva loons, but some SACW type deciding to write on the 90's campaign and to counter old web and other propaganda.

Plenty has been published on the history behind the two songs and my overall take in all this is pretty much the same as Ajit's. But for perspective, I have readily avialable in my sent folder a response I had sent to a friend a couple of months back who had pointed me to this web-based article that claimed Tagore composed JGM for George V's visit):

http://www.freeindia.org/vmataram/genesis_...aganamana.shtml

My reply then

[samir]

I think DD is talking about "Vande Mataram - The Biography of a Song", by Sabyasachi Bhattacharya (Penguin,2003), an interesting, very readable book. SB traces the history backwards, accordingly the chapters are: "The Communal War Cry" (recent happenings), "National Anthem?" (pre-independence years), "Slogan" (early 20th cent., rallying cry for nationalist cause), and finally "The Poem" (actual poem in the context of 1870-1880s).

Some tidbits:

* The first two stanzas of Vande Mataram were written in 1872 (according to SB--he has given many supporting evidences)--these were lying around (but not forgotten by Bankimchandra C.)--in 1881, more stanzas were written and this poem was included in Anandamath. In 1871 there was a census for the Bengal Presidency and the "sapta-koti kantha" was apprently b/c the population was 70 millions then.
A lot later, in an Indian National Congress (1905), Gokhale had asked Saraladevi Chaudhurani (a niece of Rabindranath) to sing the song. While singing she skipped some verses in the middle (apparently on cue from Gokhale, then the song was banned) and changed "sapta-koti" to "tringsha-koti" (300 million) as the representative number.

* Aurobindo translated the word "dharma" as "conduct" ("tumi vidya tumi dharma").

* Some early memoirs talk about some friend of Bankim singing it in his house in Raag Malhar, but Rabindranath's tune (in Raag Desh) was the first published (by both Rabindranath and Bankim)--RT sang it to Bankim himself, and also at INC in 1896.

* From 1905 onward, and quite a bit due to Rabindranath himself, who was the lead singer in the Rakshabandhan procession to protest against the partition of Bengal), this song became immensely popular. Opposition to this song also started..

* "Pathephone's Bengali catalogue proudly proclaimed: `The new technique of recording songs has been so successful that you feel that you are sitting next to the singer. test that yourself... Vande Mataram! The glory of Bengal, the immortal Bankim Chandra's moving national song. And no less than Rabi-babu (RT) is the singer!'
"According to the son of H. Bose,.... the police had searched his shop and destroyed the record. Only one of the pieces survived and from this copies were made in 1966 at the initiative of Indira Gandhi. Now the copies are commercially available."

(Can anyone tell me how to get hold of one?)

* Subhash Bose tried to promote this song--in 1937 he wrote to Rabindranath asking his opinion; he also wrote to Jawaharlal and Gandhiji.. Jawaharlal, in turn, asked Rabindranath's opinion ....

* Jawarharlal mentioned (looks like couple of times) that the words are difficult to understand--he had to consult a dictionary every now and then...

* To Nehru, RT wrote: "To me the spirit of the tenderness and devotion expressed in its first portion, the emphasis it gave to beautiful and beneficient aspects of our motherland made a special appeal, so much so that I found no difficulty in dissociating it from the rest of the poem and from those portions of the book of which it is a part, with all the sentiments of which, brought up as I was in the monotheistic ideals of my father, I could have no sympathy."

From SB's book -- following the above--

"Tagore also recalled the historical associations of the song with the nationalist movement. He mentioned that he `was the first person to sing it before a gathering of the Calcutta Congress', presumably the session of 1896. He also recalled how `at the poignant period of our strenuous struggle for asserting the people's will against the decree of separation', i.e. the partition of Bengal in 1905, Vande mataram `caught on as a national anthem'. he also remembered how Vande mataram became a national slogan associated with `the stupendous sacrifices of the best of our youths'. Thirdly, Tagore was of the view that although the association of the poem with the novel Anandamath was accidental, in the context of the novel the song was liable to hurt Muslim sentiments, in particular if one takes the song as a whole. A complex sentence, unlike Tagore's usual style, expressed this thought: `I freely concede that the whole of Bankim's "Vande Mataram" poem, read together with its context, is liable to be inpterpreted in ways that might wound Moslem susceptibilities, but a national song, though derived from it, which has spontaneously come to consist only of the first two stanzas of the original poem, need not remind us every time of the whole of it, much less of the story with which it was accidentally associated. It has acquired a separate individuality and an inspiring significance of its own in which I see nothing to offend any sect or community.'"

