The Qaumi Taranah (Urdu: قومی ترانہ, Qaumī Tarānahpronounced [ˈqɔː.mi ˈt̪ə.rɑː.nɑ], lit. “National Anthem”), also known as Pāk Sarzamīn (Urdu: پاک سرزمین, pronounced [ˈpɑːk ˈsər.zə.miːn], lit. “The Sacred Land”), is the national anthem of Pakistan. Its music was composed by Ahmad G. Chagla in 1949, preceding the lyrics, which were written by Hafeez Jullundhri in 1952. It was officially adopted as Pakistan's national anthem in August 1954[1] and was recorded in the same year by eleven major singers of Pakistan including Ahmad Rushdi, Kaukab Jahan, Rasheeda Begum, Najam Ara, Naseema Shaheen, Zawar Hussain, Akhtar Abbas, Ghulam Dastagir, Anwar Zaheer, and Akhtar Wasi Ali.[2]
English: Be Blessed The Sacred Land | |
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National Anthem | |
National anthem of Pakistan | |
Lyrics | Hafeez Jullundhri, June 1952 |
Music | Ahmad G. Chagla, 21 August 1949 |
Adopted | 13 August 1954 |
Audio sample | |
Qaumi Taranah (Instrumental) |
In early 1948, A. R. Ghani, a Muslim from Transvaal, South Africa, offered two prizes of five thousand rupees each for the poet and composer of a new national anthem for the newly independent state of Pakistan. The prizes were announced through a government press advertisement published in June 1948. In December 1948, the Government of Pakistan established the National Anthem Committee (NAC) with the task of coming up with the composition and lyrics for the official national anthem of Pakistan. The NAC was initially chaired by the Information Secretary, Sheikh Muhammad Ikram, and its members included several politicians, poets and musicians, including Abdur Rab Nishtar, Ahmad G. Chagla and Hafeez Jullundhri.[citation needed] The NAC encountered early difficulties in finding suitable music and lyrics.
When President Sukarno of Indonesia became the first foreign head of state to visit Pakistan on 30 January 1950, there was no Pakistani national anthem to be played. In 1950, the impending state visit of the Shah of Iran added urgency to the matter and resulted in the Government of Pakistan asking the NAC to submit an anthem without further delay. The NAC Chairman, then Federal Minister for Education, Fazlur Rahman, asked several poets and composers to write lyrics but none of the submitted works were deemed suitable. The NAC also examined several different tunes and eventually selected the one presented by Ahmed G. Chagla and submitted it for formal approval.[3] On 21 August 1949, the Government of Pakistan adopted Chagla’s tune for the national anthem.[4]
The anthem, without lyrics, was performed for the first time for a foreign head of state on the state visit of the Shah of Iran to Pakistan in Karachi on 1 March 1950 by a Pakistan Navy band.[citation needed]
It was later played for Prime MinisterLiaquat Ali Khan during his official visit to the United States on 3 May 1950. It was played before the NAC on 10 August 1950.[5] Official recognition to the national anthem, however, was not given until August 1954.[5] The NAC distributed records of the composed tune amongst prominent poets, who responded by writing and submitting several hundred songs for evaluation by the NAC. Eventually, the lyrics written by Hafeez Jullundhri were approved and the new national anthem was broadcast publicly for the first time on Radio Pakistan on 13 August 1954, sung by Hafeez Jullundhri himself. Official approval was announced by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting on 16 August 1954. The composer, Ahmed G. Chagla, died in 1953, before the new national anthem was officially adopted. In 1955, there was a performance of the national anthem involving 11 major singers of Pakistan, including Ahmad Rushdi, Kaukab Jahan, Rasheeda Begum, Najam Ara, Naseema Shaheen, Zawar Hussain, Akhtar Abbas, Ghulam Dastagir, Anwar Zaheer and Akhtar Wasi Ali.[6]
The Qaumi Taranah is a melodious and harmonious rendering of a three-stanza composition with a tune based on eastern music but arranged in such a manner that it can be easily played by foreign bands.[citation needed]
The music, composed by the Pakistani musician and composer, Ahmad G. Chagla in 1949, reflects his background in both eastern and western music. Twenty-one musical instruments[4] and thirty-eight different tones[4] are used to play the Qaumi Taranah,[7] the duration of which is 80 seconds.[1][4][8]
The lyrics, written by the Pakistani Urdu-language poet, Hafeez Jullundhri in 1952, have commonality with Persian, making them understandable in both Urdu and Persian languages. No verse in the three stanza lyrics is repeated.[1] The anthem has heavy Persian poetic vocabulary,[9] and only uses one exclusively Urdu word 'kā'.[10]
