As India marks 150 years since the composition of Vande Mataram in the 1870s, first penned by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay and later embedded in his 1882 novel Anandamath, the song stands as a poignant emblem of resistance and cultural revival. Yet, recent parliamentary proceedings, ostensibly celebrating this milestone, devolved into a partisan spectacle, where historical reverence gave way to mutual accusations. This op-ed dissects the song's profound Bengal origins, its fraught national evolution, the nuanced roles of key figures like Rabindranath Tagore and the Indian National Congress, and the regrettable superficiality of today's discourse.

Far from honouring Bankim's vision, the debate exposed a failure to engage with the song's complexities, reducing it to a tool for scoring political points.

Long before Vande Mataram was elevated to the status of a national emblem, it was a distinctly Bengali cry of anguish. Bankim Chattopadhyay, then a deputy magistrate navigating the contradictions of colonial service, wrote it under the shadow of Bengal’s historical wounds, especially the famine-ravaged landscape that had exposed the cruelty of British rule. In Anandamath, where the song finds its dramatic setting, ascetic warriors rise against oppression, and the motherland appears not as an abstract India but as Banga Mata: a goddess shaped by Bengal’s rivers, forests, and sanctuaries.

Bankim’s imagination was anchored in real rebellions like the Sannyasi uprising, where monks and peasants resisted exploitative taxes. His invocation, “Mother, rich with thy streams and forests”, echoes a Bengal that was both fertile and shattered. Yet the song’s later nationalisation has flattened these textures. Its Sanskritised diction, once natural to the 19th-century Bengali ear, today feels distant to many modern readers, mirroring how its regional anguish is often forgotten.

As we mark 150 years of Vande Mataram, remembering its origins is essential. Bankim wasn’t crafting a pan-Indian slogan; he was defending a wounded Bengal whose dignity demanded a voice.

Vande Mataram’s rise from a regional hymn to a national symbol........

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