Vande Mataram: One Song, One Soul, One India

Today, as India rises again — confident, plural, ancient, and young

— the Mother still listens. She asks no offerings, only remembrance.

Every time we say Vande Mataram, we remind ourselves that freedom

without gratitude is hollow – 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 ‘Bande 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 Chatterjee’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 crystallised 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 Abanindranath 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 Chandra 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, Chandrashekhar Azad, Batukeshwar 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, and Hindu and Muslim; and people of all religions and beliefs shared a chant that carried both prayer and protest.

It was not Sri Aurobindo 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. W.H. Lee, a Briton who was in the 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 Aurobindo 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, Anandamath. 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 Bankim, this was not just political coercion — it was spiritual submission. A proud civilisation was being trained to bow before a foreign sovereign.

It was in this moment of quiet rebellion that on Sunday, 7th November 1875—Akshay Navami—at his residence near Calcutta, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee took up his pen. In what his contemporaries called a “transcendental mood”, he wrote Vande Mataram in one sitting—as though the song had descended upon him rather than been composed. When others sang to the Queen, he sang to the Motherland. He answered imperial command with spiritual surrender — not to a crown, but to a conscience. Where others bowed to a monarch, Bankim Chandra Chatterejee bowed to the soil. That was his rebellion. Not a sword drawn, but a song born. He knew the sword does not live, but the words are eternal.

Vande Mataram was not composed for an hour of anger but for an age of awakening. It was not addressed to a ruler but to a realm — to rivers, fields, orchards, and winds. It was a hymn that reclaimed India’s spiritual sovereignty long before she claimed her political one. As Anandamath reached readers, the song leapt from the novel into the nation’s bloodstream. At the 1896 Calcutta Congress, Tagore’s voice gave it wings. Within a decade, the streets of Bengal echoed with it during the Swadeshi Movement of 1905. Vande Mataram then was an act of defiance. The British banned it; students were expelled; protesters were arrested. But repression only deepened reverence. In Calcutta, schoolchildren stood barefoot in the rain to chant it. In Dhaka, women embroidered it onto their saris.

Aurobindo Ghosh called it “the Mantra of India’s rebirth.” Sister Nivedita wrote that to hear it was “to hear the very breath of India herself.” The song’s power was its universality—you did not need to know Sanskrit to feel it. By the 1920s and 30s, Vande Mataram was the code of courage. In prison cells, revolutionaries like Bhagat Singh etched it onto the walls. In the Andaman Cellular Jail, it echoed through corridors like a psalm of pain. Subhas Chandra Bose made it the INA’s battle cry. For his soldiers, the chant was not a melody but a mandate. Even as Mahatma Gandhi advised restraint in mixed gatherings, he admitted that Vande Mataram had become sacred — “a song sanctified by sacrifice.”

The strength of Vande Mataram lies in its imagery — a nation not of boundaries but of breath. Its motherland is not a battlefield but a being: fertile, radiant, nurturing. When Abanindranath Tagore painted Bharat Mata in 1905, he gave that being a face — serene, spiritual, self-sufficient. The painting, like the song, was both aesthetic and political, sacred and subversive.

Bankim’s genius was to elevate patriotism into prayer. To love India was to revere her, to worship the land as a mother, not merely occupy it as a territory.

The Anthem of Freedom

By the time India neared independence, Vande Mataram had become inseparable from the idea of India itself. Yet, in the Constituent Assembly, a debate arose: which song would represent the new Republic? In 1947, “Jana Gana Mana” was chosen as the National Anthem for its linguistic universality. But Vande Mataram was declared the National Song, with equal honour. Nehru called it “the song of our awakening”. Only its first two stanzas — describing nature, not deity — were adopted for official use.

One Soul, One India

It is not a sheer coincidence that when the nation is celebrating 150 years of the song ‘Vande Mataram’, it is also celebrating 150 years of the greatest unifier of India – Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. While the song ‘Vande Mataram’ described India’s unity in word, it was Sardar Patel who brought it to reality after independence. In 1947 we got the freedom, but the biggest task of unifying the country and bringing all the princely states together was still pending. Without their integration, the freedom of the country was meaningless. It was the Iron Man of India, Sardar Patel, who took up this task single-handedly and unified the country. How could we have imagined our own motherland ‘sujalam suphalam’ if she was fragmented into different parts and ruled by the different princely state rulers? It was the valiant effort and deep-rooted commitment of Sardar Patel who made this country ‘sukhadam, varadham’.