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English: Vande Mātaram | |
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वन्दे मातरम् (Sanskrit and official pronunciation) বন্দে মাতরম্ (Bengali pronunciation) | |
National song of India | |
Lyrics | Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, Anandamath (1882) |
Music | Hemanta Mukherjee, Jadunath Bhattacharya |
Adopted | 24 January 1950 (after independence) |
Music of India | |
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Traditional
Modern
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Media and performance | |
Music awards | |
Music festivals | |
Music media | |
Nationalistic and patriotic songs | |
National anthem | Jana Gana Mana |
Regional music | |
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Vande Mataram (also pronounced Bande Mataram) (IAST: Vande Mātaram) (English Translation: Mother, I bow to thee) is a Bengali poem written by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay in 1870s, which he included in his 1882 novel Anandamath. The poem was composed into song by Rabindranath Tagore.[1] The first two verses of the song were adopted as the National Song of India in October 1937 by the Congress Working Committee prior to the end of colonial rule in August 1947.[2][3][4]
An ode to the Mother goddess, it was written in Bengali script in the novel Anandmath.[5] The title 'Bande Mataram' means 'I praise thee, Mother' or 'I praise to thee, Mother'.[1][6] The 'mother goddess' in later verses of the song has been interpreted as the motherland of the people – Bangamata (Mother Bengal) and Bharat Mata (Mother India),[7][8] though the text does not mention this explicitly.
It played a vital role in the Indian independence movement, first sung in a political context by Rabindranath Tagore at the 1896 session of the Indian National Congress.[9] It became a popular marching song for political activism and Indian freedom movement in 1905.[1] Spiritual Indian nationalist and philosopher Sri Aurobindo referred it as 'National Anthem of Bengal'.[10] The song and the novel containing it was banned by the British government, but workers and general public defied the ban, many went to colonial prisons repeatedly for singing it, and the ban was overturned by the Indians after they gained independence from the colonial rule.[11][12]
In 1950 (after India's independence), the first two verses of the song were declared the 'national song' of the Republic of India, distinct from the national anthem of India, Jana Gana Mana. The first two verses of the song are an abstract reference to mother and motherland, they do not mention any Hindu deity by name, unlike later verses that do mention goddesses such as Durga.[13][14] There is no time limit or circumstantial specification for the rendition of this song [unlike the national anthem Jana Gana Mana that specifies 52 seconds].[15]
The root of the Sanskrit word Vande is Vand, which appears in Rigveda and other Vedic texts.[16][note 1] According to Monier Monier-Williams, depending on the context, vand means 'to praise, celebrate, laud, extol, to show honour, do homage, salute respectfully', or 'deferentially, venerate, worship, adore', or 'to offer anything respectfully to'.[16][17] The word Mātaram has Indo-European roots in mātár- (Sanskrit), méter (Greek), mâter (Latin) which mean 'mother'.[18][19]
The first two verses of Vande Mataram adopted as the 'National Song' read as follows:
Bengali script[20] | Bengali phonemic transcription | Devnagari script | NLK transliteration[9][21] |
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বন্দে মাতরম্৷ | bônde matôrôm | वन्दे मातरम्। | vande mātaram |
The complete original lyrics of the Vande Mataram is available at Vande Mataram – via Wikisource..
বন্দে মাতরম্ (Bengali Script) | Latin transliteration (IAST) | वन्दे मातरम् (Devanagari transliteration) |
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The first translation of Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay's novel Anandamath, including the poem Vande Mataram, into English was by Nares Chandra Sen-Gupta, with the fifth edition published in 1906 titled 'The Abbey of Bliss'.[22]
Here is the translation in prose of the above two stanzas rendered by Sri Aurobindo Ghosh. This has also been adopted by the Government of India's national portal.[9] The original Vande Mataram consists of six stanzas and the translation in prose for the complete poem by Shri Aurobindo appeared in Karmayogin, 20 November 1909.[23]
Mother, I praise thee!
