Vande Matram: A poem that became a war cry

New Delhi, Nov 3 : India's national song 'Vande Matram', which came under attack Tuesday at the Darul Uloom Deoband seminary, evolved from being just a poem into a cry for freedom from British rule.

According to historian Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, the Sanskrit poem was written by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee in the early 1870s. It was included in Chatterjee's novel "Anandmath" in 1881.

Nobel laureate Rabindra Nath Tagore sang it before a Congress gathering in 1896.

'Vande Matram', which translates to "Mother, I bow to thee", became the rallying cry for Indians fighting colonial rule.

According to the human resource development ministry, the song was adopted as the National Song at the Varanasi session of the Congress party Sep 7, 1905.

According to Bhatacharya, it attained mass popularity only after 1905, when Bengal was sought to be partitioned.

In his book, he says that the first two stanzas of the song have to be distinguished from the full text.

"...This distinction between the originally composed song and the additions made later to fit into the narrative of the novel is important, because it was the latter part which contained those explicitly Hindu and idolatrous imageries which were objected to by many outside the Hindu community," his book says.

--IANS