Glory of the Anthem - Page 6

Just finished reading all responses too. Great input by lots of you. 👏 👏

Originally posted by: raksha.l

😆 at your😉....
Most of the South Indians dont understand hindi/urdu as much as they undestand Sanskrit...So keeping the whole India in mind, Vande Mataram is Grrreat...Dont get me wrong- Sare jaha se acha is a very nice song and I feel patriotic, listening to that too..However, nothing like 'VandeMataram'...😃

Raksha, are you sure that most South Indians can speak or sing in Sanskrit and find Hindi/Urdu tough? As far as I know people from any non Hindi speak Hindi at least with an accent or if they don't speak at all then at least they understand it. So Urdu being very similar to Hindi is easy tot understand too. Sanskrit is a language from which most Indian languages borrowed or evolved but Sanskrit in its pure form is not common at all. No one speaks it on a regular basis thus difficult to understand.

This argument is not about Saare Jahan vs Vande Mataram. Still I think first one is much much easier compared to second.

In my personal view we need only our National Anthem. Full respect to Jana Gana Mana.

Originally posted by: souro

Please read the following article and posts before deciding for yourself whether Jana Gana Mana was written in praise of George V or not. It's never fair to come to a decision based on only one side of the story. Some of the arguments in favour of Jana Gana Mana I've heard before but it has been much better presented here.

https://www.lehigh.edu/~amsp/2004/09/national-anthem-throwdow n-jana-gana.html

Thanks Souro

Yes we have grown with the national Anthema and have full regards to it. I just wanted to see if there is any justification for having it as our anthum other then that is was easy to play on band. Guru tagore wrote this in reference to British King. Yes he fooled them but he could have created even better verse for our nation but instead the Fate makers Nehru/Gandhi decided to take this as national anthem. And if it taken then why in its context or in translation, it is never said how it was originated? I would love to add this to the context that Guru Tagore fooled the King.

Originally posted by: mythili_Kiran

1. About Tagore:

Anyone even moderately informed about the life and works of Rabindranath Tagore cannot have the slightest doubt about the greatness of this towering figure of human civilization and culture, measured by any standard anywhere in the world.

Despite belonging to probably the most "elite" family and lineage of his time, Tagore used every fruitful moment of his long creative life to understand, empathize with, and defend the history, culture, and people of India. His sincere belief in India's crying need to be freed of colonial oppression has been expressed profoundly and eloquently in vast and profuse areas of his writings, some of which can be traced back to his late teens and early twenties! Further, Tagore was a very proud (including of his heritage) man and he could well afford to be so. He had deep-seated disdain and contempt for colonial rule and rulers, although he had the highest regards for European civilization and culture.


Who is this "Bhagya Vidhata"?

Those of you who have read Tagore's poetry and lyrics on "devotion" (Gitanjali for example) will know that if there was a divine entity to whom Tagore addressed many of his heartfelt yearnings for communion, it was a "Monarch" infinitely greater than any mortal King Emperor could ever aspire to be.

The Lord of India's Destiny, to whom Jana Gana Mana is officially addressed, is in Tagore's conception the perennial Bhagya Vidhata of India who has, from the very dawn of civilization, guided India through great triumphs and tragedies. The Lord of India in Tagore's conception is therefore India's "eternal guiding spirit" (a totally secular idea) and could never be merely the king of a colonial empire!

I can understand that one needs some bit of the intellectual orientation and some sense of refinement to appreciate this subtlety – which I am afraid is not necessarily the hall marks of the right wind, Hindu Nationalist propaganda machinery.

It is hardly necessary to point out that if Tagore had the slightest weakness towards, or preference for the British monarchy, his staunch and steadfast opposition to British rule would seriously contradict any such deeply guarded fantasy. His relinquishing of the Knighthood honor (received at the hands of the very same monarch to whom, according to the detractors, he supposedly offered such unabashed tributes) in protest against the Amritsar (Jallianwallah Bagh) massacre in 1919, is likewise a study in stark contrast.

B) Now let me take up the second issue – the history of Jana Gana Mana from an epistemologically sound perspective:

The main cause for confusion as per historical records:

The charge that Jana Gana Mana was composed for George V actually rests on false evidence given by the pro-British press. The song was first sung in a session of the Congress in 1911. This session had decided to felicitate George V since he had announced the abrogation of the partition of Bengal, thereby conceding the success of the Swadeshi agitation, the first modern anti-colonial movement that had started in 1905. The day after the session the nationalist Indian papers normally -- and accurately -- reported that a Tagore composition had been sung. The Bengalee -- along with other Indian newspapers as well as the report of the Indian National Congress - reported that it was a "patriotic song". The following year the song was published as "Bharat -- Vidatha". A contemporary commentator in the vernacular Bharati described the song as one in "Praise of the Dispenser of human Destiny, who appears in every age." He probably came closest to capturing its spirit. This song was to later become known as Jana Gana Mana.

The confusion about the song was stirred up by the ineptness of the pro-British Anglo-Indian press. Their inefficiency was not surprising (The Sunday Times once ascribed the authorship of Bande Mataram to Tagore and described Jana Gana Mana as a Hindi song!) On this occasion the Anglo-Indian press -- led by The Englishman - almost uniformly reported that a Tagore song had been sung to commemorate George V's visit to India. The reports were based on understandable ignorance since the Anglo-Indian press had neither the linguistic abilities nor the interest to be accurate. Actually, two songs that had been sung that day. The Jana Gana Mana had been followed by a Hindi song composed specially for George V by Rambhuj Chaudhary. There was no real connection between the composition of the Jana Gana Mana and George V, except that the song was sung -- not written - at an event which also felicitated the king.

