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VANDEMATARAM: The dcumentry fcts we must know
Posted By:peer On 9/11/2006

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(1) The author of the song Vandemataram was a darling of the British rulers from the college days itself. The Calcutta University was established by the British Government in January 1857 and Bankim completed his BA in the year 1858 from the same University. How he was granted BA degree will be clear from the perusal of the following minutes of the University Syndicate: Bankim Chunder Chatterjee and Judoonath Bose who had passed creditably in five of the six subjects, and have failed by not more than seven marks in the sixth, might as a special act of grace, be allowed to have their degrees, being placed in the second division, it being clearly understood, that such favour should , in no case, be regarded as a precedent in future years.

 ResolvedThat the two candidates mentioned be admitted to the degree of BA. [University of Calcutta, minutes for the year 1858. pp 18-19 cited in M. K. Haldar, Foundations of Nationalism in India: A Study of Bankimchandra Chatterjee, Ajanta, Delhi, 1989, p. 9]

(2) Bankim, the author of Vande Mataram was appointed directly to the post of Deputy Magistrate in the year 1858 by the British Lieutenant Governor of Bengal. He was the first Indian to be appointed to such a post immediately in the aftermath of 1857. When Bankim retired as District Magistrate in the year 1891 he was conferred with the titles of Rai Bahadur and CIE (Companion of the Order of the Indian Empire) by the British Crown. [Bhabatosh Chatterjee (ed.), Bankimchandra Chatterjee: Essays in Perspective, Sahitya Akademi, Delhi, 1994, p. 577]

(3) This is a song written partly in Sanskrit and partly in Bengali. Bankim
did not write it for India. In fact, Sri Aurobindo translated it into English (1909) as National Anthem of Bengal. Bankim did not have whole of India in his mind but only the Bengal is proved further by the mention of only seven crore (seventy million) people (it was the population of Bengal Province at that time which included Bihar and Orissa) praising the motherland. [Ibid, p. 601.]

(4) These were not only Muslims who opposed the singing of this song for the reason that it equated nationalism with the worship of Durga and Laxmi. There were also Buddhists, Sikhs, Christians, Socialists and Communists who opposed this amalgamation. Even Rabindranath Tagore opposed the attempts of those who were trying to get it recognized as national anthem. Rabindranath Tagore openly declared that this song could not unite all communities in India. In a letter to Subhas Chandra Bose (1937) Rabindranath wrote, "The core of 'Vandemataram' is a hymn to goddess Durga: this is so plain that there can be no debate about it. Of course Bankim does show Durga to be inseparably united with Bengal in the end, but no Mussulman [Muslim] can be expected patriotically to worship the ten-handed deity as 'Swadesh' [the nation]. This year many of the special [Durga] Puja numbers of our magazines have quoted verses from 'Vanda Mataram' - proof that the editors take the song to be a hymn to Durga. The novel Anandamath is a work of literature, and so the song is appropriate in it. But Parliament is a place of union for all religious groups, and there the song can not be appropriate. When Bengali Mussulmans show signs of stubborn fanaticism, we regard these as intolerable. When we too copy them and make unreasonable demands, it will be self-defeating." [Letter number 314, Selected Letters of Rabindranath Tagore, edited by K. Datta and A. Robinson, Cambridge University Press.]


Tagore in another letter to Jawaharlal Nehru univocally said that Brahmo Samaj would also not sing this song as it supported idol worship.


(5) This song was written in 1875 but remained obscure and attracted attention only in 1882 when Bankims new novel Anandmath appeared. This novel glorified the annihilation of Muslims by the army of Hindu Sanyasis who called themselves Santans and not the British rule in India. This objection was very relevant, as even a cursory glance of the novel will prove. The novel was replete with glorification of incidents of cleansing of Muslims like the following one: "The rural people ran out to kill the Muslims while coming across them. In the night, some ones were organized in groups and going to the Muslim locality, they torched their houses and looted everything owned by them. Many Muslims were killed; many of them shaved their beards, smeared their bodies with soil and started singing the name of Hari. When asked, they said, we were Hindus. The frightened Muslims rushed towards the town in group after group. The Muslims said, Allah, Allah! Is the Kortn Sareef (sic) (holy Koran) proved entirely wrong after so many days? We pray namaz five times but couldn't finish the sandal-pasted Hindus. All the universe is false." [Arabinda Das, Abbey of Delight (English translation of Bankimchander Chatterjee's Anandmath in Bengali), Bandna Das,
Kolkata, 2000, pp. 161-162.]

(4) There were non-Muslims who opposed choice of this song as a national song, as it was, part of a novel which declared unqualified faith in the British superiority and rule. It concluded with the following words of the Leader of the Santan army: There is no possibility of restoring the Sanatan virtue without the Englishman becoming KingThe subjects [Hindus] would be happy in the English kingdomthey would practice the virtue without any trouble. Therefore, oh prudentyou refrain from waging the war with the Englishmen and follow meYour mission has been successfulyou have performed well-being of the Motherthe English reign has been established. You give up the war and enmity-mood. Let the people be engaged in cultivation let the earth be full of corns, let the people be prosperousThere is no more enemy. The Englishman is our ally King. Moreover, none possesses such power who can win the war with the Englishmen ultimately. [Ibid, pp.191-194].

(5) The Congress, which under Jawaharlal Nehru's leadership wanted an
all-inclusive nationalism with special stress on Hindu-Muslim unity, responded positively to these objections. The Congress Working Committee (CWC) after long deliberations at Wardha and Bombay appointed a committee consisting of Jawaharlal Nehru (president of the Congress), MK Gandhi, Abul Kalam Azad and Subhashchander Bose in its Calcutta meeting (Oct 26-November 1, 1937). This high profile committee on Vandemataram issued a historic statement on October 28, 1937 with the aim to resolve the controversy. The statement made it clear at the outset that the first two stanzas of the song had no religious allusions and only these were commonly sung even in Bengal. It went on to observe that "the use of the first two stanzas of the song [which] spread to other provinces and a certain national significance began to attach to them. The rest of the song was very seldom used and is even now known by few persons. These two stanzas described in tender language the beauty of the motherland and the abundance of her gifts. There was absolutely nothing in them to which objection could be taken from the religious or any other point of view."[AICC Papers on microfilms, Accession No. 8612 [Roll No. 51], Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi, pp. 0852-0854.]

The CWC went on to emphasize that "the other stanzas of the song are little known and hardly ever sung. They contain certain allusions and a religious ideology which may not be in keeping with the ideology of other religious groups in India. The Committee while recognizing the validity of objections raised by Muslim friends to certain parts of the song... recommend that wherever the Bande Matraram is sung at national gatherings only the first two stanzas should be sung, with perfect freedom to the organizers to sing any other song of an nobjectionable character, in addition to, or in the place of, the Bandematraram song."[Ibid.]

(7) India seems to be the only country where a national song is being counter posed to the national anthem. Interestingly, the RSS archives of pre-Independence India make it abundantly clear that though today it terrorizes Muslims by raising the slogan iss desh me rehna he to vande mataram kehna hoga, it never sang this song during the British rule. A thorough scanning (undertaken by this author) of the pre-Independence literature/documents published by the RSS shows that there is absolutely no reference there to Vandemataram, what to talk of singing it. Startlingly, Vandemataram as a term does not appear in the writings of KB Hedgewar and MS Golwalkar either. It does not occur even once in Savarkars Hindutva (1923) and Golwalkar's We or Our Nationhood Defined (1939). The participants in the RSS shakhas recite a prayer and an oath and not Vandemataram.


Shamsul Islam

 




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