Facts about "Jana Gana Mana" - Just a thought for the National Anthem! How
well do you know about it?
I have always wondered who is the "adhinayak" and "bharat bhagya vidhata",
whose praise we are singing. I thought might be Motherland India! Our
current National Anthem "Jana Gana Mana" is sung throughout the country.
Did you know the following about our national anthem, I didn't.
To begin with, India's national anthem, Jana Gana Mana Adhinayaka, was
written by Rabindranath Tagore in honour of King George V and the Queen of
England when they visited India in 1919.
To honour their visit Pandit Motilal Nehru had the five stanzas included,
which are in praise of the King and Queen. (And most of us think it is in
the praise of our great motherland!!!)
In the original Bengali verses only those provinces that were under British
rule, i.e. Punjab, Sindh, Gujarat, Maratha etc. were mentioned. None of the
princely states were recognised which are integral parts of India now
Kashmir, Rajasthan, Andhra, Mysore or Kerala. Neither the Indian Ocean nor
the Arabian Sea was included, since they were directly under Portuguese
rule at that time.
The Jana Gana Mana Adhinayaka implies that King George V is the lord of the
masses and Bharata Bhagya Vidhata is "the bestower of good fortune".
Following is a translation of the five stanzas that glorify the King:
First stanza: (Indian) People wake up remembering your good name and ask
for your blessings and they sing your glories. (Tava shubha naame jaage;
tava shubha aashish maage, gaaye tava jaya gaatha)
Second stanza: Around your throne people of all religions come and give
their love and anxiously wait to hear your kind words.
Third stanza: Praise to the King for being the charioteer, for leading the
ancient travellers beyond misery.
Fourth stanza: Drowned in the deep ignorance and suffering,
poverty-stricken, unconscious country? Waiting for the wink of your eye and
your mother's (the Queen's) true protection.
Fifth stanza: In your compassionate plans, the sleeping Bharat (India) will
wake up. We bow down to your feet O' Queen, and glory to Rajeshwara (the
King).
This whole poem does not indicate any love for the Motherland but depicts a
bleak picture. When you sing Jana Gana Mana Adhinayaka, whom are you
glorifying? Certainly not the Motherland. Is it God? The poem does not
indicate that.
It is time now to understand the original purpose and the implication of
this, rather than blindly sing as has been done the past fifty years.
Nehru chose the present national anthem as opposed to Vande Mataram because
he thought that it would be easier for the band to play!!! It was an absurd
reason but Today for that matter bands have advanced and they can very well
play any music. So they can as well play Vande Mataram, which is a far
better composition in praise of our dear Motherland India.
Wake up, it's high time! Shouldn't Vande Mataram be our National Anthem?
thnks for the info dude!!
ReplyDeletei din knw all this!!
The national anthem also refers to territories no longer in India.. but what to do .. we can never grow out of the attitudes of singing praises of our rajahs, but never of the higher spirit..
ReplyDeleteThanks for reading my story patiently :-).. will keep you updated on the further episodes
true...Vande Mataram is a more beautiful song any given day!
ReplyDeletenice one sagii.I had absolutely no idea
ReplyDelete@ prasad n shrew..
ReplyDeletenetime.. :)
@ nagesh..
so very true.. n yeah.. the episodes are better than any other K's.. ;) hehe..
@varsha.. Yup.. :)
sorry buddy ,but your comments sound like being very ill-informed ....
ReplyDelete1.The song “Jana Gana Mana” was composed in December 1911, precisely at the time of the Coronation Durbar of George V. The composition
was first sung by Rabindranath during a convention of the then loyalist Indian National Congress in Calcutta on December 27, 1911 & the agenda of that day devoted itself to a loyal welcome of George V on his visit to India. So. why is “Jana Gana Mana” our national anthem?
------This is a complete misconception about the intention of Tagore. On a visit to India, the poet Yeats received a visit from an Indian
admirer who was also, in Yeats' words, "an Indian devotee" of Tagore. In a letter to a lady friend, Yeats quoted this unnamed devotee as giving him a 'strictly off the records' version of events dealing with the writing of “Jana Gana Mana”. That version, as presented in 1968 by the Indian Express newspaper, was this:
"He (Tagore) got up very early in the morning and wrote a very beautiful poem.... When he came down, he said to one of us, 'Here is a poem which I have written. It is addressed to God, but give it to Congress people. It will please them."
Thus, Tagore is said to have written the poem in honour of God. In a letter to Pulin Behari Sen, Tagore himself 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 [ed. God of Destiny] 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."
Here I want to add some more points which, according to me, will help you to understand Rabindranath.
1. Rabindranath Tagore strongly opposed the partition of Bengal in 1905. On the day of partition he organized a “Rakhsha Bandhan”
ceremony to mark the unity in Bengal.
2. Rabindranath repudiated his “Knighthood” in protest for Jalianwallahbag mass killing in 1919.
So why Tagore had done such a duplicity in 1911, the mid-way between 1905 & 1919. Was he a hypocrite person? What do you think?
2. Even if we were to believe Tagore’s version that he wrote it in honour of God, it still leaves some questions unanswered. He addressed it to a male (Adhinayaka, Bhagya Vidhaata etc) while it is natural for us to think of our land as female (Bharat Mata). Who is this “Bharata Bhagya Vidhata”? I don’t think such an entity has ever been mentioned anywhere in any of our mythologies/vedas etc. We have the Vidhata aka Brahma, but he is believed to be Vidhata for the entire universe and it doesn’t make sense to think of him as determining only India’s destiny. So, since it is clearly not Brahma, it seems to be some entity/God of destiny that Tagore has thought up himself.
---------------Tagore was greatly against this “Puja” of “Bharat Mata” often done by many (particularly Bengali) nationalists in those days. A dialogue by Nikhilesh with Sandipan in Ghare Baire (Home and the World) novel, which perhaps most explicitly carries Tagore’s thoughts on nationalism, is most educative in this regard. There is a dialogue, Nikhilesh: “You know Sandipan, the problem with your kind of nationalism is that you conjure up a certain mother-image of the nation in your mind and start doing Puja of that image. You forget that the real nation is among the millions of people who toil on the fields in the villages…” In “Jana Gana Mana” Tagore was appealing to the great Lord who controls the mind of all the people in the land, and certainly not referring to any “Mother India”. Whether there is any such Lord I don’t know, and whether that Lord is a male or a female. But remember Tagore, despite being a Brahmo, was greatly influenced by the Upanishads, where the Supreme Power is Brahma — who is always referred as Noun Male in Sankrit.
3.In the original Bengali verses only those provinces that were under British rule, i.e. Punjab, Sindh, Gujarat , Maratha etc. were mentioned. None of the princely states were recognized which are integral parts of India now Kashmir, Rajasthan, Andhra, Mysore or Kerala. Neither the Indian Ocean nor the Arabian Sea was included, since they were directly under Portuguese rule at that time.
--------Have anyone of you even attempted writing one in your chidhood? To imagine that the names of every Indian state should be captured in a poem to express the expanse of our motherland! Crib about Questioning the artistic ability of the only Indian blessed with a Nobel in literature! Its both irritating and amusing at the same time.