Different Ways of Expression

Thus, Vande Mataram remained India’s eternal invocation — not of policy, but of pride. Post-Independence, the song found new avatars. In 1952, the film Anandamath, directed by Hemen Gupta, brought it to the silver screen. Lata Mangeshkar’s crystalline voice, guided by Hemant Kumar’s stirring score, turned Vande Mataram into an anthem of cinematic immortality.

Half a century later, in 1997, A.R. Rahman’s “Maa Tujhe Salaam” rekindled its fire for a global generation. Mixing Hindustani ragas with world music, Rahman reminded Indians abroad that the Mother still waited for their song. His voice bridged centuries—from Bankim’s quill to Rahman’s synthesiser, the sentiment remained the same that every age sings the same mother in a different tune.

Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Vande Mataram has experienced a renaissance of meaning. The Prime Minister frequently invokes it at national events, seeing in it not nostalgia, but narrative — a civilisational reminder that India’s freedom was born from faith, not fury. Through programmes like Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav, school competitions, and cultural campaigns, the government has revived the song among youth. Digital choirs, drone-light shows, and orchestral renditions now accompany its melody at official events.

When Chandrayaan-3 landed on the Moon, social media erupted with “Vande Mataram from the lunar soil.” The anthem that once defied an empire now saluted the universe. From time to time, critics have questioned the song’s imagery—reading its invocation of the goddess as exclusionary. But they misunderstand the Indian idea of the divine. In our culture, the Mother is not theological but terrestrial. She is the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the language we speak.

The first two stanzas — officially adopted — describe rivers, fields, and winds. The Mother is nature herself. Vande Mataram is not about any religion or subscribing to any particular belief — it is about reverence. It celebrates not dominion, but devotion for the motherland. Not conquest, but compassion.

Why It Still Matters

In an age of fractured identities, Vande Mataram offers unity through emotion. It reminds Indians that nationhood is not an ideology but an inheritance. It asks nothing but gratitude — a sentiment beyond politics, beyond creed.

It also redefines nationalism—not as chest-thumping pride, but as quiet service. In Bankim’s vision, to bow to the Mother is to protect her rivers, forests, and children. As Vande Mataram turns 150 in 2025, India celebrates it in new forms. AI-driven symphonies visualise its verses through satellite imagery — rivers flowing to rhythm, crops swaying to chorus. Schoolchildren from across states sing it in 22 languages. Artists remix it into rap, classical dance, and fusion.

Technology has not diminished its sanctity; it has amplified it. The Mother now speaks in code, but her song remains the same. At its core, Vande Mataram is not political poetry — it is philosophy. It calls upon Indians to merge duty with devotion. To be born on this soil is fortune; to serve it, dharma.

Bankim’s invocation of the Mother anticipated the environmental, spiritual, and moral questions of our time. To sing Vande Mataram today is to remind ourselves of balance—between progress and preservation, power and peace. Few songs in history have outlived empires. Vande Mataram did. Banned, debated, dissected — yet undefeated. Because songs that spring from the soul cannot be silenced.

From colonial prisons to Olympic stadiums, from Bengal’s riverside to the moon’s surface, its echo endures. Soldiers whisper it before battle; children hum it before school prayers. It is India’s first language of love. When Bankim Chandra Chatterjee wrote Vande Mataram on that Akshay Navami afternoon in 1875, he could not have known that his pen would outlast empires. That his hymn would become a nation’s soul.

Today, as India rises again — confident, plural, ancient, and young — the Mother still listens. She asks no offerings, only remembrance. Every time we say Vande Mataram, we remind ourselves that freedom without gratitude is hollow.”

The Mother is free. The children must now prove worthy, as Sri Aurobindo wrote, “For nations are not built by armies alone, but by those who can hear the voice of the Mother and bow to her with love.” Vande Mataram, Mother, we bow to thee.

(Dr Sachchidanand Joshi is a writer, author and Member Secretary of IGNCA.)