* Congress adopted the first two stanzas only.... RT suffered a temporary eclipse of his iconic status in Bengal (his opinion about the first two stanzas being universally acceptable was published in newspapers). He wrote bitterly to Buddhadeb Bose: "Since I have been born in Bengal the typhoon of name-calling is like the accustomed breeze of my homeland to me. I have lodged no complaint or protest. Those days are over when I was sensitive to all that..."

-----------------

Perhaps an irrlevant aside: Rabidranath in casual conversations (I think I read it in a memoir by Maitreyi Devi) used to make fun of a poem by Dwijendralal Roy [which also has an iconic status and is very popular in Bengal] because it has a line ("sakal desher sera"), and a theme basically, which can be translated as "saare jahan se achchha"... ("Of course we are right to behave in this [bad] way, b/c our country is better than any...").

To think that 200+ countries each proclaiming it's better than any other in a UN session or something... hmm..

Samir

[Dilliwala Dilwala]

Yeah, Samir, that was the one I was alluding to, and thanks also for summarising some of the useful stuff -- I was almost tempted to pull it out from the shelves last night, but got distracted by what I am reading currently -- Ziauddin Sardar and Strobe Talbott!

[Jai Malhar]

I have never heard the Durga lines in a Vande Mataram rendition. It is a beautiful song, especially when set to Raag Des. It has been 'tried' in other melodies (none of which I have heard), but the Des version is pure gold. It's beautiful and I would have no objections if it were made the national anthem instead of the insipid Jana Gana Mana.

I would have strong objections to Saare Jahan Se Accha as natl anthem on aesthetic grounds. "Hum Bulbulein Hain Iski, Ye Gulsitan hamara"! What kind of third rate line is that! People tell me Iqbal was a great poet. Not if this particular song is representative of his talents.

I strongly resent being called a bulbul, as I imagine crores of my countrymen would also.

[arnab]

how about "mera joota hai japani"?

[Dilliwala Dilwala]

Achtung Arnab! I am sending a copy of your proposal to the Swadeshi Jagran Manch and the Left Front.

[arnab]

dilwala, as long as you make it clear that i am referring only to the chorus and not the verses, which, at least in the mukesh version, may be offensive to the tuneful community.

[Dilliwala Dilwala]

am not sure it would cut much ice with them, arnab, as your caveats are quite similar to those used for vm, but apparently to no avail. thank you for not suggesting, "phir bhii dil hai hindustani" or "i love my aendia" though.

i quite empathise with Jai Malhar's objection to SJSA and am quite thrilled to find that i am not alone in having articulated such thought. i even wrote a letter to the editor of Sunday magazine, broadly on similar lines, but unfortunately they did not publish it.

i would settle for "ham hoNge kaamyaab" as sung by Naseer and Ravi Vaswani in JBDY, particularly in the closing sequence of the film. much as i simbly lou lata's version of vande matram, i found shubha mudgal's version of jana gana mana which was being telecast on tv as some sort of a promo in between to be quite stirring too -- though not quite the same league tunefully speaking. i haven't been able to find it, not that i have looked hard enough.

This post has been edited by Dilliwala Dilwala: Sep 16 2004, 10:35 PM

[Jai Malhar]

I have to say though that although the lyrics of Jana Gana Mana are lacking in the spirit of a natl anthem, I get goose bumps every time I hear it. The trick is I think not to hear it too often.

But like somebody said earlier, VM is full of tender love, a much softer emotion than what Jana Gana Mana induces in me.

The most stirring song I have heard is the Marathi 'Sagara Pran Tarmarla' by *cough* *cough* Veer Savarkar, set to music by the great Hridaynath Mangeshkar. It simply *throbs* with emotion. Another lovely tune is 'Ae Mere Pyare Watan', from appropriately (since Tagore's name figures prominently in the discussion) Cabuliwalah. But the last two are, unfortunately, songs of the exile's love for his native land and prolly don't qualify for consideration as natl anthems.

[samir]

[Pratibha]

How about
`Vijayee Vishwa Tirangaa Pyaraa JhanDaa ooncha rahe hamaaraa'

Not that my voice matters or anything.

Pratibha

[poorvi]

while we are at it, we might as well add "chitthi aayee hai watan se chitthi aayee hai" and the other one in Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge

seriously speaking, jana gana can give me goose bumps too, but only because of its association with india - i.e. not because of tune or lyrics or anything.

but even more seriously speaking, national anthems, like passports, are - should be - passe.

Poorvi

[ajit]

If they should be passe why do they give you goosebumps Poorvi ?