In the long and inspiring journey of our nation’s history, there have been many defining moments when songs and art became the soul of movements, shaping collective emotion into action. Be it the war songs of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj’s army, the patriotic anthems sung during the freedom struggle, or the songs of resistance sung by the youth during the Emergency, songs have always awakened collective consciousness and unity in Bharatiya society.

Among them stands Vande Mataram, Bharat’s national song, whose story did not begin on a battlefield but in the calm yet resolute mind of a scholar, Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay. In 1875, on the auspicious day of Jagaddhatri Puja (Kartik Shukla Navami or Akshaya Navami), he composed a hymn that would become the eternal anthem of the nation’s freedom. In those sacred lines, he drew inspiration from Bharat’s deepest civilisational roots, from the Atharva Veda’s declaration, “Mata bhumih putro aham prithivyah” (“The earth is my mother, and I am her son”), to the Devi Mahatmya’s invocation of the Divine Mother.

Bankim babu’s words were both a prayer and a prophecy. Vande Mataram was not merely a national song or the lifeblood of the freedom movement. It was Bankim Chandra’s proclamation of cultural nationalism. It........

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