Vande Mataram : One Song, One Soul, One India

Dr Sachchidanand Joshi
“Mother, I bow to thee!
Rich with thy hurrying streams,
Bright with thy orchard gleams,
Cool with the winds of delight,
Dark fields waving, Mother of might,
Mother free.

Glory of moonlight dreams
Over thy branches and lordly streams
Clad in the blossoming trees,
Mother, giver of ease,
Laughing low and sweet!
Mother, I kiss thy feet
Speaker sweet and low!
Mother to thee I bow.”
Nearly twenty years before this translation appeared in Karmayogin on 20 November 1909, the song ‘Vande Mataram’ had already woven itself into the soul of Indian unity. Sung at rallies and whispered in homes, it charged the hearts of millions to rise above provinces and creeds. Bankim Chandra Chatter-jee’s words called a Nation to dream together, and Aurobindo’s rendering in English became the bridge for new generations and the world to hear India’s cry for freedom. The poem’s publication in Karmayogin did not just translate a song: it crystallized a movement, lending voice and vision to an idea that for two decades had been uniting India beyond every divide.
People first heard Vande Mataram rise like a hymn in 1896, when Rabindranath Tagore gave it a voice at the Calcutta session of the Indian National Congress. That evening, the audience fell into a spell — the notes were not of defiance, but devotion. Ten years later, in 1905, as Bengal convulsed under the Partition, Tagore’s nephew Abanin-dranath Tagore painted Bharat Mata—a saffron-robed woman holding a sheaf of grain, a book, and a rosary — the visual embodiment of Bankim’s verse. This song was not merely the imagination of a poet; it was the anguished cry of a soul nurturing the intense will to survive and protect the Motherland, a yearning held deep within for years. When the British Administrators were forcing people to sing "Long Live the Queen," Bankim Chan-dra Chatterjee penned this anthem in a single night. It was the poetic expression of decades, even centuries, of suffering, a fervent call to awaken a Nation that had become semi-conscious from enduring prolonged pain.
From the Congress convention to the gallows of Lahore, Vande Mataram became the breath of rebellion. Bhagat Singh, Chan- drashekhar Azad, Batu-keshwar Dutt and many more shouted it as they faced death. Subhas Chandra Bose made it the marching tune of the Indian National Army. It was sung in rallies and whispered in jails; it united monk and soldier, scholar and farmer, Hindu, Muslim, people of all religions and beliefs shared chant that carried both prayer and protest.
It was not Sri Aurbindo, who first translated it, Many Indian and English scholars translated the song into English. It had also been translated into various Indian languages including Urdu. WH Lee, a British who was in Indian Civil Service, translated it into English in 1906. When it was prohibited even to utter the word Vande Mataram, it was translated anonymously. However, the English translation by Auro- bindo Ghose, is appended along with the original song in Bengali. No other song has travelled across generations and geographies, crossing every hue and stratum of Indian life, and yet remained at the heart of what it means to be Indian. Through subjugation and sorrow, through reform and revolution, Vande Mataram endured—not as a slogan of rage, but as a salutation of love.
To understand its endurance, one must return to its origin—to a modest home in Bengal, on a luminous day that would change India’s destiny. Bankim Chandra Chatterjee (1838–1894), one of the earliest graduates of Calcutta University, had entered Government service as a Deputy Magistrate and Deputy Collector. His job gave him access to British Archives and Gazettes— records that revealed a forgotten saga : the Sanyasi Rebellion (1763–1780), when ascetic monks had risen against imperial oppression across Dhaka and North Bengal. That story of renunciation turned into resistance inspired Bankim Babu’s later novel, Ananda-math.
But before the novel, came the song. By the 1870s, the British Empire had begun enforcing its loyalty rituals—demanding that Indians stand for “God Save the Queen” at official gatherings and schools. To Ban- kim, this was not just political coercion—it was spiritual submission. A proud civilization was being trained to bow before a foreign sovereign.
(To be contd)