It is customary to consider ‘Bande Mataram’, written by Bankimchandra Chatterjee (1838 – 1894), as India’s national song. While it was in 1937 that it acquired such a status, on the strength of a resolution passed in the Indian National Congress, based on the advice and opinion of Rabindranath Tagore which had been sought, ‘Bande Mataram’ has had a remarkable history since 1875 when its first two stanzas were published in Banga Darshan, a Bengali monthly which Bankimchandra himself edited since 1872. Later, he added more stanzas to the song which thereafter formed a part of his famous novel ‘Anandamath’, published in 1882.

It is fascinating to examine, on the one hand, ‘Bande Mataram’s tremendous impact in the Indian freedom movement in the first half of the 20th century, and, on the other, how the growth of the movement in the 19th century served as the base to make ‘Bande Mataram’ more meaningful and appropriate later.

Rabindranath Tagore, who had composed the music for ‘Bande Mataram’, sang it himself at the 11th session of the Indian National Congress in Kolkata in 1896, two years after Bankimchandra had passed away. Thereafter, the song assumed great importance during the Swadeshi Movement and in the agitations against the partition of Bengal in 1905, in which the most important roles were played by both moderate leaders like Surendranath Banerjea and Anandamohan Bose and extremists like Bipin Chandra Pal and Aurobindo Ghosh in Bengal, with tremendous support from the seniormost leader Bal Gangadhar Tilak, the moderate leader Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Sakharam Ganesh Deuskar and other freedom fighters of Maharashtra. 

Participation Of Muslims

Rabindranath Tagore gave the agitation a new dimension by promoting Raksha Bandhan with a view to ensure the participation of Muslims, while his niece Saraladevi made some changes in the song to widen its reach and appeal. It is noteworthy that the legendary Subrahmanya Bharati translated the song into Tamil in 1905; this was followed by Aurobindo Ghosh’s English translation of the song in 1909. Moreover, Bande Mataram was the name of two English publications with which three well-known freedom fighters were involved – the first launched by Bipin Chandra Pal in Kolkata in 1906, with Aurobindo Ghosh as its editor, while the second was published in faraway Geneva in 1910 by Madam Bhicaji Cama, after she had anticipated arrest following her fiery speeches on England’s misrule in India, and escaped from England and France to Switzerland, and before her internment during World War I.

Several bans of the British government at several places and at several times in Bengal notwithstanding, ‘Bande Mataram’ became the battle cry for freedom fighters and armed revolutionaries of Bengal, and, before long, reverberated throughout India in deliberations relating to its freedom movement, with the writings of Swami Vivekananda and the efforts of his Irish disciple Sister Nivedita also playing a major role in inspiring them in the early 20th century. ‘Bande Mataram’ were the last words martyrs like Khudiram Bose, Ashfaqulla, Ramprasad Bismil and several others uttered before they were hanged.

Considering the tremendous impact of ‘Bande Mataram’ in the Indian freedom movement, it is reasonable to wonder why it was so impactful, and how and why people in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were mentally conditioned to respond positively to it.

Bengal, Maharashtra, Punjab Nationalists

To begin with, the life, work and endeavours of Rammohun Roy in the early 19th century were aimed at every conceivable form of emancipation, with the greatest importance attached to movements for freedom and democracy. This is why Rammohun, followed by Dadabhai Naoroji, Ramesh Chandra Dutt and Madam Bhicaji Cama were the first to raise their voices against India’s economic drainage as a result of British rule. With regard to education, Rammohun’s powerful advocacy for “modern and useful sciences” in his letters to the Governor General Lord Amherst in 1823 were fully recognised and followed by those who took up the leadership of the Brahmo Samaj he had set up in 1828, under the banners of the Tattvabodhini Sabha, the Adi Brahmo Samaj, the Bharatvarshiya Brahmo Samaj, the Sadharam Brahmo Samaj and numerous other organisations associated with social reform and the spread of not only education, but also thoughts relating to patriotism and nationalism. These endeavours led to the establishment in Maharashtra of the Prarthana Samaj associated with Mahadev Govind Ranade, and the Arya Samaj associated with Dayanand Saraswati, which later became very important in Punjab.