Rich with thy hurrying streams,
bright with orchard gleams,
Cool with thy winds of delight,
Dark fields waving Mother of might,
Mother free.
Glory of moonlight dreams,
Over thy branches and lordly streams,
Clad in thy blossoming trees,
Mother, giver of ease
Laughing low and sweet!
Mother I kiss thy feet,
Speaker sweet and low!
Mother, to thee I praise thee. [Verse 1]
Who hath said thou art weak in thy lands
When the swords flash out in seventy million hands
And seventy million voices roar
Thy dreadful name from shore to shore?
With many strengths who art mighty and stored,
To thee I call Mother and Lord!
Thou who savest, arise and save!
To her I cry who ever her foeman drove
Back from plain and Sea
And shook herself free. [Verse 2]
Thou art wisdom, thou art law,
Thou art heart, our soul, our breath
Thou art love divine, the awe
In our hearts that conquers death.
Thine the strength that nerves the arm,
Thine the beauty, thine the charm.
Every image made divine
In our temples is but thine. [Verse 3]
Thou art Durga, Lady and Queen,
With her hands that strike and her swords of sheen,
Thou art Lakshmi lotus-throned,
And the Muse a hundred-toned,
Pure and perfect without peer,
Mother lend thine ear,
Rich with thy hurrying streams,
Bright with thy orchard gleems,
Dark of hue O candid-fair [Verse 4]
In thy soul, with bejeweled hair
And thy glorious smile divine,
Loveliest of all earthly lands,
Showering wealth from well-stored hands!
Mother, mother mine!
Mother sweet, I praise thee,
Mother great and free! [Verse 5]
Apart from the above prose translation, Sri Aurobindo also translated Vande Mataram into a verse form known as Mother, I praise thee!.[24]Sri Aurobindo commented on his English translation of the poem that 'It is difficult to translate the National Song of India into verse in another language owing to its unique union of sweetness, simple directness and high poetic force.'[25]
Vande Mataram has inspired many Indian poets and has been translated into numerous Indian languages, such as Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Assamese, Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, Punjabi Urdu and others.[26][note 2]
Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay was one of the earliest graduates of the newly established Calcutta University. After his BA, he joined the British Indian government as a civil servant, becoming a District Magistrate and later a District Collector. Chattopadhyay was very interested in recent events in Indian and Bengali history, particularly the Revolt of 1857 and the previous century's Sanyasi Rebellion.[28] Around the same time, the administration was trying to promote 'God Save the Queen' as the anthem for Indian subjects, which Indian nationalists disliked. It is generally believed that the concept of Vande Mataram came to Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay when he was still a government official, around 1876.[29] He wrote Vande Mataram at Chuchurah, there is a white colour house of Adhya Family near river Hooghly (near Mallik Ghat).[citation needed]
Chattopadhyay wrote the poem in a spontaneous session using words from Sanskrit and Bengali. The poem was published in Chattopadhyay's book Anandamatha (pronounced Anondomôţh in Bengali) in 1882, which is set in the events of the Sannyasi Rebellion.[28][29]Jadunath Bhattacharya was asked to set a tune for this poem just after it was written.[29]
'Vande Mataram' was the whole nation's thought and motto for independence [from British rule] during the Indian independence movement. Large rallies, fermenting initially in Bengal, in the major metropolis of Calcutta, would work themselves up into a patriotic fervour by shouting the slogan 'Vande Mataram', or 'I praise the Mother(land)!' The British, fearful of the potential danger of an incited Indian populace, banned the book and made the recital of the song a crime.[11] The British colonial government imprisoned many independence activists for disobeying the order, but workers and general public repeatedly violated the ban many times by gathering together before British officials and singing it.[11] Rabindranath Tagore sang Vande Mataram in 1896 at the Calcutta Congress Session held at Beadon Square. Dakhina Charan Sen sang it five years later in 1901 at another session of the Congress at Calcutta. Poet Sarala Devi Chaudurani sang the song in the Benares Congress Session in 1905. Lala Lajpat Rai started a journal called Vande Mataram from Lahore.[29]Hiralal Sen made India's first political film in 1905 which ended with the chant. Matangini Hazra's last words as she was shot to death by the Crown police were Vande Mataram.[30]
In 1907, Bhikaiji Cama (1861–1936) created the first version of India's national flag (the Tiranga) in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1907. It had Vande Mataram written on it in the middle band.[31]
A book titled Kranti Geetanjali published by Arya Printing Press (Lahore) and Bharatiya Press (Dehradun) in 1929 contains first two stanzas of this lyric on page 11[32] as Matra Vandana and a ghazal (Vande Mataram) composed by Bismil was also given on its back, i.e. page 12.[33] The book written by the famous martyr of Kakori Pandit Ram Prasad Bismil was proscribed by the then British government of India.
