What two gramophones tell us about Vande Mataram

Why in the News

Two gramophone records of Vande Mataram, one cut in 1938 and one pressed some time afterwards, carry contradictory descriptions of what the song officially is. The first was commissioned for the 51st Annual Session of the Indian National Congress at Haripura in 1938. It answered the Congress Working Committee meeting at Calcutta in October 1937, which had cut the song’s ceremonial position. The second, undated record reverses the first on both the stanza count and the label. What is contested is the basis on which the familiar distinction between a National Anthem and a National Song now rests.

What had happened at Calcutta in October 1937?

1. The song’s position was reduced there: The Congress Working Committee meeting of October 1937 compromised the pride and the position the song had held in Congress proceedings.
2. The Congress had treated it as the anthem for years: Vande Mataram had been referred to as the National Anthem in the proceedings and reports of the annual sessions over a long period.
3. The record keeping was not incidental: Many of those reports through the 1920s were edited and prepared by the then General Secretary of the Indian National Congress, Jawaharlal Nehru.
4. Haripura was framed as a correction: The session a few months later set out to restore what the Calcutta meeting had removed, so the staging there is evidence of intent rather than ceremony.

How was the song staged at Haripura?

1. The procession was built around it: The President elect, Subhas Chandra Bose, was carried four miles to the pandal in a rath drawn by 51 bullocks, moving in pairs, each pair carrying tricolour flags on their heads.
2. The detail was deliberate: The bells hung around the bullocks’ necks were tuned, and carried the words Vande Mataram engraved on them.
3. The performers were brought from Bengal: Singers and musicians travelled with the President elect from Calcutta in the second class bogies of the Nagpur Mail, led by the master musician RR Mukherjee.
4. The leadership acknowledged it formally: The senior leadership of the Congress, including Mahatma Gandhi, stood at attention as the Bengal troupe sang the song.
5. The reception was recorded at the time: Sarojini Naidu described the Haripura rendering as exquisitely sung with deep and thrilling emotions, and Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay credited the troupe with setting the emotional tone of the whole session.

What did the 1938 record actually declare?

1. It was commissioned to make a point: A special gramophone record was cut in 1938 to restore the standing of the song, and the work was given to Timir Baran, then the most credible name in Indian orchestration.
2. It was the first complete setting: For the first time the complete song was composed in two versions, a grand choral rendering as an anthem and an instrumental arrangement in the character of a military march.
3. The physical format carried the argument: It was issued on a 12 inch disc against the usual 10 inch, because the larger disc combined respect with the need to fit all six stanzas on one side.
4. The label declared completeness: It read BANDE MATARAM SAMPOORN, sampoorn meaning complete, and that assertion was repeated in Devanagari, Bangla and Nastaliq.
5. The label declared status: A second declaration in bold capitals read INDIAN NATIONAL ANTHEM, with a tricolour bearing the charkha above it.

What did the Constituent Assembly settle on 24 January 1950?

1. The Cabinet’s earlier choice was provisional: Jana Gana Mana was tentatively chosen as the National Anthem in 1948.
2. The Assembly formalised it by statement, not by article: The Constituent Assembly settled the question through a Statement read on 24 January 1950, after the Constitution had been finalised on 26 November 1949 and signed.
3. The Statement drew no such distinction: It declared Jana Gana Mana the National Anthem, and said of Vande Mataram that it shall be honoured equally with Jana Gana Mana and shall have equal status.
4. The disputed term is absent from it: The expression National Song does not occur anywhere in what was read out on that date.

Where did the National Song distinction come from?

1. A secretariat noting, not a statute: The distinction sharpened in a Prime Minister’s Secretariat noting of 25 November 1955, which referred to Vande Mataram as a Special National Song.
2. It departed from the 1950 language: That phrase replaced the equal status formulation the Constituent Assembly had used five years earlier.
3. It also fixed protocol: Where both were performed, Vande Mataram was to open and Jana Gana Mana to close, and the noting recorded the view that as a rule both should not be performed at the same function.
4. The distinction was carried forward administratively: The noting was marked to the Ministry of Home Affairs, which has maintained the National Anthem and National Song distinction since.
5. It rests on nothing enacted: That distinction has no constitutional, legal or legislative basis.

What does the second record leave unresolved?

1. The stanzas were cut back: Between the 1938 recording and the 1950 statement, a second, little noticed record reduced the six stanzas to four.
2. The format shrank with them: It was pressed on a 10 inch His Master’s Voice (HMV) record, the standard size the 1938 disc had deliberately exceeded.
3. The claim on the label changed: The words Sampoorn and Indian National Anthem were both dropped, and the label read Indian National Congress Anthem instead.
4. The record itself is silent on why: Who inserted the word Congress, and on whose authority, is not documented anywhere on the disc.

Conclusion

The documentary trail runs from Congress proceedings through the 1920s, to the 1938 disc, to the Constituent Assembly, and then to an executive noting in 1955 that changed the terminology. The distinction now treated as settled therefore originates in administrative practice. The unanswered question is who authorised the relabelling on the second record, since no source names them.

Laws and Rules Governing India’s National Symbols

1. Prevention of Insults to National Honour Act, 1971: Penalises insult to the Indian National Flag, the Constitution of India and the National Anthem, and it is the only statute that names a national symbol for protection.
2. The Act does not extend the same protection to a National Song, which is one reason the anthem and song categories are not legally equivalent.
3. The Flag Code of India, 2002: Consolidates the executive instructions on display and use of the National Flag, and was amended in 2021 and 2022 to permit machine made and polyester flags and flying by night on open display.
4. Emblems and Names (Prevention of Improper Use) Act, 1950: Restricts commercial and professional use of the State Emblem, the name and pictorial representation of national figures, and certain official seals.
5. State Emblem of India (Prohibition of Improper Use) Act, 2005: Governs use of the State Emblem specifically, which the 1950 Act had covered only in part.

Key Facts about India’s National Symbols

1. National Anthem: Jana Gana Mana was composed in Bengali by Rabindranath Tagore and first sung at the Calcutta session of the Indian National Congress in 1911, with a playing time of about 52 seconds for the full version.
2. Constitutional position: The Constitution names neither the anthem nor the song in its text, and Article 51A(a) makes respect for the Constitution, the National Flag and the National Anthem a Fundamental Duty.
3. National Flag: Adopted by the Constituent Assembly on 22 July 1947, with the Ashoka Chakra of 24 spokes replacing the charkha carried on the earlier Congress tricolour.

Back2Basics: Vande Mataram

1. Its origin: A poem by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, written in the 1870s and published within the novel Anandamath in 1882.
2. Its language: Composed in Sanskritised Bengali, which is why the stanza count and the translations became a point of dispute later.
3. Its political career: It entered nationalist politics at the 1896 Calcutta session of the Indian National Congress and became the mobilising song of the Swadeshi movement during the Partition of Bengal.
4. Why the stanza count matters: Only the first two stanzas invoke the land, while later stanzas carry religious imagery, which is why the number of stanzas performed became a political question.

Matching Previous Year Question

“[2021] With reference to Madanapalle of Andhra Pradesh, which one of the following statements is correct? (a) Pingali Venkayya designed the tricolour Indian National Flag here. (b) Pattabhi Sitaramaiah led the Quit India Movement of Andhra region from here. (c) Rabindranath Tagore translated the National Anthem from Bengali to English here. (d) Madame Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott set up headquarters of Theosophical Society first here ANSWER: (c)”