Initially the controversy seemed a non-starter. Contemporaries obviously found it hard to associate Tagore with servility. Tagore was known for this opposition to the government.

What we know from Tagore's works and limited correspondence on this:

In Tagore's collected works, it is mentioned that the Indian National Congress requested that Tagore write a felicitation to the King Emperor as an appeasement gesture to the British monarchy in response to the annulment of the Bengal Partition Act.

Not only was Tagore troubled by the request, he was downright offended by it. It is said that Jana Gana Mana was written more out of protest and rebellion than adoration towards the monarchy. An objective reading of the song should make it eminently clear as to whom the poet decided to offer his worship.

In a letter to Pulin Behari Sen, Tagore later wrote, "A certain high official in His Majesty's service, who was also my friend, had requested that I write a song of felicitation towards the Emperor. The request simply amazed me. It caused a great stir in my heart. In response to that great mental turmoil, I pronounced the victory in Jana Gana Mana of that "Bhagya Vidhata" of India who has from age after age held steadfast the reins of India's chariot through rise and fall, through the straight path and the curved. That Lord of Destiny, that Reader of the Collective Mind of India, that Perennial Guide, could never be George V, George VI, or any other George. Even my official friend understood this about the song. After all, even if his admiration for the crown was excessive, he was not lacking in simple common sense."

Tagore said that he felt too pained by the unjustness of the charge to come out with a public refutation. Well there was really no need. There are many around who understand Tagore enough, not to require a public refutation.

Intellectual impotence of tragic consequence / indifferent scholarship combining with a distorted ideology

Epistemology and intellectual enquiry (done on a scientific basis) I am afraid, has never been the hall mark of the Hindu right wing. Professor Amartya Sen writes in "The Argumentative Indian":

" Following the electoral victory of the coalitions led by the BJP in 1998 and 1999, various arms of the government of India were mobilized in the tasks of arranging 'appropriate' rewritings of Indian history" in what was a blatant case of "abuse of temporal power"…" The rapidly reorganized NCERT became busy from shortly after the BJP's assumption of office, not only in producing fresh textbooks for Indian school children, but also in deleting sections from books produced earlier by NCERT itself (under pre-BJP management), written by reputed Indian historians"…. "The speed of the attempted textbook revision had to be so fast that the newly reconstituted NCERT evidently had some difficulty in finding historians to do the tasks who would be both reasonably distinguished and adequately compliant" … "The Hindu, a leading daily, put the gravity of the problem in perspective when it pointed to the 'havoc that indifferent scholarship combining with a distorted ideology could cause in school education' ".


How / why Jana Gana Mana was chosen
over Vande Mataram

In a survey made just before the poet's death in 1941 in Mumbai, respondents felt Jana Gana Mana to have the strongest "national characteristics" although Bande Mataram was found superior on some other criteria. The dirt thrown by the pro-British press seemed to have been completely wrung out when Netaji Bose's Indian National Army adopted it as the National Anthem; this was followed by Gandhij's declaration in 1946 that "the song has found a place in our national life": that it was "also like a devotional hymn".

The critics of "Jana Gana Mana" and the initiator of this email chain would prefer to see it replaced by "Vande Mataram," composed by Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, the another literary giant (and a Hindu revivalist) from Bengal.

"Bande Mataram" - sublime and lyrical as it is, treats India as a Goddess to be worshipped. The words of Bande Mataram feature India as a "homogeneous Hindu" nation (on the other hand India today is a proudly heterogeneous nation and a secular democratic republic) and the lyrics understandably controversial since its invocation of the nation as a "Goddess" goes against Islamic theology which forbids the worship of any God other than Allah. Further the Bande Mataram had been successfully (and very tragically) converted into a sign of communal antagonism by Hindu communalists (with the enthusiastic participation of their Muslim counterparts, who regarded the song as a horrible provocation) and even chanted it as a slogan in riots, with the Muslims responding with "Allah ho Akbar"! Despite being a Hindu revivalist, Bankim Chandra would have been horrified at this grotesque use of his beautiful creation by Hindus, if this happened during his life time.

On the other hand, Jana Gana Mana evokes the country as composed of a multiplicity of regions and communities united in a prayer to a universal lord. After all, Bande Mataram was composed by a colonial administrator who could only visualize the nation in Hindu terms: religious identity was the only available idiom for conceptualizing the nation then. In contrast, Tagore had seen the riots that broke up the Swadeshi movement and had divined the obvious: religious nationalism easily divided anti-colonial struggles.

Jana Gana Mana can be seen as one of the fruits of Tagore's search to find an alternate inclusivist definition for the nation. Incidentally, it was one of the harbingers of a decade that was to see Hindu and Muslim politicians draw together. In short, the two songs embody different ideas, histories and aspirations of the country.

Jana Gana Mana was chosen as anthem in 1950 over Bande Mataram as well as Iqbal's Sare Jahan Se Accha - although Bande Mataram was given "equal status". One of the reasons (and certainly not the most important one) apparently was that Bande Mataram could not be played by bands. Additionally Jana Gana Mana enjoyed an international reputation. It had been greatly appreciated in the United Nations at New York where it was first played as an orchestral arrangement in 1947. Many said that it was superior to most national anthems in the world. Within the country the overwhelming majority of the provinces supported its nomination.

I would conclude by asserting that the anti-Jana Gana Mana campaign is at best ill informed and ignorant and at worst sinister in its jingoistic inspiration.

https://www.countercurrents.org/comm-sengupta180706.htm

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Found this intersting article and therefore posted it here!

Thanks Mythilli, indeed was interesting