Monday, November 30, 2020

 





In the original Bengali poem - Bharoto Bhagyo Bidhata by #Rabindranath #Tagore from which our national anthem was derived, only those provinces were mentioned which were under British rule, i.e. Punjab, Sindh, Gujarat, Maratha.

Those princely states (Kashmir, Rajasthan, Andhra, Mysore, or Kerala) were ruled by the Portuguese not mentioned in the anthem.

While the poem was written by Tagore in 1911, it was adopted as our national anthem in 1950. There isn't a direct one to one relation between the literary terms and contemporary regions, but with some approximation, we can establish a decent mapping.

Another interesting fact is that there exists another derivative of the poem in Hindi called Shubh Sukh Chain which was the national anthem of the Provisional Government of Free India (Azad Hind) formed by Subhash Chandra Bose.

Tagore was a man who understood the diversity of India compared to others of his times. If one read his book 'nationalism' today, he would be labelled as anti-national by the religious nationalists. The way he acknowledged and integrated the variety of culture, race, region and language in the national anthem is a reminder to us every single day that what India is all about and we should accept and cherish our differences rather than trying to impose one on another.

You can listen to that version here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0wWSyAbTgg 

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