These important developments apart, the ‘give-and-take’ between Bengal and Maharashtra, and thereafter Punjab, was extraordinary. Both before and after the deportation of Vasudeo Balwant Phadke to Aden in 1880 and his death in 1883, and the execution of Mahadev Vinayak Ranade and the Chapekar brothers Damodar, Vasudeo and Balkrishna in Pune in 1897 and 1898, the role of Bal Gangadhar Tilak deserves special mention. In Mahratta and Kesari, the English and Marathi weeklies he edited since 1881, he preached radical views, and his seditious writings led to his arrests in 1897 and 1908 when, like Lala Lajpat Rai in 1907, he was deported to Mandalay in Burma. In Maharashtra, the Ganpati Festival was resurrected by him in 1894, followed by the Shivaji Utsav which injected additional strength to the nationalist movement all over India, including Kolkata where it was held thrice between 1902 and 1906. Hailed as a national hero by Tilak in Mahratta in 1906, Shivaji was also the subject of Rabindranath Tagore’s famous poem ‘Shivaji Utsav’ published earlier in 1904. In 1905 and 1906 in Varanasi, Tilak formed important alliances with nationalists of Bengal, with protest meetings against the partition organised all over Bengal, beginning from January 1904 in Mymensingh with ‘Bande Mataram’ festoons displayed, and also used by participants to greet one another. 

Thereafter, before the partition became effective on October 16, 1905, a large number of protest meetings were held in Kolkata January 1905 onwards along with the start of a boycott movement and the decision to observe Raksha Bandhan. It is important to note that in Barisal (now Bangladesh) in May 1906, over 10,000 Hindus and Muslims under Ashwini Kumar Dutt carried ‘Bande Mataram’ flags, sang national songs and shouted ‘Bande Mataram’ and ‘Allah-o-Akbar’. Tilak, who had been hailed as ‘Lokmanya’ by Rabindranath Tagore, addressed huge meetings in Kolkata in June 1906 and January 1907. It is also important to note that as early as in September 1982, Swami Vivekananda stayed with Tilak in Pune for over a week; later, in September, 1904 Rabindranath Tagore’s niece Saraladevi met Tilak in Pune to discuss the role of extremists.

Influencing Educated Middle Class

Much earlier, in 1867, Rabindranath Tagore’s father Debendranath Tagore, his family members and others started the Hindu Mela to foster the growth of patriotism and nationalism in various ways; later, in 1903 Rabindranath’s niece Saraladevi inaugurated the Pratapaditya Utsab and Birastami Utsab in Kolkata.

Surendranath Banerjea, along with Anandamohan Bose, undertook the important task of building up public opinion against British rule among educated middle class youths, not only in Bengal but all over India, with several lecture tours. With their erudition and brilliant oratorical powers, they influenced educated middle class youths so greatly that the Indian Association which they had founded in Kolkata in 1876 had no fewer than 80 branches even before the Indian National Congress was set up in 1885. Such was Surendranath’s all-India popularity that when he was put behind bars in 1883, Kolkata burst at its seams with huge protest demonstrations; these were also organised in Maharashtra and Punjab, and people in distant Kashmir were reported to have wept!

‘Bande Mataram’, ‘Allah-o-Akbar’ and ‘Hindu-Mussalman ki Jai’ were the three national slogans proposed by Mahatma Gandhi in consultation with Shaukat Ali in 1920 during the Non-Cooperation Movement, and, much later on August 29, 1947, two weeks after the country’s independence and partition, ‘Bande Mataram’ was sung at his prayer meeting in Kolkata in the presence of both Hindus and Muslims. There were indeed numerous reasons for the positive nationwide response to 'Bande Mataram', particularly from the receptive minds of the educated middle class of both the Hindu and Muslim communities.

(The author is a retired public relations consultant who likes reading about movements for emancipation. Views expressed are personal. He can be reached at corpocom@gmail.com)