Mahatama Gandhi supported adoption and the singing of the Vande Mataram song. In January 1946, in a speech in Gauhati (Assam), he urged that 'Jai Hind should not replace Vande-mataram'. He reminded everyone present that Vande-mataram was being sung since the inception of the Congress. He supported the 'Jai Hind' greeting, but remanded that this greeting should not be to the exclusion of Vande Mataram. Gandhi was concerned that those who discarded Vande Mataram given the tradition of sacrifice behind it, one day would discard “Jai Hind” also.[34][note 3]
Parts of the Vande Mataram was chosen as the 'national song' in 1937 by the Indian National Congress as it pursued independence of India from the British colonial rule, after a committee consisting of Maulana Azad, Jawaharlal Nehru, Subhash Bose, Acharya Deva and Rabrindanath Tagore recommended the adoption.[36] The entire song was not selected by Hindu leaders in order to respect the sentiments of non-Hindus, and the gathering agreed that anyone should be free to sing an alternate 'unobjectionable song' at a national gathering if they do not want to sing Vande Mataram because they find it 'objectionable' for a personal reason.[36] According to the gathered leaders, including the Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore, though the first two stanzas began with an unexceptionable evocation of the beauty of the motherland, in later stanzas there are references to the Hindu goddess Durga. The Muslim League and Muhammad Ali Jinnah opposed the song. Thereafter, with the support of Mahatma Gandhi and Jawahar Lal Nehru, the Indian National Congress decided to adopt only the first two stanzas as the national song to be sung at public gatherings, and other verses that included references to Durga and Lakshmi were expunged.[2][37]
Rajendra Prasad, who was presiding the Constituent Assembly on 24 January 1950, made the following statement which was also adopted as the final decision on the issue:
...The composition consisting of words and music known as Jana Gana Mana is the National Anthem of India, subject to such alterations as the Government may authorise as occasion arises, and the song Vande Mataram, which has played a historic part in the struggle for Indian freedom, shall be honoured equally with Jana Gana Mana and shall have equal status with it. (Applause) I hope this will satisfy members.
The poem has been set to a large number of tunes. The oldest surviving audio recordings date to 1907, and there have been more than a hundred different versions recorded throughout the 20th century. Many of these versions have employed traditional South Asianclassicalragas. Versions of the song have been visualised on celluloid in a number of films, including Leader, Amar Asha, and Anand Math. It is widely believed that the tune set for All India Radio station version was composed by Ravi Shankar.[29]Hemant Kumar composed music for the song in the movie Anand Math in 1952 and this version of the Vande Mataram sung by Lata Mangeshkar became a cult success.[38] In 2002, BBC World Service conducted an international poll to choose ten most famous songs of all time. Around 7000 songs were selected from all over the world. Vande Mataram, from the movie Anand Math, was ranked second.[39] All India Radio's version and some other versions are in Deshraga.[40]
In July 2017, the Madras High Court ruled that the Vande Mataram shall be sung or played at least once a week in all schools, universities and other educational institutions of Tamil Nadu. The Court also ruled that the song should be played or sung in government offices and industrial facilities at least once a month.[41]
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